Reagan launched his career on the airwaves in Iowa

Former President Ronald Reagan died this weekend at the age of 93. While he was born in neighboring Illinois — a former Iowa Governor says Reagan never forgot the time he spent in the state. Former Iowa Governor Robert Ray took office in 1969 and it was then that he first got to know fellow republican Ronald Reagan.Ray says the first national governors’ conference he attended after being elected was hosted by Reagan — the then governor of California. Ray says he saw right away that the Reagans did things with class. Ray says he and his wife Billie got to know the Reagans well and had one thing in common — they could always talk about Iowa. Ray says Reagan had a love of Iowa as he felt it got his first career started. That first career was five years of radio broadcasting in Iowa beginning in 1932.Reagan then went on to Hollywood and the movies, and then into politics and eventually the Presidency. Rays says he had a lot of respect and admiration for Reagan and says he was a “great communicator” who didn’t get bogged down in little details. He says he let others work out the details and he focused on the big picture. Ray says President Reagan’s leadership revitalized America’s spirit.He says the nation had gone through some tough times with the Vietnam war, and there was the communist threat. Ray says Reagan stood up the communist threat and did the people of the communist world a lot of good, even though their leaders didn’t realize it at the time. He says Reagan was strong and was a leader, and whether or not you believed in his position on issues, “you still thought the world of the guy.” Ray sums up his feelings He says, “I will always remember him as a person of strength, a person of character, a person of humor, a person who could lead, a person who took a position and you could count on him to pursue that position. And he was strong and likeable.” Reagan’s funeral is Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The man known as the Great Communicator got his start in broadcasting more than seven decades ago as a sports announcer at W-O-C radio in Davenport. When the station dedicated a new building in 1988, President Reagan returned to eastern Iowa for the event and recalled his first job interview with W-O-C in 1932. Reagan said sports announcing was just an idea of his then at the dawn of the radio industry. Program director Peter McArthur gave Reagan his first “very unusual” audition by standing him in front of the microphone and told him when the light came on to start broadcasting an imaginary football game. Reagan did so for about 15 minutes and McArthur offered him a job on the spot for 10-dollars and bus fare to call the Iowa-Minnesota game in Iowa City the following weekend. Reagan said a veteran W-O-C sports announcer was at the game too and the two of them were to trade off quarters. Reagan said a note was passed down during the third quarter from McArthur that read “Let the kid finish the game,” which he said brought him a great thrill. Reagan said he had hitchhiked to Davenport from his home in Dixon, Illinois, in hopes of finding a better job in the depths of the Depression, not wanting to return to lifeguarding. Reagan visited Davenport in 1988 during the midst of the farm crisis and during a bad drought. During the appearance, the President recalled a speech he’d made to the Farm Bureau’s national meeting in Las Vegas many years before he’d become governor of California.Reagan said a bystander asked him why a bunch of farmers were in Las Vegas and he responded “Buster, they’re in an occupation that makes a Las Vegas crap table look like a guaranteed annual income.”