In dimming light, he stuck to his script

It was just like Ronald Reagan to upstage the greatest military endeavor in history by dying on the day before the 60th anniversary of D-day. The time and space that would have been given to the Allied invasion at Normandy instead went to the passing of the 40th president. When I heard about it, I nodded and said to myself, “That’s Ron, all right.”

I didn’t say it with any intent to mock the memory of a man who looms larger in death than he did in life. I just meant it to indicate that his timing was that of an accomplished, if not talented, actor. He knew where to stand and how to turn and when to smile and generally how to make the most of what he had. He even knew when to die.

My words come a little late after his death, but I still wanted to say goodbye to a guy I spent time with who later went on to become president of the United States. I have a good memory of the way he took a moment to say goodbye to me.

It was in 1976. I was assigned to write a series of articles about the top seven men who had announced their candidacies for president, both Democrats and Republicans. Reagan was one of them. I spent a couple of weeks with each on the campaign trail as they crisscrossed the country in everything from private jets to a VW bus, the latter being Jerry Brown’s vehicle of choice.

I had private time with them in the months preceding the California primary, and there wasn’t one whom I didn’t regard with a measure of respect. Politically, I couldn’t have been further apart from some, but good men can communicate even when they don’t agree. Years before, I’d profiled Barry Goldwater when he ran for president, and while I disagreed with about every third word he said, I admired the man’s integrity.

Reagan was easily accessible in whatever the circumstance. My first contact with him was when he was trying to decide whether or not to run for governor after a speech on behalf of Goldwater in 1964 had thrust him into the political limelight. He had scheduled a press conference in San Francisco, but I was the only journalist who showed up. Nancy was with him, and the three of us sat there like strangers at a bus stop, discussing his plans, which were unclear, and the unseasonable weather.

He seemed a little vague to me then and just about every other time I saw him, but no one ought to expect an actor to be either eloquent or concise without a script. It was his stage presence, not an ability to think on his feet, that won him the title of Great Communicator. I’m not even sure what that means. He could deliver a line, but so can Jerry Seinfeld, and we don’t consider him any kind of master linguist.

When I think of Reagan, I think of him standing in front of an American flag five times his height on a stage before 3,000 God-loving Republicans in Oklahoma City. He looked like George C. Scott in an ad for the movie “Patton,” and he played the crowd with the expertise of a Shakespearean actor, which he never was. When it came to commenting on the debate over school prayer, he let his voice drop to a stage whisper, leaned into the microphone, paused for effect, and said, “If we ever get Washington out of the classroom, maybe we’ll let God back in.” The Okies went wild.

His forte was one-liners, and I listened to the same jokes over and over as he gave his standard citizen-candidate speech from Detroit to L.A. “Laws are like sausages,” he’d say. “If you like them, you should never watch them being made.” And “If we could have harnessed congressional hot air during the energy crisis, we wouldn’t have had to turn the thermometer down.”

Privately, he seemed to answer a lot of my questions with a “huh?” and appeared distracted at other times, as though his mind had drifted to another plane. I wondered later if even back then he was showing signs of the disease that would lock him in limbo for the final decade of his life.

I liked Reagan the way I liked Goldwater. I never doubted his sincerity, even though he bumbled about a bit, and I never doubted his good-heartedness. There was a sweetness to him, and a closeness in his relationship with Nancy that was beyond question. Their affection for each other was obvious, and no man with hate in his heart could love that much.

So I say farewell to Reagan the way he said it to me. We were at a small airfield in the Midwest. He was standing in the doorway of a private jet saying goodbye to a lot of Republican cronies as I stood alone, watching from a distance. When they were gone, he stepped back into the plane.

I had started to leave when I noticed he was suddenly in the doorway again, waving at me. He had made a special effort to return to say so long. I owe him at least that much in return.

Goodbye, Mr. President.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.