By E.A. Barrera
February 1, 2011 (San Diego's East) -- February 6, 2011 marks what would have been Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. That milestone is a personal one for me. Though I never knew or met President Reagan, he was the first president who I could recall from start to finish. He was the president as I entered my senior year in high school and came of age … proud liberal-Democrat from a family of the same (dating back to Al Smith running as the first Catholic candidate for president in 1928).
As a member of the generation euphemistically once called "Gen X", I was never the less fascinated by the America Reagan promised. Reagan's America was in complete contrast to that of the baby-boomer class, which dominated the airwaves and media all my life. It was the return of the generation that beat the Great Depression and won World War Two. It was John Wayne reborn … and the "Old Man" (as I would come to call Reagan - first in sarcasm, then in reverence) epitomized that return.