“Yes, that is my job”

On Aug. 28, 1997, The News & Observer carried an AP news report about a grandfather and his 12-year-old grandson’s chance encounter with Reagan in an L.A. park. Yakow Ravin and his grandson, Rostik Denenburg, who “moved to Sylvania [Ohio] five years ago from Kiev,” recognized the president immediately and wanted a photograph. According to the article:

[Ravin] approached Reagan and said: “Mr. President, this is an unforgettable moment in my life. It also is an unforgettable moment in the life of my grandson. Can I take a picture of him with you?”

“Go ahead,” Reagan said, smiling as they shook hands.

I wish I could find a copy of the photo online ? young Rostik is beaming, leaning in toward the president, who also smiles beneath an baseball cap and behind sunglasses that both appear too large for his head.

I saved that article from 1997 because it was touching, and also because I thought it was appropriate, too ? not only because Ravin and Denenburg from the former Soviet Union, the evil regime whose end Reagan not only foresaw but greatly helped to bring about, but also because they were Jewish, members of a race particularly oppressed by the Soviet regime. But it wasn’t until today that I learned the rest of the story, which I saw in two different places on the web: Mark Steyn’s column and James Taranto’s Best of the Web.

Taranto linked to a New York Times article reprinted in the Standard-Times, which provided crucial details:

“We went to the park, for a picnic, with our friends,” he said. “And then we saw President Reagan. And we began to cheer him, and said, ‘Mr. President, thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the communist empire.

“And he said, ‘Yes, that is my job.'”