Troubled times at Ronald Reagan's boyhood home: 'We cannot keep bleeding money'
DIXON, Ill. - One morning back in 1988, a fancier car than usual rolled up to Ronald Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon. It was Monday, and the home-turned-museum was closed, but a well-dressed man walked up and persuaded Kenny Wendland, then a tour guide, to take him through it.
The man fired question after question at Wendland. "What's Ronald Reagan's brother's name?"
"Neil," he answered.
After the tour, the man revealed himself to be Beryl Sprinkel, an economic adviser to Reagan, then in his second term as U.S. president. Though Reagan had been at the museum when it was a fledgling operation, he had asked Sprinkel to check out how it was operating as his time in office was coming to a close. The museum was established as a tourist and educational destination during Reagan's first term and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Wendland is no longer a tour guide there, but he stopped by for a tour during a recent morning. He pulled out a wallet-size photograph of himself standing with the former president. Impressed with
