Rep. Bohac Unveils Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway
Photo: Rusty Graham
A plan that was hatched earlier this year in the cornfields of Iowa came to fruition Thursday with the unveiling of signage designating a large part of the Northwest Freeway in Harris County as the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway.
Under a brilliant fall sky, Republican officials revealed the highway sign that will mark one of Houston’s busiest roads as the Reagan Highway.
State Rep. Dwayne Bohac (R-138), who authored and got passed a bill during the 2005 legislative session naming the highway for the former president, told those gathered in the afternoon heat under the U.S. 290-Beltway 8 flyovers that Reagan had always been a hero of his.
“(Reagan) restored our belief in America,” Bohac said. “We all believed it was morning in America,” a reference to a 1984 Reagan campaign ad.
“I was so profoundly influenced by Ronald Reagan that I named my son Reagan,” he said. Wearing his blue Cub Scout shirt, Reagan stood with his father and other officials near the podium during the ceremony.
State Rep. Allen Fletcher (R-130) told the story of him, Bohac and state Sen. Dan Patrick (R-7) driving across the cornfields of Iowa in January, caucusing for then presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry.
Fletcher said he told Bohac and Patrick that he was opening a district office on Highway 290, the Northwest Freeway.
Bohac told Fletcher that wasn’t altogether true, that he was opening his office on the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, a moniker that neither Fletcher nor Patrick was aware of. The highway runs through Fletcher’s District 130 and Patrick’s Senate District 7.
Bohac explained that he’d authored and passed a bill during the 2005 session designating a large portion of 290 as the Reagan Highway but that no public money was to be used on the project.
The three men agreed to launch the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway Fund to raise nearly $24,000 to pay for the signage that would officially mark the highway.
Patrick told the small crowd on Nov. 1 that revealing the sign just before the Nov. 6 election was significant — Ronald Reagan was the last president to be elected on Nov. 6. The presidential election is held every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and has only been on Nov. 6 six times, Patrick said — each time a Republican has been elected, starting with Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
The sign revealed on Nov. 1 will be installed on eastbound U.S. 290 at the Harris-Waller county line. A similar sign will be placed westbound near Beltway 8. The Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway is U.S. 290 between Beltway 8 and the Waller County line.
The Reagan Highway Fund was chaired by Bohac, Linda Dewhurst and Travis Griffin.
For more information about the fund and the highway, go to www.reaganhighway.org.