To hear Mike Reagan tell it, his life, too, has been a series of heavyweight challenges. At 38, the President's elder son has had bouts with reporters, state investigators, divorce, injury and illness—but no battle has consumed him more than breaking free of his father's shadow. He calls himself "the unknown son," and says his mission is "making people believe that I can really do it on my own."
At the helm of a 38-foot Scarab, flanked by a navigator and a throttleman, Reagan plainly felt in charge. The Chicago-to-Detroit endurance/ speed record had never been attempted, and Reagan, reaching speeds of 85 mph where the chop subsided, established a benchmark of 12 hours 34 minutes 41 seconds. In the process, his "Assault, on the Great Lakes" raised an estimated $250,000 for the U.S. Olympic Committee from sponsor pledges and fund-raising events. Secret Service men massed at Reagan's departure and destination points, but for logistical reasons they let the President's son race unaccompanied. That decision required Ronald Reagan's own signature to authorize. Sadly for Mike, contact within the First Family has often failed to exceed that mechanical level.
"Communication is not terrific," he contends. The younger Reagan, wife Colleen, 32, and their son, Cameron, who will turn 5 on May 30, have not been invited to the White House since Inauguration Day, and father and son last met 10 months ago at a dinner following Mike's 25-hour-11-minute record-setting tear up the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis, which raised $500,000 for the Olympics from individual donors and corporate sponsors who pledged donations for each mile he completed.
On April 12 Colleen gave birth by cesarean section to a 6-pound-14-ounce daughter, Ashley Marie. The First Grandparents have yet to see her, though they did send flowers to Colleen. Young Cameron, when asked whether he ever sees his grandfather, blurts out, "Sure—on TV." "It's a hard situation," says the wounded Mike. "Sometimes I think they should spend more time with Cameron and Ashley and less time with the foster grandchild program." Colleen adds, "It's a shame they don't see their own, but I don't think they mean to hurt us. They are probably just too busy to think about it. They do call sometimes when they are in California." (Mike and Colleen live in Sherman Oaks.)
Actually, the fissures in the family predate the Reagan Presidency. In his official autobiography, first published in 1965, Ronald Reagan scarcely mentioned his four children, all of whom were sent away to boarding school. "There are two distinct families," Mike explains. "There is Dad's [meaning Mike and older sister Maureen, 42, the offspring of Reagan's first marriage, to actress Jane Wyman] and Nancy's [Patti Davis, 29, and Ron, 25]. It seems Nancy's are the real kids," Mike adds. "Nobody wants to be reminded of the first wife."
Michael should understand that. Only now has he decided to talk publicly about his first wife—a dental assistant from Atlanta whom he wed in June of 1971, the month she graduated from high school. For years he had gone to a summer camp run by her parents, and later lived with the family while attending Valley College near L.A. The bride's mother says, in retrospect, "They were more like brother and sister. That's why the marriage didn't work out." It lasted only 10 months.
"She left me as soon as she knew she was pregnant," Mike says. "She decided I wasn't fun anymore or something, and didn't want any part of me." A son was born. "Soon after that she remarried, and her husband adopted the boy. I have never seen him. I was depressed for a long time after that. I lost 30 pounds. It really shook me up badly." Still, he made no effort to get in touch. "What could I do? It was her decision. That was a bad, bad period, a kind of 'twilight zone.' "
In a way, it was familiar territory for Michael, who himself was adopted when he was 1 day old. (Jane Wyman had been advised not to bear any children after Maureen.) Mike didn't find out about it until he was 8, when Maureen "broke the news—right in the middle of a childhood fight." Family legend has it that he was adopted because Maureen wanted a brother, but "an older brother," Mike laughs, "like all her friends had. She's never forgiven me for not being an older brother."
Reagan and Wyman divorced when their son was 3. Mike says the fact that he was adopted did not unsettle him—"They always made me feel chosen." But within his defense of their decision to send him to boarding school at age 6, disappointment lurks. "I had a few rulers busted over me there. Mom was working full-time. There was nobody to take care of us. Really, it was better to be at boarding school because they could give us the discipline we couldn't have gotten at home."
Having a famous father, Mike maintains, was more a hindrance than a help even then. At Judson High School in Scottsdale, Ariz., "They figured, 'Hey, that's Reagan's kid. Hit him harder. He ought to be able to take it on the football field.' " They were right, and wrong. The star teenage quarterback was offered an athletic scholarship to Arizona State but turned it down because "I played for fun. Those guys were serious." His father told him, as he remembers it, "I'll put you through school, but I'm not going to make you rich." So, supplementing his allowance with poker and odd jobs, he enrolled at Arizona State, then at Valley College, only to drop out in 1968. A duodenal ulcer he developed in school kept him out of the Vietnam draft.
While working as a loading-dock hand in downtown L.A. in 1966, he got hooked on speedboat racing through a friend and they promptly each put up $5,000 of their savings to buy an 18-footer. Race publicity people from Lake Havasu, Ariz, "asked me to compete because of who my dad was," Mike recalls. "They were thinking that Mike Reagan was just a stooge." Not this time. In his first year, the 22-year-old won the world outboard championships. Then, in 1969, he crashed during a 250-mile race in Texas, tearing up his back muscles and dislocating both hips. A month later he was back in the cockpit, but "I didn't really have a purpose." His marriage came and went, and in quick succession, five of his friends were killed in racing accidents. At that, having sunk all his prize money into racing, he decided, "It's time to start making a living instead of spending one."
Mike was beginning to flourish as a pleasure-craft salesman in Southern California when he met Colleen Sterns on a blind date in 1973. (They married two years later.) When she was told his father was the Governor of California, he says, "She thought it was a joke. She even went to the library, but found no reference to me. That's how our part of the family was treated."
Still, he did his bit, and more, as the dutiful son during his father's 1980 campaign, delivering 600 personable, persuasive speeches in 35 states. After the election, imagining that "it's going to be a little hard being a floor salesman with a bunch of Secret Service guys running around [the family is assigned 15 to 20, in shifts]," he launched a business that marketed gasohol equipment for farmers. Shortly after the Inauguration his anonymity ended, though not as he'd have liked. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced it was investigating allegations that Michael Reagan had sold stock in the company before it was incorporated and had diverted $17,500 of the investors' funds to pay personal expenses. In May 1981 the Oklahoma City Times disclosed that Mike, in a new position as vice-president of sales in a small California aerospace firm, had written to several U.S. military bases mentioning "my father's leadership at the White House" and asking to be put on the list of "approved" contractors. Unapologetic, Mike insisted he had only been following up phone calls in which the other person "asked me if I was Ronald Reagan's son." The President's only admonition about that, according to his errant offspring, was, "Don't write any letters."
By the end of 1981 Mike had been cleared of the stock charges, but he was unemployed. Though he shrugs the situation off now as "one of those things you go through when your dad becomes President of the United States," the bad publicity did in his gasohol venture and forced him to resign both from the aerospace firm and from a second job as senior vice-president of a real estate title insurance company in Orange County. For long spells reporters camped on the lawn of his three-bedroom stucco ranch-style house in Sherman Oaks. "I'm tired of having to explain," he told them testily after the name-dropping incident. "I'd just like to know what the press expects me to do. You tell me, what job can I do?" Looking back, he says, "It was like the wrath of God was unleashed on me. I had lived this very ordinary life before."
In February 1982 he returned to the boat business, founding a marine marketing company in Los Angeles called M.C.R. (for Michael Colleen Reagan). So far it has operated without a ripple.
Mike credits Colleen with "putting my life in the right direction. She keeps me out of trouble." Last year he accepted an invitation from Larry Smith, head of the Scarab racing team, to pilot the speed attempt up the Mississippi. To legitimize the job, which he was offered in part because of his name, Mike insisted on the Olympic fund-raising tie-in. It's not all altruistic. He pockets a small percentage of the net donations and the fees paid by sponsors to have their logos on the boat; in the case of the Missisippi run, Mike's paycheck was $25,000. He will next "assault" the Atlantic Ocean, a significantly tougher and more dangerous challenge than any he has tackled so far. Weather permitting, he will leave Miami on July 3, hoping to make the Statue of Liberty on the 4th—thereby raising as much as $5 million to refurbish the fading lady. Such feats serve a recurrent dream whose fulfillment, Mike believes, "would make me happiest of all." In his fantasy, the President of the United States walks into Chasen's Restaurant—Hollywood's venerable see-and-be-seen spot—and is hailed as "Michael Reagan's father." The more plausible and better wish for a man of his years and history is that he, one day, may be hailed as Cameron Reagan's father.
- Contributors:
- Julie Greenwalt.
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