Ronald Reagan Had A Great Sense Of Humor

There is a letter that Ronald Reagan wrote back in 1984 to 13 year old Andy Smith of Irmo, SC that has recently been making the round on the internet. The following letter has been retweeted almost 200,000 times in the last 48 hours, so you can imagine, before you read it, that it is that good. Check this out.

Dear Andy:

I'm sorry to be so late in answering your letter but as you know I've been in China and found your letter here upon my return.

Your application for disaster relief has been duly noted but I must point out one technical problem; the authority declaring the disaster is supposed to make the request. In this case your mother.

However setting that aside I'll have to point out the larger problem of available funds. This has been a year of disasters, 539 hurricanes as of May 4th and several more since, numerous floods, forest fires, drought in Texas and a number of earthquakes. What I'm getting at is that funds are dangerously low.

May I make a suggestion? This administration, believing that government has done many things that could better be done by volunteers at the local level, has sponsored a Private Sector Initiative program, calling upon people to practice voluntarism in the solving of a number of local problems.

Your situation appears to be a natural. I'm sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster. Therefore you are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program to go along with the more than 3,000 already underway in our nation—congratulations.

Give my best regards to your mother.

Sincerely, Ronald Reagan

—From Reagan: A Life in Letters

Sadly for Andy, he didn't get the disaster funds he was looking for, but we all learned from that letter that Ronald Reagan did read his mail and sometimes even responded. You don't hear of that happening very often anymore.