this was at the time and most people have not flown because the 1930s john gillespie magee, jr. became a fighter pilot in world war ii as one or two began, and died in the run up to the war but he left behind this beautiful poem. it ended with the words slipped the storm the bonds of earth to touch the face of god. it just came to be. i just remembered it from seventh grade. here's the thing. i made that the end of the speech, but there was a mystery. i knew that ronald reagan would only use those words if he knew that polymer and if that poem meant something to them. and i hoped he knew and i hoped it meant something, but just be careful the speech ended actually before that paragraph so it would be easier for the president to kill that paragraph and not say it. we got the speech done. there was no time to ruin it, by which i mean normally presidential speeches are staffed out to hundreds of people who can't help themselves. they think defensively or they think aggressively, whatever they're doing. they change everything around. sometimes they don't know good from bad and so th

he did everything he wanted and at the end he quoted the john gillespie magee column. but he was the first time i could see ronald reagan was really upset and the teacher and in part about a dreadful tragedy, in part because he understood it was the height of the cold war. you have to let the world know a little bit. no soviet union, this is not quote make a military disaster. there was a lot going on. reagan left the oval office feeling it had not succeeded. in the words of abraham lincoln he felt it hadn't scoured, lincoln said a good speech scours, breaks up the earth these reagan did not feel the speech had met the moment. i came to think afterwards that he thought that in part because there is nothing you can say that could meet a moment that painful to the american people and to you. i picked up from watching reagan how he felt, everybody went home by that night feeling sad about what happened, the history that happened and reagan's part and my part feeling we had not met the moment, feeling disappointed in ourselves. however something changed overnight. people s