Early Life
He was born in Los Angeles, California, to Irene Flaugher (born 1916- died December 26, 1985), an unwed woman from Kentucky who became pregnant through a relationship with U.S. Army corporal John Bourgholtzer (died 1993). He was adopted by Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman shortly after his birth.
Michael grew up with the Reagan family in Beverly Hills, California, and later nearby Pacific Palisades. He was sent to boarding school when he was six and spent a total of four days per month visiting his father and mother. One childhood story he has told that introduced him to politics was how at the age of 8, he asked his father for a raise in his allowance. At the time, around 1953, his allowance was $1 a week. Ronald Reagan said that since he was paying 90 percent of his earnings to the federal government as income tax, he was not able to increase Michael's allowance. This, according to Michael, was how he was introduced to the subject of tax cuts and how that affected people.
In 1964 he graduated from the Judson School, a boarding school outside of Scottsdale, Arizona. At his high school graduation, Ronald Reagan introduced himself to his son by saying, "My name is Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" He replied, "I'm your son Mike." "Oh," said Ronald Reagan. "I didn't recognize you." He briefly attended Arizona State University.
According to Nancy Reagan in her memoirs published in 1989, Reagan disclosed to his parents in 1987 a very painful incident in his boyhood that he had kept secret for many years. "At the age of 8, he had been sexually molested by a camp counselor, who had also taken nude pictures of him.... Poor Mike had spent his whole life racked with guilt and in constant fear that these pictures would someday surface in a way that might embarrass him and, especially, his adoptive father." Speaking at the opening of the Michael Reagan Center in Spring, Texas, October 7, 2005, Michael said, "At 8 years old, I thought I was going to hell." Michael said the experience drastically changed him: "I cussed God and his Son. I wanted to do anything I could to earn my way into hell." Michael said he was horrified that the pictures would be made public and ruin the lives of his family.
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“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
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