Yahoo! News - Former President Ronald Reagan Dies at 93
WASHINGTON - Ronald Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was "morning again in America," died Saturday after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 93.

Reagan's body was expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, Calif., and then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral was expected to be at the National Cathedral, an event likely to draw world leaders. The body was to be returned to California for a sunset burial at his library.

Over two terms, from 1981 to 1989, Reagan reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image, fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion in his single-minded competition with the other superpower.

Although I blame Ron for sewing the seeds of Republican conservatism that sprouted the Evil Empire that it has become today, I'm glad that the man is finally free of the horrible disease of Alzheimer's.

I attended Ron's inauguration in 1981, where I met George Bush the Elder on the Capitol steps. I have pictures of Ron riding in an open air limo, him and Nancy smiling and waving at the crowd. It was quite a party.

That day seemed to mark the "end of the 70's"- the end of peace as an ideal, the end of gentleness, the end of the long hair hippie freak and their music, the end of the movement towards personal freedom. The country turned toward the right; conformity, short hair, electronic music and "get tough" rhetoric, and saw the beginning of the cowboy mentality that still occupies the Republican Party to this day.

I remember being bummed and worried about where Ron would lead us. And I was right. The 80's weren't very fun (well, I partied a lot- heh heh) as far as opportunity goes; interest rates were high and the jobs seemed to be scarce. Kind of like today. A pattern was set that I will probably be plagued with for the rest of my life, unless George the Son totally blows "conservatism" for all of them.

We can only hope.

Rest in peace Ron. A part of the "past" you become.