At Home with Nelle Reagan
Nelle Wilson Reagan was a devoted believer in Jesus Christ. She was a loving mother to her two sons and loving wife to her alcoholic husband. Nelle served in her church and in her community. Her younger son watched the life of his godly mother, took her lessons to heart, and became president of the United States.
Reagan once described his mother like this:
Nelle was quite a remarkable woman — tiny in stature but with enormous optimism and a huge heart.
When Ray and I toured President Reagan’s childhood home. I was impressed again and again by how Nelle Reagan shaped her son’s life.
First, we headed to the top of the stairs of their rented home and looked in the guest room. Nelle visited inmates in the local jail and read the Bible to them. When they were released, she invited them to spend their first night of freedom in this guest room, believing they would more likely find a job if they had a chance to get cleaned up.
Nelle Reagan was a member of Dixon’s First Christian Church. She was involved in church programs and taught Sunday School.
Years later, after her husband passed away, Mrs. Reagan grew ill and moved in with her son Neil. The family’s belongings were placed into storage. While in storage, their belongings burned. When Dixon residents began to prepare the Reagans’ former home as an historic site, President Reagan and his brother chose similar furniture from catalogs to show how the home looked when they lived there. This was their parents’ bedroom. Ladies from First Christian Church made the quilt. Many years before, three of those ladies had been girls in Mrs. Reagan’s Sunday School class.
Near the foot of the bed an open Bible lay on a dresser.
In the evenings the Reagan family gathered in the living room for reading and storytelling. Mrs. Reagan encouraged her sons’ reading. Ronald went to the library about three times a week, checking out hundreds of books during the seven years or so that he lived in Dixon.
The last room on the tour was the kitchen. Here the family kept their ice box. It was young Ron’s job to empty the tray which caught melting ice. When he forgot, his mother required him to mop up not only the spill, but to mop the entire kitchen on his hands and knees.
When our tour guide (a former homeschooling mom, by the way) told this story, I was struck by how this simple act of discipline helped to shape the man that President Ronald Reagan became. President Reagan lived his life guided by his mother’s teaching. What a privilege it is to guide young hearts.
Listen to your father who begot you,
And do not despise your mother when she is old.
Buy truth, and do not sell it,
Get wisdom and instruction and understanding.
The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice,
And he who sires a wise son will be glad in him.
Let your father and your mother be glad,
And let her rejoice who gave birth to you.
Give me your heart, my son,
And let your eyes delight in my ways.
Proverbs 23:22-26