"Happy Hare and Da Doo Run, Ron Ron!!"

Fortunately, the song I wrote for Ronald Reagan urging him to run for President, a lame take-off on “Da Doo Ron Ron Ron” has long been tossed. It took Pete Wilson, on a chance meeting in L.A, to dredge up the memory of my performance of this timeless standard at the grand opening of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge in 1969.

Pete impishly asked me if I still had the “Da Doo Run, Ron Ron” song I wrote when I emceed the dedication of the bridge in 1969. I honestly told him “no” and would have told him no, anyway. The public persona of Pete Wilson is as being deadly sincere and humorless, but I know better. Behind that façade is a big league joker. He could be a contender in the Poker games now so hot on cable. No one could tell what he was holding. I can tell you that most of the times he was holding aces.

Governor Reagan was already slated for another term in California,. But Pete then an Assemblyman was thinking ahead, so this little bridge dedication they had asked me to emcee was the first ripple of a political tsunami.

Pete invited me to emcee the dedication ceremonies on the bridge. I then retired for a full five minutes and wrote the song I mentioned. It was a take-off on the hit song “Da Doo Ron Ron Ron.” I changed it to “Da Doo Run, Ron Ron!.” The song fit in with Pete’s plans to ooch Reagan along to the presidency leaving a vacant slot in the Governor’s office.

I called Pete on the phone and sang the song. He loved it. He asked me to sing it at the bridge ceremony. There, I would reel off a few snappy one-liners, then perform it.

The day of the event, I was limo’d up to the soaring center of the bridge where a platform had been erected for the ceremony. Pete Wilson greeted me, and escorted me to the Reagans, Ronald and Nancy. Reagan beamed on me, not at me, when we shook hands. When I turned away, Pete nudged me and said reverently, “There is the next president, Harry.” Standing next to Reagan, I felt a slightly dizzy feeling that I have since named “vicarious vertigo,” the dizzy feeling you get when you are near greatness.

The momentous moment arrived and I rose and unashamedly launched into my contribution to history.

“Ronald Reagan is the King of the Hill

Da Doo Run Ron, Ron. Da Doo Run, Ron.”

Etc etc.

Reagan, the consummate actor politician, listened with feigned amusement. No one in his crowd of King Makers had gotten past Sinatra, or Tommy Dorsey chronologically. Yet, they knew something good was happening, so some of the most powerful men in America tentatively joined in on the clapping..

Bob White, Pete’s political thinker, was a Hare listener. So was Pete. They were young guys who knew the original hit song, and got it. They swayed and danced in place to the bouncy rhythm of the song. So did most of the crowd and that’s all White and Pete wanted

I got a first hand feel for the pecking order. It was all choreographed, Reagan was The Man, and Pete was his anointed successor. Sitting quietly among the Republican elite was Mayor Frank Curran, a democrat, who didn’t count in this right wing setting. Still, I made sure that Curran received due courtesy from me. He was the one who asked me to be San Diego’s Ambassador of Good Will that year, the 200th anniversary of San Diego, resulting in my round the world trip extolling San Diego, and breaking the speed record for a jet passenger. When I rose to introduce Pete, I acknowledged Mayor Curran, but. in my intro for Pete, I laid it on.

Pete was a handsome man with a great smile, but had a flat speaking voice that was not tuned to resonate with the rafters. What he had was deadly sincerity, rare in politics. He spoke about the glory of San Diego and his pride in the city, for which he had deep feeling. Then, he brought on the Governor.

When Reagan rose to speak, the stage tilted toward him. One-on-one, he had the wispy speaking voice, often satirized by the comics, but when he spoke publicly his voice filled out and became the Stradivarius instrument we can still hear in our heads. In short, he had a great mic voice. Add to that his beatific smile, and you had the next President.

The deal on this occasion was: Reagan would speak, and then be the first man in history to cross the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, the highest honor San Diego could bestow on anyone. He would lead a motorcade of high ranking state officials and his brain trust to the Del Coronado Hotel where we would all celebrate with a 5 star lunch. Pete made sure I was seated at the head table.

Then, as Reagan wound up his turn, the choreography began to get wobbly, like a drunken Baryshnikov.

I was standing in the rear of the platform when I was approached by a hard hat, a grubby laborer who was part of a small crew assigned to put the finishing touches on the bridge. He sidled up to me and whispered, “Hare, do you want to be the real first man across the bridge instead of the Governor? I’m leaving. Jump in the car with me.” I took no time in shaking my head no and that was it. But, get this. Nancy heard the guy, smiled to me, then walked to her “Ronny” and whispered to him.

He turned toward me while she was talking. Good Lord! She was talking about me. Was I going to be banished for this lapse in protocol, no lunch at the Hotel Del? Reagan bestowed one of those incandescent smiles on me, and mouthed, “Go ahead.” I was incredulous. I pantomimed with my hands pointing toward myself, then looked askance. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head, reassuring me that it was okay to go ahead of him. By now, I was the center of a spectacle, but when Reagan laughed, they all laughed.

I shrugged a “what can I do?” shrug, and joined the trail-blazing hard hat., sliding into the passenger seat of his old Plymouth. Of course, he had to drive me to the Del Coronado for my luncheon date.

Pete didn’t make it into the Governorship right away. He was elected Mayor of San Diego for two terms where he is regarded as the greatest mayor in local history. Then he was elected to the U.S Senate for two terms and wound up in Sacramento as Governor from 1991 till 1999.

It was during this term as Governor that he helped me solidify my meager hold on establishing Charter Schools in San Diego by ordering the Teacher’s Union to lay off while I raised money for the first school. I have described the Charter School episode in an earlier piece in the Special Contributors section.

My really favorite Pete Wilson story happened while he was Mayor a term he began in 1971 running through 1983. The event occurred at Sea World. The venue was a large open air auditorium where, again, I was to bring on Pete who would bestow the gold medal Helms Award on two great local swimmers, Florence Chadwick the first woman to swim the English Channel and Mike Troy, the Olympic back-stroke champion. I was all set, but Pete was running late..

The large crowd, several hundred of them, was restive and I was even thinking of going ahead with the ceremony.

But wait! A limo screeched to a stop on the other side of a cyclone fence. separating him from the stage.. As it was, Pete was going to have to run a good half mile to the main entrance, then to us. Instead, he stood for a moment staring at the forbidding fence. Then, the Marine Major in him asserted itself. It was obvious that Pete was going to scale the fence. The crowd roared in apprehension

Suddenly 15 years younger, he backed up, ran, and jumped up as high as he could, clutched the cyclone fence, clawed his way to the top, leaped the entire fifteen feet to the ground, and ran to the stage.

All of this without asking me to hold up while he caught his breath. Florence Chadwick, laughed and said, “We are giving the Helms medal to the wrong athlete.”

Pete went on to serve eight years as a U.S. Senator, where he distinguished himself. His last big thing was the Governorship which he won by a landslide. His run for the Presidency was muted by a severe throat problem, so the nation could not appreciate him the way Californians did. He bowed out of the race.

My last personal experience with Ronald Reagan happened a couple of years later when I was the Chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Campaign. I asked him to come to San Diego for a photo op with the Cystic Fibrosis poster child. Governor Reagan showed up early without fanfare, in a side room of the Bahia Hotel where he waited a few minutes for me. I wheeled the delightful child in to meet him, the kind whose radiant personality makes you forget her condition..

He greeted her like she was the Queen of England, then sat down opposite her, and began visiting her on a mutual level, without patronizing her.

They didn’t need me. I ducked out, and left him with her after the photographer was finished. Some ten minutes later, he emerged from the get together, and sincerely thanked me for inviting him.

I started to leave, but heard him calling me, this time with a little more of his command voice. I turned and faced the smiling Governor.

”Harry, I really enjoyed that song you sang at the bridge ceremony. Did you write that? I would like to use it,” obviously referring to his plans to run for president.

“No sir, I didn’t write it,” I said, “It is copyrighted by The Carpenters, and they may not want it to be used for political purposes, but I could look into it for you.”

“The Carpenters,” he repeated solemnly. There was a long thoughtful pause.

“No, I don’t think so, Forget it. The Carpenters’ (Union). won’t do me any favors.. We locked horns a lot when I ran the Screen Actor’s Guild.”