Reagan and My Mother's Big White Lincoln
So it’s 1980 and Ronald Reagan is running against Jimmy Carter for President. In Youngstown, the steel industry has collapsed, and the area has lost tens of thousands of jobs in a very short period of time. If the American economy was bad, it was catastrophic here in the Mahoning Valley. In the midst of the campaign, Reagan decided to make a pit stop in our lovely valley. He visited St. Rose Church in Girard, and visited several of the closed down steel mills. I got a phone call from some of my Republican friends and asked if I would like to drive some of Reagan's staffers in the motorcade. I was thrilled to death. Reagan had been one of my political heroes for years. Then came the edict. At the time I was driving an Oldsmobile 98, a pretty big car that I bought used from my parents. My Dad was driving a two seat sports car, and my mother had this big, freakin’ white Lincoln Continental. The word from the Reagan people was we were to drive them in nothing more than a Chevy, Ford,