Nancy Reagan will be buried next to her husband at the library.
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President Barack Obama said he once had the opportunity to meet with former first lady, and Mrs. Reagan could not have been more charming and gracious to him and Michelle Obama when he came into office.
Nancy Reagan died of congestive heart failure on Sunday at her Los Angeles home.
Friday’s funeral starts at 11 a.m. and will be closed to the public.
Revered in Republican politics, Reagan was known as a fierce protector of her husband, both personally and politically.
Mrs. Reagan, who died Sunday at age 94 and will be buried next to her husband at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, helped steer him through two terms as California governor and two more as president – through the Iran-Contra controversy, a lingering recession and negotiations with the Soviets.
As part of the official events, Reagan will lay in repose at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday, March 9 from 1:00 p.m.to 7:00 p.m. and also on Thursday, March 10 from 10:00 a.m.to 2:00 p.m. She also launched the “Just say no” anti-drugs campaign and advocated for stem-cell research later in life. Afterward, she remained a staunch guardian of his image and legacy. When Ronald Reagan was shot in a 1981 assassination attempt, Nancy Reagan never left the hospital where the president was treated until he was released, according to Nancy Reagan’s press secretary, Sheila Tate.
In 1994, she wrote an open letter to America to announce that the former president had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, not a widely understood disease at the time. He said he knows how much she meant to the president and country as a whole.
But she maintained an upbeat view – even when it didn’t involve gazing adoringly at her husband, as she famously did in countless pictures.
“She is once again with the man she loved”, her stepson Michael Reagan wrote on Twitter.
Branstad said he prepped Ronald Reagan for the then-presidential candidate’s address to a district convention in 1976.
On social media, Nancy Reagan’s death inspired the circulation of a presidential forum in which Ronald Reagan and H.W. Bush speak about immigration.
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“She was pulling together her staff and asked me if I would like to join her in the White House”, Robertson said.
