Remembering 'More Than Just a Man'
In and around the city where he presided over the end of the Cold War, where he defined an American conservative ethos and where he nearly lost his life to an assassin, Ronald Reagan was remembered yesterday as a towering, almost old-fashioned figure.</br></br>"He was a great man, a man of decision," said the Rev. Mupenda Muzumbi, 49, of Fort Washington, who was at Reagan National Airport, one of several Washington area institutions renamed in honor of the 40th president.</br></br>The news of Reagan's death yesterday, though not unexpected, unleashed a great wave of nostalgia. "More than just a man died," said Bill Enrico, 47, a self-described Republican who also was at the airport. "An era of greater decency died."</br></br>Like other admirers, Enrico saw Reagan's presidency as a time of personal opportunity for his family. He and his wife were able to buy a home after years of high interest rates during the Carter administration, he said. Thinking back on the Reagan era also produced a kind of longing in Enrico; when Reagan was in charge, he said, politics seemed less bitter.</br></br>But not everyone remembered the former president in such positive terms. In the liberal enclave of Takoma Park, Lisa Ripkin, 37, an employee of the Takoma Park Co-Op, said Reagan's death gave her "inner peace." She felt that it closed a chapter in U.S. political history with which she disagreed.