The library lecturer, Matthew O’Leary, was enjoying himself. He was a good, informal speaker, full of funny anecdotes about famous people, and his audience, from the Ronald Reagan Junior High School, hung on every word. His topic was Presidential Summit Meetings, and since Mr. O’Leary had personally been on a number of these trips, he could tell what really went on behind the scenes. And he did.

“My favorite summit was the one in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1985,” O’Leary said. “You should be interested in that one, because President Ronald Reagan, for whom your school is named, took part. He was meeting the Soviet leader, Gorbachev, and they were talking about nuclear arms. It was a tense time, until the goldfish incident. Then it got even more tense! We realized after all that we’d come to Geneva thinking our toughest job would be to handle the Russians. We soon found out it wasn’t, not by a long shot.