Description:
Loengard says of this photograph in his book "As I See It": "It seemed Ronald Reagan would surely win the Republican nomination for governor of California. Waiting for a committee to appear on the tarmac to greet him at one stop, Reagan swapped jokes with his staff. When he guffawed in my presence, I assumed his gaiety reflected his confidence of victory. Now it seems more likely to reflect the fact the plane is on the ground. No one on board mentioned a fear of flying, but a decade after Reagan left the presidency, his authorized biography described his state of mind that day: 'Only sheer will would have made him conquer his thirty-year fear of airplanes, and consent to a series of stop-go flights in a battered white DC-3.' "