After his first year at Eureka, Dutch returned to Dixon to work as a lifeguard during the summer. He considered dropping out and working as a surveyor. A talk with his girlfriend, Margaret, and a return visit to school changed his mind.

When he told his mother of his decision to stay at it, she said that his brother had concluded that staying was the right thing to do. In fact, Neil surprised Dutch by saying that he wished he could join his younger brother at school. Surprised by his Neil's enthusiasm, Dutch began working on a way to get his brother to college. Dutch even talked to the football coach about getting his brother a scholarship to entice his brother to come along.

After all this work, though, Neil rejected his brother's offer to come along to college. Instead he preferred to remain at the cement plant where he had worked since high school graduation three years earlier. When the new semester began, Neil came home from the plant and found Dutch had gone, but his beloved new steamer trunk was left in his bedroom.

"Nelle," Neil said to his mother, "I thought Dutch was leaving."

"He has," Nelle replied, "but your brother left that in case you changed your mind about going to college. He packed up all his things in cardboard boxes and shipped them down to school."

Neil was dumbfounded and realized how important this was to Dutch for him to have left his prized possession. Neil thought for a moment and then said, "If that's the case, I'll go to college. I'll pack and go tomorrow." [anecdote]

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Years later, when he would retell this story of his brother's decision to attend college, Ronald Reagan would say that an old immigrant at the cement plant where Neil worked convinced his brother to go to college. As the adult Reagan would tell it, a grissled factory worker at the cement plant where Neil worked would tell Neil that his life would not amount to much working in the mill. In Dutch's version of the story Neil sees himself years later through the eyes of his coworker and with that vision in his mind Neil decides to follow his brother to school.

Though a good story the way he tells it, Neil says, "it isn't true."




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