President Reagan may have been a Hollywood actor, but he had human warmth that could not be faked. In 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, Reagan addressed the nation’s sadness from the Oval Office:
“I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.”
Greene considers the Challenger speech one of Reagan’s finest.
“It was such a beautiful example of how Ronald Reagan used his warmth, his fatherly reassuring qualities, to calm and comfort a nation,” said Greene.
