Ronnie and Nancy Read Online Free PDF Page B

disciple,” helping the poor and the sick, sometimes wrote the weekly church notes in the Tampico Tornado , and was elected president of the Missionary Society.21
    The Disciples of Christ had emerged out of the great religious upheaval that swept the American frontier in the early nineteenth century, as the new nation spawned new churches, including the Unitarians and the Mormons.
    It was formally organized as a distinct denomination in 1832, and by 1900
    had more than 1.2 million members. It was especially strong in the rural parts of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Disciples called themselves “simple Christians” and their church “the Christian Church.” Unlike most other Protestant denominations, the Disciples made communion open to anyone who accepted Christ as the son of God and the New Testa-ment as the means to salvation. They rejected the Calvinism of the old Presbyterians, with its emphasis on predestination and the depravity of man.
    Instead, they stressed individual responsibility, the work ethic, education, good works, and Protestant unity.22

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    Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Like many nativist churches, the Disciples had an anti-Catholic streak, seeing Roman Catholics as foreign and morally lax, particularly with regard to alcohol, so Nelle’s choice of this church was something of a slap in the face to her husband. The Disciples of Christ were fanatically opposed to drinking, “the driest of the dries.” They were closely aligned with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. One of the most famous Disciples was Carry Nation, who, in the 1890s, led a crusade of hymn-singing, hatchet-wielding women through the saloons of Kansas, smashing bottles and furniture. The Disciples used grape juice, not wine, in their communion service.23
    In the summer of 1913, the Reagan family’s peaceful life was turned upside down, literally and figuratively. Five years after Henry Ford brought out America’s first affordable car, Jack bought a Model T and within a month had managed to overturn it, with his wife and two sons inside, by crashing into a stump. When it was repaired, it not only widened the family’s hori-zons, making it easier for Nelle to visit her sisters in Morrison and Quincy, but also stimulated Jack’s restlessness. His buying—and drinking—trips to Chicago and other “wet” towns became more frequent.24
    In comparison to his brother William’s alcoholism, which was so severe that Jack tried to have him committed in 1914, Jack’s drinking seemed under control. He tended to binge on holidays and when things were going well, but otherwise he would remain sober for long stretches of time.
    Still, by the age of thirty-one he had apparently had enough of the small-ness—and dryness—of Tampico.
    The Reagans would move five times in the next five years. Their first stop was Chicago, where they spent a miserable eight months living in a cold-water flat. Jack hated being one of three hundred employees at the Fair Store, which billed itself as the largest department store in the world, and was fired after being arrested for public drunkenness.25 Then came three years in Galesburg, home of the country’s largest horse and mule market, where Jack lost another job because of his drinking. (In Galesburg he tried to enlist for service in World War I, but as a father of two was turned down.) A year in Monmouth, a pleasant county seat best known as the birthplace of Wyatt Earp, followed. Finally, in 1919, Jack’s former boss, H. C. Pitney, who was going blind, lured him back to Tampico with an offer of higher pay and the chance to become a partner. The Reagans moved into an apartment above the Pitney store, right across the street Early Ronnie: 1911–1932
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    from the apartment where the boys had been born. After five years of wandering in an attempt to move up in the world, they had come full circle.26
    Yet young Ronald thrived. Buoyed by his mother’s faith and love,