Ronald Reagan visits General Electric

From 1954 to 1962 Ronald Reagan served as host of a popular Sunday evening television program called General Electric Theater. During that time he also spent ten weeks each year traveling the country as General Electric's roving ambassador. By the time the show concluded its eight-year run, Ronald Reagan, by his own account, had visited 139 General Electric’s research and manufacturing facilities. He walked the plant floors, toured offices and met over 250,000 individual employees.

In 1957 while touring across the country, Reagan hit Erie in the morning, coming in on the red-eye special from New York, in those days he wouldn't fly. Reagan was met at the Union Train Station by representatives of General Electric at six-thirty in the morning, they greeted and put him in a car and his luggage in another, he would not see the hotel that he was booked at until after midnight. Coming straight from Union Station to General Electric’s plant in Lawrence Park, Reagan begun walking the plant’s floors, talking to employees. Through it all he maintained his good humor, he was in terrific physical shape for the task at hand. When he showed up on the plant’s floor all the women came rushing up, handing him mash notes and asking for autographs. The men all stood around, in a group, looking at him, saying something among themselves, very derogatory. He would carry on a conversation with the women for awhile, then he would leave them and walk over to these fellows and start talking to them. When he left them ten minutes later, they were all shaking his hand and slapping him on the back. He would not leave a department with the men scowling and snarling about the attention that he was receiving from the women.

When Reagan got to the hotel, after midnight, he arrived at the front desk and asked for the key to his room, the desk clerk informed him that there was a young lady who has been waiting for him for two and a half hours. He went over and greeted her. She was the typical stage-struck small town girl. She was all set, her mind was made up, tickets and everything, she was going out to Hollywood. Reagan spent an-hour-and-a-half convincing her that if she was really serious about acting what she should do is hit the little theater, the local radio and TV stations, the local floor show, and so forth. Offering the lady his advice, he kept drumming into her, "Always remember, if you can command an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, you can command an audience anywhere. You don’t have to go to Hollywood to prove it." It’s not know if the young lady heeded his advice. Afterwards, he escorted the lady out of the hotel then retired to his room for the night. The next day he concluded his tour of the Lawrence Park facilities before leaving Erie to his next destination.

Ronald Reagan inspecting a jolt pin lift machine, used for making the cope or top half of an aluminum mold at General Electric’s foundry lab.

Ronald Reagan observing a chemist working at General Electric’s foundry laboratory.

Ronald Reagan observing the pouring of malleable castings at General Electric’s foundry lab.

Ronald Reagan posing with a General Electric locomotive.

Ronald Reagan watching aluminum being molded at General Electric’s foundry laboratory.