In 1982, I was still working part-time as chairman of the Chester County Board of Assessment when I received a call from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. “Would you take two men from Washington around to show them some places they could bring U.S. Secretary of Agriculture John Block to discuss agriculture [with the local farmers]?”
I drove the men around to show them different farms that were well taken care of and were good family farms. My sons Charles and Tom were busy filling silos and felt it was more important to get their work done in time, so I didn't take the visitors to our farm. While we were driving along, I said, "Well, that farm up by Downingtown is really a nice farm."
One of the men said, "Yes, but I don't know about the security of the president."
"President?” I asked. “President who?"
"Well, if we can work the schedule that day, we may bring President Reagan along with us, too,” he replied.
I realized then that things were getting more important than I had anticipated. So I dropped them off [on Monday afternoon], and they said we would hear from them in a couple of days. Tuesday went by, and nothing happened. On Wednesday, I was at the Assessment Board when my wife, Edna, called. “Ten black cars just pulled in with a lot of black-suited gentlemen riding in each car,” she said. “I think something important is going to happen at our farm.”
By the time I got home, the men (Secret Service agents) wanted to know what kind of fuel was in the fuel tanks underground. What was in the silos? What was the ammoniated fertilizer stored in the shed? When they found out that the Delaware state line went across our pasture, they asked where the nearest police station was in Delaware and how many miles it was to the hospital. Everyone would have to be alerted in both states, they said.
My family and I decided we better get a shuffle and try to get ready for this important visit. Charles called the big aerial sprayer and asked when he could come down and spray-paint the barn. The painter said in ten days to two weeks. Charles said, "I mean tomorrow."
“Well, I don't think I can do that,” the man said. “How come it's so important?”
"I'm not supposed to tell you. But if you're going to help me, I'll have to tell you that the president of the United States is coming, and we need the old barn painted."
“I’ll be there.”
On Thursday, about a hundred of the farmers around and many of our neighbors, as well as some park workers sent by the county commissioners, came in to help us mow grass, paint the fence, and tidy things up to get ready. About noontime, here came a big van with all the electronics so they could pull right in and start bouncing the pictures they wanted off the satellite. The telephone people asked me, "How many phone lines do you have in here?" I thought I was bragging when I told them two.
"That's not nearly enough. We'll have to have twenty-five or thirty to accommodate all the reporters."
This fellow who worked for the telephone company said he never saw a job processed so quickly. They got word at noontime and had a new cable line run into the farm by two-thirty to accommodate the situation. So a lot of things happened with the support of many people I didn't even know. By six or seven o'clock Thursday, it looked like we could accept the president the next day.
Charles Bakaly Jr., staff assistant and director of press advance for President Reagan, followed me around like a dog. I wondered what was going on and asked him, "Do you want to stay overnight with me rather than going to a motel?"
"That's the idea because I'm not allowed to let you out of my sight from now until the president comes and takes off again," he said. He stayed with us at our rancher and only drank half a cup of black coffee the next morning. "Until the president gets on the ground and gets off again, I don't believe I want to eat," was his explanation. So you realize how much work goes behind a visit like this.
They had limed three circles for the helicopters to land in the cow pasture. When the first big chopper came in, television news anchor Sam Donaldson and all the reporters were on it. In the second chopper were senators and House members from Washington. Someone told me, “Now walk out in the middle of the cow pasture. The president will be arriving next." It was the most lonely feeling I ever had, standing out there alone in the middle of the cow pasture, waiting for a chopper to land in one of the big circles.
Before the president landed, the Secret Service agents had worked for several hours to get the 11,000-pound presidential limousine over the bank and out into the cow pasture. They had it all set up what the president was supposed to do. The little book said, "Leaving south lawn of the White House for Wilkinson Farm." It had pictures of where we were supposed to walk and where we were supposed to stand, and it said the exact time we were to be at each designated spot.
When the president got out of the third chopper I met him and Secretary of Agriculture John Block and welcomed them to Chester County. President Reagan said he was going to walk. That upset the Secret Service because a hike across the cow pasture wasn't in their plan.
We walked up and hung ourselves on the rail fence to make it look real homey-like. This is where the christening of the baby calf took place. … I christened a new calf Nancy No. 1 and talked shop as we walked to the big hay shed, where the people were gathered. We sat on bales of straw and listened as the president made a short speech, fielded questions from the concerned farmers, and introduced members of his cabinet, senators, congressmen, and Governor Thornburgh of Pennsylvania.
Pictures of Ronald Reagan, John Block, and me were taken up at the hay barn. Then a lot of gentlemen who were running for election wanted to be in the act too. After they finished taking pictures, the president and I were ushered over to the limousine. We drove down through a metal detector that everybody had to pass through. As we passed it, Reagan said to me, “The young farmers surely spoke from their hearts this morning.”
“You’d better believe it,” I said and shook my finger at him to make the point. We rode back across the cow pasture and out to the choppers. The president thanked me for the warm welcome and for our hospitality before he took off for a meeting in Philadelphia.
Someone took a picture through the limousine window of me shaking my finger at President Reagan that day. It has been kind of a joke ever since. They said that a farmer like me would be about the only one that could get away with something like that. The picture hangs in one of the halls down in Washington now.
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