Nancy stood by his side for a half-century
By Jeff Wilson
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Ronald Reagan's fierce protector was there to the end.
Advertiser library Photo • Oct. 10, 1981
Nancy Reagan was at the Gipper's side for a half-century in his journey from motion pictures and head of the Screen Actors Guild to California governor and president of the United States. He called her Mommy. She called him Ronnie.
President and Mrs. Reagan walk through to the White House following his statement on the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
She was also there as caregiver when Alzheimer's disease sapped his memory in the sunset of his life at the couple's Bel-Air home. The nation's 40th chief executive knew it would be tough on his wife.
"I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience," Reagan wrote in his November 1994 letter to the American people disclosing he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
When asked about the president during those declining years, Mrs. Reagan would say, "He's OK." There were no details, no elaboration.
"You know that it's a progressive disease and that there's no place to go but down, no light at the end of the tunnel," she wrote in the book "I Love You, Ronnie," a collection of letters he wrote to her, published in 2000. "You get tired and frustrated, because you have no control and you feel helpless."
Yet Reagan's protector was always on the job. When he fell and broke his hip in January 2001, she was with him at the hospital night and day.
"I think the only time that they were able to get me out was they wouldn't let me in the operating room. But otherwise, I was there," she said.
Nancy Reagan was her husband's champion, helpmate and closest adviser. Admirers and detractors alike insisted she was the real power in the White House.
She laughed it off.
"This morning I had planned to clear up the U.S.-Soviet differences on intermediate-range missiles but then I decided to clear out Ronnie's sock drawer instead," she once joked with an audience.
Ronnie was always paramount.
"I make no apologies for telling him what I thought," the former first lady wrote in her 1989 book, "My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan."
"For eight years, I was sleeping with the president, and if that doesn't give you special access, I don't know what does! So yes, I gave Ronnie my best advice whenever he asked for it, and sometimes when he didn't."
While working as an actress at MGM, she met Reagan in 1950 through a family friend, director Mervyn LeRoy. She had gone to him with a problem — her name had been placed in an advertisement in a list of people she considered left wing. LeRoy called Reagan, the president of the Screen Actors Guild, who found Nancy's name had been put in the ad by mistake.
They discussed it over dinner and were married two years later, on March 4, 1952. It was her first marriage, his second. Patti was born in October and Ron six years later. Reagan had two children from his previous marriage to actress Jane Wyman, Maureen and Mike.
She and Reagan made one movie together, a 1957 World War II story called "Hellcats of the Navy."
During Reagan's final years, Mrs. Reagan and a nurse cared for him with a contingent of Secret Service agents nearby. First quietly, later publicly, she lobbied for money for stem cell research, which could some day help fight Alzheimer's, even though many abortion opponents are against it.
"Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him," she said in May.
"Because of this, I'm determined to do whatever I can to save other families from this pain. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this."
