The former first lady died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles.
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After her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, Nancy Reagan became an advocate for Alzheimer’s research.
When first lady Nancy Reagan is laid to rest Friday, she will join her beloved husband of more than five decades at his burial place. “She’s with her Ronnie now, but those of us she left behind will miss her dearly”. Through her work at the Reagan Library, she protected and advanced the legacy of President Ronald Reagan.
Nancy Reagan was also important in persuading her husband to issue a “half apology” in a speech about the Iran-Contra affair, he said. But the Reagans, shoulder to shoulder, weathered many storms: Unrelenting, hateful criticism from liberals, much of it directed at her personally, and even an attempted assassination that seriously wounded the president. She spent a good deal of her time after 1982 working as part of a national campaign to convince kids to “just say no” to drugs.
“I get a call from Jim Rosebush, Mrs. Reagan’s chief of staff, and he says she wants to interview you to be the new press secretary”, she recalled.
“One person wrote to her asking if she played a grocery store bingo game and if she had a certain number would she please share it with her“, Eberly laughed. And of course he didn’t just trust Nancy Reagan.
Since Reagan’s death in 2004, Republican presidential candidates often claim to be his rightful heir, hold him up as a patron saint or outline proposals they say he inspired. In this 1955 photo, then-actor Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy are sitting together, holding hands at a party in Hollywood.
Eberly worked for the former First Lady during the first term of the Reagan Administration.
An official Portrait of Nancy Reagan taken February 1, 1983.
Ted Cruz calls himself the first true conservative running for president since Reagan and has promised to employ a “Reaganite” approach. She had looked forward to spending their last years together, with memories of their extraordinary shared adventure, but it was not to be.
Reagan never presented a balanced budget to Congress. A 1986 law he signed established a one-year amnesty program for people who entered the USA illegally and had been in the country at least four years.
The Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act in 1986, enacted right after the First Lady’s campaign kicked off, resulted in zero tolerance policies and the introduction of cops in the schools, the arrest of black and Latino kids for minor infractions and the criminalization of whole communities.
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In her memoir, My Turn, Nancy Reagan describes the first time she met Ronald Reagan as not “exactly love at first sight” – but “pretty close”. A devoted partner, she was her husband’s most trusted advisor and, as such, served our country well. “I probably see more of Reagan in Hilary Clinton than anybody else”.
