Posted on 06/06/2004 5:56:29 PM PDT by Pokey78
Nancy Reagan had her share of sniping press coverage as one of America's more domineering First Ladies. But yesterday she was at the centre of millions of Americans' thoughts and prayers as they recalled what Charlton Heston once described as the 'greatest love affair in the history of the American presidency'.
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She was in many ways the ultimate steely and protective politician's wife. She never hid her determination to make him succeed; stiffening his spine at times of crisis, counselling against advisers she did not trust and even dabbling in policy.
Yet theirs was unquestionably also the most adoring of relationships. Hardly any photographs of the two together do not show them holding hands or embracing.
Until the last years of their 52-year marriage he wrote her hundreds of personalised love letters, many addressed to "My Mommy Poo", "from Poppa".
She once said that "my life began with Ronnie". Her late husband clearly thought the same of her.
Nine months after the failed assassination attempt of 1981 he wrote: "I love the whole gang of you - Mommy, First Lady, the sentimental you, the fun you and the peewee powerhouse you."
Another acquaintance from Hollywood days, the actor Jimmy Stewart, once joked that if the two had been together in 1940, at the time when Reagan was married to his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman, "he would have won an Oscar. She [Nancy] would have made him do it".
The couple met in Hollywood in 1949 when she was a 26-year-old starlet and he, aged 38, was the president of the Screen Actors' Guild.
Reagan was still heartbroken by the collapse of his first marriage. But Nancy pursued him with the same devotion she would display towards him for more than five decades, and they married in 1952.
Their family life was not straightforward. The two children by his first marriage, Maureen, born in 1941, and Michael, who was adopted in 1945, both felt at times that Nancy was the caricature stepmother, trying to alienate them from their father.
For a long time, the Reagans also had a difficult relationship with Patti, the elder of their two children.
But more recently she wrote movingly of her parents' love affair, saying they were "people who nurtured their love for each other every day, who knew that friendship is the mortar holding love together, who closed their eyes when they kissed, and who held hands like teenagers".
As First Lady, Mrs Reagan was mocked by the Washington establishment and the media for her expansive redesign of the White House, her lavish taste in clothes and her belief in horoscopes which, one embittered former aide said, influenced the White House timetable.
But few doubted or dared belittle the intensity of the Reagans' bond.
In a 40th wedding anniversary tribute to her in 1992, Mr Reagan made clear that she was at the heart of his post-presidential life.
"We relax at the ranch [in California] which if not heaven itself probably has the same Zip code.
"Nothing draws a couple closer together than to find a pretty spot, maybe a ukulele and a canoe - Nancy's idea of the perfect romantic setting - and share happy memories of the past."
In his emotional letter to America in 1994 announcing his Alzheimer's, he said: "I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience."
Since then she has been managing his "long goodbye", controlling access to him, his legacy and now funeral plans with her familiar passion.
Michael Deaver, one of their oldest friends, wrote in a memoir of Mrs Reagan this year: "You would do just as well to come between a bear and its cub as try to come between Nancy and Reagan."
The greatest love affair in the presidency of the United States was Bill Clinton with Bill Clinton.
The greatest love affair in the presidency of the United States was Bill Clinton with Bill Clinton.
It will be interesting to see how the writings of Ronald and Nancy Reagan (POTUS 40) stack up (over time) to the writings of John and Abigail Adams (POTUS 02).
I always like Nancy Reagan. She has class.
Excellent!!
LOL!
ROTFL!!
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