On Sunday, May 10, 1992, a private plane landed at Whiteside County Airport in Rock Falls, Illinois, about 100 miles west of downtown Chicago and 12 miles north of Tampico, population 800.
Today, Amy and her husband, Lloyd, run the Ronald Reagan Birthplace Museum at 111 S. Main, a half mile north of the church in a storefront on the block-long strip that is downtown Tampico. On a recent morning so cloudy it’s difficult to discern where Tampico’s white grain elevator ends and the colorless sky begins, McElhiney stands behind the counter of the museum. Her cane is propped against the wall; her arthritic hands straighten racks of key chains, postcards, and other Reagan-era memorabilia on display next to a donation jar that’s empty save for a few crumpled bills and a smattering of coins. The silver-haired 79-year-old remembers the former president’s visit vividly.
Despite the Reagans’ wish that there be no impromptu speeches, Devore couldn’t resist asking. It’s not often that the only president born in Illinois worships under the same steeple where he once sat with his mother, Nelle, a staunch Protestant. (Reagan’s father, Jack, worshiped at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church down the road.) As it was Mother’s Day, Reagan obliged.
Reagan had tried to see the apartment in 1976, but a family was living there and, according to Amy McElhiney, the Secret Service agents didn’t think it was a good idea. Thus, Reagan was only able to tour the downstairs of the building, which at that time housed an informal card and memorabilia shop celebrating his acting career and status as governor of California. When he became president, the Nicelys stopped renting the apartment out and began slowly refurnishing it to reflect what it might have looked like during the years the Reagan family occupied it. They changed the sign out front to say “Birthplace of President Ronald Reagan” rather than Governor.
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Edmund Morris didn’t bypass Tampico, yet from the tone of Amy’s voice when she talks about the author it can be inferred that she wishes he had. She has yet to finish Dutch. Reading it gives her a headache, and besides, as many of its critics despaired, Morris’s book is a peculiar blend of fact and fiction. But she gives the 896-page tome as much table space as she allots other less-than-favorable books, like Reagan daughter Patti Davis’s The Way I See It.
Perhaps most disappointing to Amy was that Morris wrote that the president pretty much recoiled upon seeing his humble birthplace, which Amy considers an insult to Paul Nicely, who went to great lengths stripping the wallpaper, refinishing the woodwork, and frequenting antique shops and auctions to find furnishings appropriate to the period. The nomadic Reagans, who moved 11 times before Ronald turned 18, left nothing behind. “He did not recoil,” Amy says. “He enjoyed seeing his birthplace.”
