She also began fostering relationships with prominent Southern California businessmen as her husband made the transition to politics. After Reagan was elected governor of California in , Nancy used her new public platform to assist Vietnam veterans and lead the Foster Grandparents program, which paired senior citizens with special-needs children. Favorably compared to former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy for her youth and style, she was named the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in In , she hosted the first ladies of 17 countries in an international conference on youth drug abuse.
Nancy weathered multiple crises during her eight years in the White House. Her husband was shot in an unsuccessful assassination attempt shortly after entering office in , and she underwent a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer in She became a staunch advocate for embryonic stem-cell research, pressing Congress to increase federal funding to accelerate progress.
Devoted the expansion and endowment of the Reagan Library in her twilight years, she made a rare public appearance for the signing of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act at the White House in On March 6, , Nancy Reagan died of heart failure at Start your free trial today. In time, her concern to protect her husband's personal well-being led her to consult an astrologer to attempt to discern precisely what days and at what times would be optimum for safety and success, and which slots were to be avoided because of potential dangers as reflected in the astrological readings.
Both Reagans admitted that the President had a tendency to trust all those who worked for him, while the First Lady tended to perceive those who, in her words, might "end run him," essentially using their positions to further their personal careers or agendas rather than that of the President and the Administration.
The President's long-time aide Michael Deaver also served as a trusted and important advisor to Nancy Reagan and he often approached her when he felt a problem might be developing. Nancy Reagan effectively supported decisions to replace various personnel, including the likes of National Security Council member William P.
Clark, and the hiring of others such as Secretary of State George Schultz. After Nancy Reagan witnessed the bold control exercised by Chief of Staff Donald Regan following President Reagan's cancer surgery, and then the fall-out he generated in mishandling the Administration's reaction to the Iran-Contra scandal, she felt that the President would be better served with a replacement.
However, she was one among many who felt this way, including those working in the Administration and national media, from Vice President George H.
Bush to Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham. Many of these figures would not bring their concern directly to the President, but rather to his wife. Although Nancy Reagan rarely ventured into specific policy, it was she who defied the conventional wisdom in the Reagan Administration State Department to promote the idea of the President forming first a personal relationship with the new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when he assumed power in She did so she recalled, simply because it made no sense to her that the two leaders were not at least in open dialogue with one another.
The resulting friendship and then political negotiations resulted in the INF Treaty, which called for a mutual destruction of intermediate range nuclear missiles.
The treaty proved to be a crowning moment for the Administration and was later considered by many to be an important step in the end of Soviet communism and the shift to democracy of several Soviet satellite nations. Nancy Reagan's devotion to seeing this through, as well as other aspects of her husband's legacy were made all the more dramatic in light of the fact that she underwent breast cancer surgery and shortly thereafter endured the death of her mother, all just prior to the treaty signing.
Post-Presidential Life: After publishing her memoirs entitled My Turn , in , she established the Nancy Reagan Foundation, to support educational drug prevention after-school programs; it merged with the Best Foundation for a Drug-Free Tomorrow, out of which emerged the Nancy Reagan Afterschool Program, a drug prevention and life-skills program for youth.
Over the next decade her public activities were largely limited to the Los Angeles area, since she was the primary caregiver to the former president. One notable exception was the Republican National Convention in nearby San Diego, California, thus making her only the second former First Lady - and the first of her party - to do so see "Post-Presidential Life" for Eleanor Roosevelt.
After former President Reagan's death in June , she became an outspoken public advocate for stem cell research, a scientific effort that promised hope for patients of Alzheimer's and other illnesses, despite the fact that her view was in direct opposition to that of the incumbent Republican president.
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan has remained highly active in both public and private. She engages in a full life with her friends and family in California, despite a fall requiring hospitalization, from which she fully recovered. Reagan loved entertaining, home decoration and fashion.
For years, she appeared in public in elegant and expensive clothing. This continued into the White House. The nation was suffering from a deep recession when the Reagan Administration began and the image of sophistication and wealth the First Lady exhibited seemed, at best, as insensitive to the sufferings of many Americans.
This image, along with controversies over the cost of her White House redecoration and ordering of a very expensive set of china for the White House - all paid for with donated funds - created a difficult image for the First Lady in her first years. Then Mrs. Reagan acknowledged that designers were lending her designer clothing. After two years of criticism on these issues, the First Lady appeared at the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington, DC poking fun at her image in a mismatched wardrobe performing a musical parody of "Second Hand Rose" entitled "Second Hand Clothes.
While her image would remain a problem throughout the Reagan Administration, it became less of a controversy from this moment. In spite of the controversies, she had many admirers.
Reagan one of the ten most admired women in the world, and in , , and , voted her number one. In October , a mammogram detected a lesion in Nancy Reagan's left breast, and it was cancer. She underwent a radical mastectomy on October 17, Reagan chose to share her diagnosis and treatment with the public, and became an advocate for early detection. After leaving the White House Mrs. Reagan established the Nancy Reagan Foundation to continue her campaign to educate people about the serious dangers of substance abuse.
Reagan was always more than first lady. She was also "first friend. History has shown that presidents need a close-in confidant -- someone whose relationship stretches back in time, who is devoted to the president's well-being, talks over his most intimate dreams and fears, keeps conversations secret, and once in a while, steps in to guide an errant president to a higher path. A confidant can be a second pair of eyes, seeing what a leader doesn't.
Whenever we needed help inside, I recommended we invite in Jordan. In the case of President Barack Obama, the outside world senses that Valerie Jarrett is his closest staff confidante. Nancy Reagan's death has reminded the world that she and her "Ronnie" enjoyed one of the great love stories of modern politics.
They met in the late s when she was a respected Hollywood actress, but he was at a low point. His movie career was stalling out, and his first wife, Jane Wyman, had walked out on him, leaving him desolate. Read More. As biographer Lou Cannon has described better than anyone else, Reagan's marriage to Nancy in and his winning of a contract to host TV's "General Electric Theater" changed the course of history. The new couple began a magical journey, one that gave him a fresh start in life and drew him away from the liberalism of Hollywood to become a rising star of the conservative movement.
Fourteen years after they were married, he was the governor of California, with a beaming Nancy always at his side. To those of us privileged to work for President Reagan in the s, it was obvious that they remained deeply in love. Their favorite evenings were spent alone together upstairs at the residence. Woe be it to a staff member who tried to intrude. In remembrances of Nancy, much has also been said of how influential she was and how she protected him behind the scenes.
Both observations are true. She didn't bring a policy agenda with her to the White House and rarely got involved in policy discussions, in the manner of Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Clinton.
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