For those of you in San Diego, I encourage you to pick up a copy of today's Union-Tribune -- there's a special commemorative section on Reagan and a long retrospective.

Ronald Reagan was the first president that I was really conscious of; I was 8-years-old when he took office. A good friend of mine in Jr. High and High School was a huge Reagan fan. She plotted various ends for Nancy, so that she could marry him.

I remember John Hinckley's attempted assassination. I remember the bombing of Libya. I most remember Reagan, as he stood before the Brandenberg Gate, saying:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

It's only in the subsequent years, as I've read, learned and studied American politics that I've truly come to appreciate what a great leader Reagan was.

Reagan was not afraid to call communism evil.

He supported freedom fighters in Latin America against communists.

He won the Cold War.

Reagan's landslide victory in 1984 is something that hasn't been duplicated and the way the Great Communicator was able to unify the American people hasn't been matched.

Reagan's optimism and his belief that America's best days were ahead of it, still reverberate in the hearts of many Americans.

Ronald Wilson Reagan will be missed. For the past decade he has suffered and his family have suffered as Alzheimer's disease ravaged a once sharp mind. Now that is returned to him as he meets his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.