Past Presidents Honored at Library

For the throngs who flocked to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Monday, the Presidents Day celebrations wouldn’t have been complete without George, Abe and, of course, the Gipper to mug with for photographs.

Several thousand area residents crowded into the spacious library to celebrate the holiday with jumbo hot dogs, a Dixieland band and more presidential memorabilia than you could stuff into Air Force One.

For the fourth year, the library hosted its Presidents Day celebration with free admission, cake, music, tours and informative lectures on perhaps the most powerful institution in history.

“I came for the music,” self-professed Dixieland connoisseur Dan Fructuoso of Thousand Oaks said while tapping his foot. “I grew up on this stuff, and any chance I get to see it, I go.”

For others it was a long-awaited opportunity to tour the library and see everything from the tweed jacket worn by Reagan in the 1947 film “Stallion Road” to his class ring from Eureka College in Illinois to an X-ray of his chest showing the small bullet that lodged near his lung after an assassination attempt in 1981.

“He was such a handsome man,” said Marti Claycombe of Simi Valley as she perused old photos of Reagan while he was in college. “Heck, he’s still a handsome man.”

Others posed for pictures with impersonators portraying George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, George Bush and, of course, Reagan.

“Hey, I worked on your campaign in 1992,” one celebrant said to the Bush look-alike.

“Well, you didn’t work hard enough,” the phony Bush replied with a nasal laugh. “But we can still blame it on Ross Perot.”