US Presidency
1987

Gorbachev told me that this sort of talk is sometimes viewed in the Soviet Union as a threat, but I told him then and I have said since then that this is no threat at all but only a dream: the American dream. And it's a dream that has meant so much to so many, a dream that still shines out to the world. You know, a couple of years ago, Nancy and I were deeply moved by a story told by former New York Times reporter and Greek immigrant Nicholas Gage. It's the story of Eleni, his mother, a woman caught in one of the terrible struggles of the postwar era, the Greek civil war at the end of World War II, a mother who was tried and executed because she smuggled her children out to safety in America. It is also the story of how her son secretly vowed to return to Greece someday to take vengeance on the man who had sent his mother to her death.