Redemption: How Ronald Reagan Nearly Ruined My Life

by Barbara McVeigh, Siobhan Gallagher (Foreword)

“My father is a federal criminal. My father is a hero,” Barbara McVeigh writes in her memoir Redemption, How Ronald Reagan Nearly Ruined My Life. Reagan fired her father for a union strike in 1981, leading him and 11,500 other families into years of strife. Just eleven years old, she lost her dream to become an oceanographer, and her beloved guitar lessons, as her family struggled emotionally and financially for years. She blamed her father for "following his ego," as her grandfather had termed it, and not placing family first. Reagan's heroic public image soared as America was told how he combated the alleged threats of communism, nuclear war and the Soviet Empire. Thirty years later, Barbara marries and then takes up sailing at her late great uncle’s urging, himself a passionate and accomplished sailor, who had been her best friend, where she finds an unexpected connection to the ocean and freedom of the complexities of the modern world. When hard, bitter truths emerge about the ocean’s health and her fourteen-year marriage, Barbara packs her bags and leaves the illusory "good life." She takes the helm of not one, but two film projects, one with the world’s paramount oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle, and the other with renowned Brazilian guitarist José Neto. She does this with no experience and virtually no money, to reclaim her childhood dreams and, in a desperate effort, to remind the world of the awe, beauty, and truth we must always stand for. During her projects she confronts the dark shadows of Reagan’s energy, labor, health, media, and environmental policies, revealing horrific truths about America’s so-called “Hero of the Republican Party." She discovers that her father was NOT the federal criminal Reagan accused him of being. Instead, her father is a hero today. Barbara shares her very personal and painful family story of three generations and her search for truth that led her to China, Cuba, the Balkans, across Europe, and ultimately back to her own home, the San Francisco Bay. There she discovers herself, and what it means to be free in America today as our world faces political, social and environmental threats unlike any before. Barbara has a new dream and sees now that the spirits are guiding her, just as they had been, all along.

362 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2019

Reviews

[Eloise Hamann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poignant memoir begins with a girl whose dream of becoming an oceanographer is shattered when her father loses his job as an airtraffic controller who went on strike during the Reagan presidency. The family struggles to put food on the table let alone pay for a college degree. Only later does she understand her father was right about the strike. Her father's mistake was his presumption he'd be called back. She also learns of Reagan's role in squelching efforts to address climate change including protection of the oceans.

She works her way through college as an adult in a major other oceanography. Oddly, she is always broke but manages to travel outside of the country with no explanation of how she paid for her journeys.

The real roadblock in her life was the man she married. She describes his behavior in a way that it is easy to imagine how she must feel, but she just takes it and takes it. They and their two children become involved in sailing and a small sailing company run by a number of volunteers including her husband. She conducts sailing lessons for children. Her love of the ocean and nature is described beautifully many times and many ways throughout the book. She fails to understand the indifference of the general public.

Her husband's parents are wealthy. She admires their gracious lifestyle, but doesn't appreciate the too large home they buy for her family. It isn't in keeping with her and her husband's vision of a carefree life. He loves working for the sailing company at poverty wages.

She achieves some success in winning a contest to produce a film about the oceans. She uses her sailing students and manages to snag the great Dr. Sylvia Earle, the first woman aquanaut to participate. It is shown internationally.

I found the memoir suspenseful in wondering how long she would tolerate a husband who lacked respect for her feelings. It was noticed by their friends. She still loved him, but nothing described in the memoir explains why she could continue to have feelings for him.

She is a remarkable woman.