The committee didn’t make a final determination about a statue of Reagan. State Rep. Mary Flowers said the panel she chairs is not at the decision-making stage yet and is focused on listening to “what everyone has to say.”
President Ronald Reagan attends the Illinois State Fair in Springfield in 1986 with Gov. James Thompson. Reagan is holding a 4-day-old goat belonging to Carry Marshall, 16, of Decatur. – Nancy Stuenkel/Sun-Times file
As statues of controversial figures are being torn down across the nation, an Illinois House panel on Wednesday discussed putting a new one up in Springfield of Ronald Reagan, the Illinois native who went on to become the nation’s 40th president.
House members on the Statue and Monument Review Task Force debated the pros and cons of “The Gipper’s” legacy, and the propriety of memorializing him on the Capitol grounds, but didn’t come to a decision.
The South Side Democrat who chairs the panel said in weighing the former president’s flaws with his legacy there has to be a recognition that “whether we agree with his policies or not … he had a profound impact on the direction of this country.”
Reagan spent his early years in northwestern Illinois — born in Tampico and raised in Dixon — before heading west to launch his acting career in Hollywood, playing Notre Dame football player George Gipp and others, and eventually his political career as governor of California.
He died in 2004 at the age of 93.
Josem Diaz, the vice president for Institutional Advancement at Reagan’s alma mater Eureka College in the Illinois city of the same name, would like to see a statue of a young Reagan on the state capitol grounds.
Read more here.
State Rep. Mary Flowers’ contact information can be found here.
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