As the newly arrived first lady, Mrs. Reagan raised more than $800,000 from private donors to redo the White House family quarters and to buy a $200,000 set of china bordered in red, her signature color.
Advertisement
An undated photo of Billy Graham with President Ronald Reagan and then First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Reagan died Sunday at her home in Bel-Air, California, of congestive heart failure, her assistant said. But underneath the designer dresses she wore at White House state dinners and beyond her attention to the high-priced china, Nancy Reagan was a political force of her own.
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.
Emil Lau attended church with the Reagans. But she neither spoke out publicly about AIDS nor left a documented record of pressing her husband on the issue early on in the crisis.
The death on Saturday of former First Lady Nancy Reagan was hardly shocking.
Though she had her critics, her admirers will remember her for restoring grace and elegance to the White House. “Mrs. Reagan was fiercely loyal to her beloved husband, and that devotion was matched only by her devotion to our country”, Former president George W. Bush said. “No parking will be allowed at the Reagan Library”.
Mrs. Reagan carried that charge through the rest of her days. Ronald Reagan had promised to champion conservative values when elected in 1980, and Nancy Reagan was in some ways a throwback to a more old-fashioned approach. She was also well recognized for wearing red, which was dubbed “Reagan Red” while she was in the White House.
I know every American felt Nancy’s huge pain when she, kissing Ronnie’s casket, mouthed a tearful farewell to the best friend she once said she couldn’t imagine life without. Ted Cruz, said, “She would be appalled at the lack of civility by Mr. Trump”. The flags will remain at half staff until sunset on the day she’s buried, which has not yet been announced. “She will be missed”.
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. She was very open about the loneliness that the disease had created in her life.
Simi Valley resident Andy Hall honors the late Nancy Reagan with an American flag by the road to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
Tell us what you think!
Advertisement
“She wore that Reagan red so well”, Berman said. He writes about the meal, and what she would have liked or disliked.
