How He Got His Start in Radio
	A prospective author asked Reagan in 1979 to look back on his life and describe how he overcame obstacles. His response:

Dear Miss Kellner:

. . . I was taught from the very beginning and accepted the idea that when all else fails, you then turn to God and put it in his hands . . . Let me give one example that was not a great tragedy but, at my particular age and at that particular time seemed so: I got out of college in the depths of the Depression in 1932. The government was putting announcements on the radio urging people not to leave home looking for work because there was none. I had decided that I wanted to get into radio, and I had decided that what I wanted to be in radio was a sports announcer. I didn't listen to the government announcements. I went hitchhiking around the Midwest simply asking at radio stations for a job, a job of any kind so that I could get in the studio and then would take my chances with working up to sports announcer. Finally, after weeks of this, I hitchhiked my way home, arriving in a downpour of rain.

My mother told me that a new Montgomery Ward store had opened in our small home town and was looking for someone known to the people in town for having had athletic experience to manage the sporting goods department. Wet and bedraggled as I was, I went right down and was interviewed for the manager. I must have looked like a bum, and I realized I wasn't going over very well. The next day I found that a local high school athlete of more recent vintage had been given the job. It was a very low moment, but . . . that faith that my mother had given me was sustaining.

The next day, I hitchhiked out again . . . where there was another radio station, walked in, stated my case and was told they had just hired a young man to break in as an announcer the day before. This was a little too much for me, and on the way out the door, I mumbled, "how does a guy ever get to be a sports announcer if he can't get a job in a radio station?" I reached the elevator. But before it arrived at that floor, the program director I'd been talking to, a wonderful old Scotsman, crippled with arthritis hobbling on canes, caught up with me, and said, "what is that you said about being a sports announcer?" And I told him of my ambition. He asked me if I knew anything about football. Well, I'd played the game for eight years--through high school and college. The upshot of it was I was given a tryout. I broadcast a Big Ten football game . . . and that began my career in radio. As you can see, I look back on that Montgomery Ward job and understand very well why I didn't get it . . .

      Sincerely,
      Ronald Reagan

NEXT LETTER: Love after a Loss

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