NAMES IN THE NEWS : Reagan Tells Teens to Keep Hope

Former President Ronald Reagan told troubled teen-agers today that everything happens for a purpose--even bad things.

“I know you haven’t had it easy,” Reagan told more than 120 young people at Covenant House. “There must have been times when you wondered if anyone cared.”

Covenant House shelters about 25,000 runaway, homeless or neglected children each year at houses in three nations and seven states. Reagan visited the agency’s building in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, where he handed out writing pens and spoke briefly.

Reagan told the youths that when he was young, his family was poor and his father was an alcoholic. But he said he was sustained by his mother, who insisted “everything happens for a reason.”

He gave an example: During the Depression he went to the Montgomery Ward department store in his Illinois town and applied for work. When he was turned down, he recalled, “I felt about as low as could be.”

But Reagan next went to a radio station and was hired as a sportscaster, beginning his road to Hollywood and the White House. If he had gotten the first job he’d applied for, Reagan said, “I’d still be in working at that Montgomery Ward.”