Larry Melvin Speakes was an American journalist and spokesperson who acted as White House Press Secretary under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987.
14 Facts About Larry Speakes
2.
Larry Speakes assumed the role after Press Secretary James Brady was shot on March 30,1981.
3.
Larry Speakes worked as a journalist in the 1960s until he became press secretary for Democratic Senator James Eastland in 1968.
4.
Larry Speakes served as Bob Dole's press secretary during his unsuccessful vice-presidential run with Ford.
5.
Larry Speakes was born in Cleveland in northwestern Mississippi, which had the nearest hospital to his parents' middle-class home in Merigold in Bolivar County.
6.
Larry Speakes received a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
7.
Larry Speakes served as editor of the Oxford Eagle in 1961, and thereafter as managing editor of the Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland from 1962 to 1966.
8.
Larry Speakes headed to Washington, DC in 1968, serving as press secretary to Democratic Senator James Eastland of Mississippi.
9.
Larry Speakes served as Bob Dole's press secretary during his unsuccessful vice-presidential run with Ford.
10.
In Brady's absence, Larry Speakes took over the job of handling the daily press briefings.
11.
Larry Speakes wrote in his 1988 memoir Speaking Out that he twice invented statements himself and attributed them to President Reagan.
12.
Larry Speakes thought that Gorbachev's remarks at the summit had been highly quotable while Reagan's were "disappointingly lackluster", so he asked his aides to make up some quotes, polished them himself, then issued them to the press as President Reagan's statements.
13.
Larry Speakes died in Cleveland, Mississippi, on January 10,2014, at the age of 74, of Alzheimer's disease.
14.
Larry Speakes's body was interred a few hours after his death at North Cleveland Cemetery.