SIMI VALLEY, CA—Declaring the whole visit “sort of a letdown,” Valley View Middle School student Lucas Hursch, 13, was disappointed to find Monday that the so-called Ronald Reagan Presidential Library bears no resemblance to the man who was the leader of the free world from 1980 to 1988. “You could maybe argue it has a passing resemblance from some angles, but seriously, that would be quite a stretch,” said the eighth-grader, adding that unless the 40th president had a tiny, marble version of himself inside his own body which he charged a $20 entrance fee to see, the building bearing his name shares no physical characteristics to the actor-turned-politician. “I assumed we’d get there, enter a giant glass and steel model of Reagan’s head, perhaps using The Great Communicator’s tongue as a walkway, and have the chance to explore his guts and stuff. But this place has none of that— just a boring building with completely normal doors and windows. I was taught a library is where knowledge is kept, so that kind of should be up in his brain, I guess? Also, you’d think they have it dressed up in a nice suit or something, but the outside is just bricks. If they were going for realism, they did not do a great job.” Hursch noted that the architects and building contractors had no excuse for their shoddy work, as there are thousands of photographs available to aid them in constructing a more realistic replica of the president.

Advertisement