U.S. Sen. Rob Portman: “Nancy Reagan lived a storybook life that took her from Hollywood to the White House, from actress to First Lady and devoted public servant”.
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Reagan died Sunday at her home of congestive heart failure.
She also championed Alzheimer’s patients, raising millions of dollars for research and breaking with fellow conservative Republicans to advocate for stem cell studies.
She was diminutive and publicly soft spoken but Nancy Reagan’s strong will, high-tone tastes and clout with her husband made her a controversial figure during his presidency.
“We remain grateful for Nancy Reagan’s life, thankful for her guidance and prayerful that she and her beloved husband are together again”.
She advised on the menu for the State dinner and personally directed Presidential staff to liaise with the Irish authorities over the precise cooking of the meal – down to the amount of butter used in cooking the fish starter. When she sold it after Reagan’s Alzheimer’s took him another step downward, she was terribly depressed.
Reagan “redefined the role” of first lady, they said. She “set a model for how we love and care for” those with Alzheimer’s, he said.
Years later, while she led me through the refurbished Ronald Reagan presidential suite atop the Century Plaza, Mrs. Reagan confirmed the 40th president was crouched down in the station wagon that day. 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.
Nancy came to adore him, even taking his name, and the doctor was believed to have had considerable influence on his eventual son-in-law’s shift from Democrat to Republican years later. “She will be missed!”
When Reagan went into California politics in the 1960s, Nancy recast herself as the ultimate political wife and confidante, serving as his first lady there from 1967-1975.
The post-White House years for the Reagans were my responsibility.
Our former first lady had a dream to build a modern hospital to benefit people fighting disease and to help introduce new cures on behalf of patients everywhere.
“Nancy was an extraordinary woman: a gracious first lady, proud mother and devoted wife to President Reagan – her Ronnie”.
“I think the message is still the same”, he said.
“My job is being Mrs. Ronald Reagan”, she once told the late 60 Minutes reporter and friend Mike Wallace.
But her admirers credited Mrs. Reagan with restoring grace and elegance to the White House after the austerity of the Carter years.
First ladies can also be vital players in diplomatic relations, and Nancy Reagan certainly was.
Nancy Reagan will be buried next to her husband at that library.
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They married in 1952 after Reagan divorced his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, beginning a marriage that has been described as a love story to rival any that the couple acted out on the silver screen. She hated it. After the 1981 assassination attempt and his recovery, they were on Air Force One and he was wearing the suit. She never stopped loving Ronald Reagan and never stopped mourning him.
