Ronald Reagan Wrote to My Father. We Found the Hidden Letter Years Later

Almost 35 years ago, my father received a letter from then-president Ronald Reagan.

Every modern commander-in-chief relies on staff writers to compose letters on his behalf. But I've always suspected—and, I believe, with ample reason—that our 40th president drafted this particular letter himself.

The letter in question, typed on embossed White House stationery and dated November 16, 1988, was addressed to Mr. Lee Brody, at his office in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Reagan was taking the opportunity to congratulate my dad, who was stricken profoundly deaf at birth, on his pioneering advocacy for other people with impaired hearing.

"I was pleased to learn of your many contributions to the members of the deaf community and their families," the letter opened.

"To be cut off from the ability to communicate with others can be a lonely, frightening and even life-threatening experience. In the past, for deaf people, this was an experience that was all too frequent.

"Your good efforts, however, have helped countless deaf and deaf-blind people gain renewed ability to communicate with others, greatly enriching their lives," the note went on. "I know their gratitude for your efforts is boundless. Your selfless service to others exemplifies the human spirit at its best, and I commend you."

"Nancy joins me in sending best wishes," the letter closes. "God bless you." At the bottom appears the upright cursive signature "Ronald Reagan."

And well might Reagan have done so.

Some 20 years earlier, my father had begun a mission. He adapted an all but outdated technology, namely the teletypewriters previously deployed to issue stock updates, military orders and long-distance news updates.

They were converted into devices that operated over ordinary phone lines and thereby enabled people with hearing problems to communicate, for the first time ever, instantaneously via the typed written word.

My dad eventually helped establish a network of TTYs—first across New York and New Jersey, then nationally—that connected the deaf community not only with each other, friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues but also hospitals, schools, libraries, airports, local police precincts, fire and ambulance stations, federal agencies, the U.S. Senate and, yes, even the White House.

My evidence suggesting that this 112-word letter came from the president himself is two-fold. First, Reagan himself had suffered from hearing loss since 1939, the result of a .38-caliber pistol being fired near his right ear while he acted on the set of a movie called Code Of The Secret Service.

In 1983, as a first-term president and with his hearing deteriorating, he began wearing a hearing aid in public (just as my father had done throughout his adult life).

The personal then translated into policy. In 1986, now in his second term, Reagan signed into law the Education of the Deaf Act, chiefly to promote the improvement of educational programs for deaf individuals throughout the U.S.

Second, Reagan is rarely credited, as history shows he most certainly deserves to be, for being a good writer in his own right. The letters he crafted to his wife Nancy, collected in a book, I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan, are adequate proof alone.

But he also wrote most of the speeches he delivered through his career, first as president of the Screen Actors Guild, then as a spokesperson for General Electric crisscrossing the country, and later as two-time governor of California. His other books, such as The Reagan Diaries and Reagan In His Own Hand, cement this legacy.

So there you have it. Ronald Reagan had plenty of reason to take a deep-seated personal interest in the issue of hearing loss, so much so that his letter to my own father was likely among those he felt duty compelled him to write himself.

My dad never told me, by the way, about getting this message from the leader of the free world. By nature, my father was too modest to do so. Rather, I learned of its arrival in the mail at his office, years later, from an uncle who somehow found out by chance.

To my regret, I never took the opportunity to ask him about the letter, much less find out how he felt about it.

Reagan was hardly alone in praising my father. The deaf community honored him with awards for his public service and hailed him as a hero. Bell Telephone accepted him to the Telephone Pioneers of America, only the 29th member since Alexander Graham Bell in 1911.

Every two years, the Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc. gives the I. Lee Brody Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual "who has devoted time and energy over an extended number of years to improve accessibility in telecommunications, media and information technology."

The Stevens Institute of Technology held a memorial service for him in 1997, drawing 500 people to pay tribute, and Gallaudet University, a Washington D.C. college for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, named a scholarship after him.

My dad is gone 26 years now. He's proof that if you reach out to help anyone, someone will usually reach back. In this case, it happened to be the president of the United States. And he made himself heard loud and clear.

Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist in Italy, is the author of the memoir Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes Of Age. He contributes to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York TImes, among other publications.

All views are the author's own.

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