The Google Books results show that letter on page 664 of “Reagan: A Life In Letters” by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson. That’s the cite provided by the Letters of Note website, which I’ve always found reliable. (BTW, that site is often very interesting.)
It’s legitimately in the book…I’m looking at a preview on Amazon, and the letter’s there. Obviously there weren’t 539 hurricanes through May that year, but I assume the President was exaggerating for comedic effect.
As an aside, even if this letter is genuine, is there any reason to think it was actually written by Reagan himself? I would expect that any President would have staffers for answering his “fan mail” of this sort, who would at most give him an executive summary of all of the letters for each day. He could have “answered” this kid’s letter without ever even being aware of it (though he might have been told anyway in a quiet moment just because it’s a cute story).
It doesn’t ring false to me. I don’t doubt that the staff will bring to the president’s attention certain correspondence that he might find interesting. The original letter is something he probably would have found amusing. Reagan had the reputation of being one of the funnier presidents who liked joking around in private. It sounds like something he would do.
Reagan had a policy of having his staff give him some letters which he would then answer. He had his staff select twenty or thirty letters every couple of weeks which were supposed to be representative and he would read them. He would reply to some.
Yeah, it certainly could have been written by him. I’m just saying that most letters “from the President” actually aren’t, and there’s no direct way to tell which are which.
