Reagan Plane Given to Library

A Boeing 707 jet used as Air Force One by five former presidents will be retired and donated to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library next month.

Library directors have committed to carefully preserve this significant piece of American history, said Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche. The library’s location 50 miles north of Los Angeles, allowing easy access for millions of people, also influenced the military’s decision, Roche said.

The library’s fund-raising arm has promised to pay for getting the aircraft to its new home in a hangar to be built next to the library, set on 100 hilltop acres above Simi Valley.

Reagan foundation officials have also pledged to restore the blue, silver and white fuselage to how it would have looked when Reagan was president--right down to the bowl of jelly beans--and let the public walk inside.

“We are extremely pleased with the vision set forth by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation,” Roche said in a prepared release.

Transfer of the jet is a coup for the 90-year-old former president. It will also burnish the prestige of his 10-year-old library. No other presidential library has acquired a former Air Force One aircraft.

The primary Air Force One jet during Reagan’s two terms also carried that designation for four other presidents--Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush--before it was replaced by a larger and more luxurious 747 in 1990. After that, presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have used the jet as a backup.

A similar Boeing 707 that carried John F. Kennedy’s body from Dallas to Washington after the assassination is housed in the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, along with other former presidential aircraft.

A Flying White House

Reagan foundation officials were ecstatic that efforts to acquire the plane had paid off. The foundation began making inquiries two months ago when it learned that the 30-year-old plane was scheduled for retirement, foundation director Mark Burson said.

“We have every intention of creating a memorable experience that allows the public to walk through this magnificent aircraft and feel the sense of its awesome history,” Burson said.

A bulletproof limousine used by Reagan, on permanent loan from the Secret Service, will be housed with the jet. It is not the limousine that Reagan was pushed into by federal agents after a 1981 assassination attempt, but another one in the agency’s fleet, library officials said.

A U.S. Air Force Museum Web site lists the craft’s price as $36.2 million, but it was unclear if that is in current dollars or when it was commissioned in 1971.

Jerry Ter Horst, an Air Force One historian who has written a book on the world’s most famous plane, said the jet’s historical significance makes it priceless.

Nixon flew back to California in it after resigning in disgrace. Ford tumbled down the last four steps on a visit to Salzburg, Austria. And Reagan flew to a divided Berlin to demand that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down this wall!”

“Air Force One is really a flying White House,” Ter Horst said. “Presidents do a lot of business on board and that makes it a national treasure.”

But Ter Horst, who briefly served as press secretary to Ford, said he questions whether the Reagan library, depository of a Republican administration, is the best custodian.

“It’s a gift from the taxpayers to the Ronald Reagan library,” he said. “And I presume there are people who will say this is a gift I did not want to give.”

Elton Gallegy, the Republican congressman whose district includes the library, noted that the 55 million papers stored there are administered by the U.S. National Archives and Records. The same is true for every other presidential library, Gallegy said.

“These are not monuments to someone’s political party,” he said. “They are national treasures. And if the general public has access to it, it is certainly appropriate.”

New Hangar to be Constructed

An immediate challenge will be building a hangar big enough to house a plane that is 153 feet long and 146 feet wide. Library officials said they will construct a Museum of Presidential Travel with private funds, working closely with Ventura County officials.

Plans are for the jet to be flown into Ventura County, possibly at the Point Mugu Navy base, at the end of September. It will be stored in a hangar until the library structure is ready, Burson said.

Then the plane will be disassembled, hauled to the library and put back together. Foundation officials have not worked out whether visitors will be charged a separate admission to see the plane, Burson said.

“All of the details of how we are going to display the plane, the exhibits that go with it, those are issues we are going to work on in the next 12 to 15 months,” he said.

Acquisition of Air Force One is a “big deal for everyone,” said Simi Valley Mayor Bill Davis.

“It’s good for Simi Valley in that a lot of people will come here to see it,” Davis said. “But it’s a first for the country and it’s nice that the Reagan library could be the first.”

The library foundation is a nonprofit group that sustains the library, a Center for Public Affairs and the Presidential Learning Center. A museum contains more than 100,000 artifacts chronicling Reagan’s life and political career.