Outside the Beltway

REAGAN’S PEN PAL

James Joyner · Sunday, October 12, 2003 · 1 comment

WaPo has an interesting story on President Reagan’s relationship with a then-grade school student from D.C. named Rudy Hines. I vaguely remember Reagan having visited their home for dinner but had forgotten about this. While there was certainly a publicity-stunt angle to this, it was quite legitimate with the two exchanging well over 100 letters over a six year period. It is rather amazing that a president would take time out of his schedule for this but Reagan was apparently a very prolific letter writer. He was also a pretty fair cartoonist, judging from samples that accompanied the story in the print edition.