Even as President Reagan faced Alzheimer’s disease during the later years of his life, Nancy stoically stood by his side as a caregiver, a comforter and a beloved wife.
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Nancy Reagan died on Sunday of congestive heart failure at her home in Los Angeles.
The funeral for former first lady Nancy Reagan will be held on Friday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Revered in Republican politics, Reagan was known as a fierce protector of her husband, both personally and politically.
She did so much to raise the profile of first lady and American fashion that she received a CFDA lifetime achievement award in 1989.
Tough-minded on the hiring and firing of key staffers and Cabinet members, she often played bad cop to his good cop, forcing hard decisions that the famously easygoing chief executive was loath to make.
Nancy Reagan is survived by Patti Davis and Ron Reagan – her two children with Ronald Reagan – and Michael Reagan, a son from Ronald Reagan’s first marriage to Jane Wyman. Betty Ford had spoken candidly about gun control, premarital sex and her surgery for breast cancer and praised the ruling of Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to abortion, as “the best thing in the world”.
Actor Todd Bridges says the episode of the 1980s sitcom Diff’rent Strokes featuring then-First Lady Nancy Reagan helped him when he hit rock-bottom.
In an interview with The Washington Post in 1989, Nancy Reagan accused reporters in Sacramento of taking sweepings from the barbershop floor where her husband had his hair cut to determine if he dyed his hair.
Although a feud between the first lady and chief of staff Donald Regan had spilled into the open, the president dismissed reports that it was his wife who got Regan fired. She majored in drama at Smith College and found stage work with the help of her mother’s connections. But while first lady, she stated most of her opinions in private.
She’d also had her own medical challenges. In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton would try (and fail) to overhaul the country’s health care system. She was criticized for financing these pet projects with donations from millionaires who might seek influence with the government, and for accepting gifts and loans of dresses worth thousands of dollars from top designers.
She said he told her: “I think Nancy’s biggest strength and weakness is linked. No, it does not”.
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“I would like to say: “thank you!”
