“It’s a moment sort of engraved in my mind, one that I’ll never forget,” says Templin, who was just 18 when she captured media attention in 1983 and ‘84 for becoming only the seventh person in the nation to undergo an experimental bone marrow transplant between unrelated people.

She found herself thrust into the national media spotlight for the famous hug.

“There are few moments like that and you just hold them up in your hand and put them in your pocket and they make you feel special,” says Templin, who is now 38 and working at a television station in Tampa, Fla.

When she heard that America’s 40th president died this weekend, Templin said she was surprised but not saddened.

Instead Templin, a Republican who always supported Reagan, chose to reminisce about “the good times” and their face-to-face meeting.

The road to their encounter began in December 1983.

At the time, Millersville University announced plans for a fund-raiser to help freshman who needed a bone marrow transplant to survive chronic myelogenous leukemia, cancer of the blood in which too many white blood cells are produced in the bone marrow.

That freshman was Templin.

A Lebanon Catholic High School graduate, the brown-haired young woman arrived at MU in the fall of 1983 to major in communications and broadcasting.

She had been diagnosed with leukemia in January 1983 and needed the bone marrow transplant to survive. No one in Templin’s family was a genetic match for the transplant.

At the time, the operation was experimental and only six hospitals in the nation performed transplants between unrelated people.

Her story captured Lancaster County’s attention.

On Jan. 11, 1984, she underwent the $200,000 operation at the University of Iowa Hospital with bone marrow donated by an Iowa lab technician, Sandy Greear. Doctors found Greear through a computerized donor bank.

While Templin was in the hospital, she received a card from the president and his wife, Nancy.

“It was sort of one of those letters they sent out that said, ‘Nancy and I are thinking of you,’ ” Templin recalls.

Reagan learned of her operation in a roundabout way.

Earlier, Templin’s mother, Mary Jo, had been in touch with the White House Correspondent Department, asking if Air Force One could transport Templin to Iowa for the operation.

She didn’t get the flight, but the department told Reagan about her story.

In the months following the transplant, Templin’s body struggled to accept the bone marrow, but she eventually returned to MU.

In October 1984, Templin learned that Reagan, who was campaigning for re-election, planned to make a stop for a rally at MU — and asked her to greet him.

The day Reagan arrived, Oct. 29, 1984, “was like a whirlwind.”

She looks back on the moment with affection.

People packed the school’s gymnasium and lined up outside for a chance to see the well-liked president.

Templin entered the gymnasium behind the stage. She watched the crowd roar as “Hail to the Chief” rang out and Reagan walked to the podium.

He spoke for several minutes before Templin joined him on stage.

Reagan instantly made her feel comfortable.

“He was like a relative. He just had a presence where you were just in awe but you felt like he was your grandfather,” she says.

She couldn’t get over how tall he seemed, towering over her at 6-foot-1.

“I had on this mousy little outfit and my sorority pledge pin, and I barely had any hair,” she recalls.

“I presented him with the roses and I remember, oh I was such a child then, I remember everyone screaming and I remember putting my hands up like I was telling them to quiet down.

“I told him, ‘Red roses mean I love you. Me, Julie Templin, loves you. Millersville University loves you. Lancaster County loves you.’ And that’s when he gave me a big hug.”

Newspaper photographers captured their embrace on film, and the image appeared in newspapers around the world.

Dozens of people — many were Americans traveling overseas — sent clippings of the photograph to her. She still has most of them.

After the hug, Templin asked Reagan, who was nicknamed “The Great Communicator” for his ability to convey powerful concepts to the average person, if he had any career advice for her, since she was a communications major.

He told her that when he was a radio broadcaster, he wouldn’t think of his listeners as thousands of people. Instead, he would think of his listener as one person, a friend.

“Think of somebody you love,” he said.

Templin remembers thinking that was simple advice.

But, she admits, “I was listening to him and I was so in awe. I was trying to look at his face, so I would just remember everything.”

She held onto framed pictures of herself with the president and even saved the letter he sent her.

Today, she considers herself healthy, although the effects of radiation treatment and medicine later caused her to have a lung and kidney transplant.

When Templin learned of Reagan’s death this weekend she was in West Chester for a sister’s wedding.

The news did not sadden her. She knew he would be in a better place, free of Alzheimer’s.

She’s spent the last few days reminiscing about the experience.

“It made me think of the good times,” she says.