Posted on 09/28/2002 10:53:56 PM PDT by MadIvan
HE was a key figure in ripping down the iron curtain and ending the cold war, which brought the 20th century to a close with America as the only superpower. Yet Ronald Reagan’s horizons have shrunk to his bedside as Alzheimer’s disease ravages his mind.
Michael Reagan, his elder son, believes that death would be a merciful release for the former American president.
“It’s time for him to go. It’s very sad,” he said in an interview. “I’m going to hate the day Dad dies. You think you are ready for it, but you never are. But I sometimes pray that if God wants to take him home, then take him home.”
Reagan, 91, sleeps on and off for 18 hours a day, according to his son. He was always a sound sleeper, even when his policies were under attack in the 1980s.
His waking hours are a nightmare of befuddlement.
Reagan fell in the bedroom of his Bel Air home in California in January 2001, broke a hip and has been bedridden ever since. He is fed, washed and cared for 24 hours a day by medical staff, but can neither leave his bed, even for the most basic functions, nor make himself understood.
“Some days are better than others but they are all sad days. You see a man who is referred to as the Great Communicator and he can’t communicate because he doesn’t know who he is. He talks gibberish,” said his son.
Reagan does not know that his daughter Maureen died last August of melanoma at the age of 60. On the day of her funeral he stayed at home. “You wouldn’t have wanted to tell him,” said Michael. “Even if he could comprehend, he would have no way of expressing his feelings.”
Michael, 57, was adopted as a baby by Reagan and his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman. According to family legend three-year-old Maureen was in a Hollywood chemist’s when the pharmacist asked what she wanted. She put 97 cents on the counter and said: “I want a baby brother.” Her birth had been difficult, so the family chose to adopt.Today Reagan’s son is a radio chat show host in California who buried some of his family demons with an autobiography more than a decade ago. The children had many run-ins with their emotionally distant father but Michael now visits him once a month. “He doesn’t know me, but I go there for Nancy, to show up. I hug and kiss him,” he said.
“In some ways I go there out of guilt. We’re not like every family — I was at boarding school from the age of five, so I’m seeing him more than I used to. It’s the way our family works, by appointment — it’s always been by appointment.”
Nancy, who was 81 in July, still looks at Reagan adoringly, said Michael. She wants others to remember him the way he was but even she confessed last week that she was lonely. She was not sure that her husband knew her any more and said: “When you come right down to it, you’re in it alone and there’s nothing anybody can do for you.”
The strain is beginning to tell on her. “She’s frail,” said Michael. “She’s much frailer than she would have been because of Dad’s illness. She’s a professional worrier. She’s always carried a burden of some sort. She worries about what people are saying about Dad, about his place in history.
“I worry that when Dad goes Nancy won’t be far behind because she lives and breathes for Dad.” She need have no fear about history’s verdict on Reagan, whose virtues are frequently invoked in this post-September 11 world.
“George W is closer to my father’s ideology than he is to his father’s,” said Michael, who believes that the September 11 attacks would not have happened under Reagan. “He responded to the Muammar Gadaffis. They knew where he stood.” Despite backing Bush, he thinks his father would have disapproved of the “giant conversation” under way over Iraq.
Libya was bombed in 1986 after a terrorist attack on Americans in West Berlin. “Dad didn’t hold a press conference saying what we’ll do with Gadaffi. He just did it,” said Michael.
Reagan’s descent into Alzheimer’s was remarkably rapid after he left the White House in 1989 and soon became impossible to conceal.
Michael said Reagan’s great ally, Margaret Thatcher, was guest of honour at a birthday party for him in 1993.
“Dad gave Maggie a great introduction, as he always did, and she got a standing ovation. Then the applause stopped and Dad reintroduced her. Everybody stood up and applauded again as if nothing had happened.
“After that Nancy and Dad felt it was time to start thinking about getting the word out about Alzheimer’s.”
In 1994 Reagan published a touching letter about his plight in which he said: “I only wish I could spare Nancy from the painful experience.”
He could not. By 1997 he was still active — some golf, walking on the beach — but his mind was faltering. He would spend hours sweeping leaves from the swimming pool and his secret servicemen would quietly put them back, simply to keep him occupied.
Every now and then he would show a flash of insight, his son recalled. “My daughter Ashley hugged him and said, ‘Grandpa, I love you.’ He looked directly at me and said in a full voice, ‘You know why I’m hugging her? Because she’s a she.’ ” He’d remembered how Michael had complained about his lack of hugs as a child.
Now Michael understands that Reagan was a typical post-war father. At the time, however, the children were often unforgiving and even today the family is politically divided.
At the launch of the battleship USS Ronald Reagan last year, Nancy’s children Patti Davis and Ron Reagan stayed away. “They’re the 1960s generation, the liberals. To them the ship was a killing machine,” said Michael. “I felt sorry for Nancy that day. She fought hard to have the ship commissioned before my father died. It had never been done in anybody’s lifetime before, so it was an honour. I was there with my wife and children. George W Bush was there.
“Nancy and I have not always had the greatest of relationships and I began to wonder if the problem was not that she’s so angry with me but that she’s jealous that the Wyman kids — Maureen and I — would show up no matter what was going on in the family.”
Maureen was Nancy’s chief support until she succumbed to her own illness. In the past year Patti has grown closer to her mother and believes the reconciliation makes her father happy. Nancy said last week: “She thinks he has a feeling of the two of us together. As she says, his soul doesn’t have Alzheimer’s.”
Michael is grateful. “When Maureen passed away, Patti stepped up and she’s there with her mother all the time. It’s been good for Nancy and it’s great for Patti. She’s finally getting close to Dad.”
Maureen sacrificed her own health, Michael believes, by campaigning non-stop for an Alzheimer’s cure instead of fighting her cancer.The time is nearing when Reagan will join her. “Maureen has been waiting for him for a year and has probably got a good spot for him beside her. She’d love it. No brothers, no sisters, no moms. Just her and Dad.” For Michael, it is a consoling thought.
Others, myself included, will say that Kennedy's cowardice during the Bay of Pigs was such a sign of weakness that the Soviets thought that they could get away with something that they would not dream of trying with Eisenhower.
The original Bay of Pigs invasion plan dictated that Castro's air force, which consisted a few obsolete jet trainers, must be completely destroyed prior to the invasion landing.
That's Amphibious Invasion Planning 101:
Rule #1: Estasblish air superiority over the invasion beach.
Rule #2: See Rule #1.
The initial air strikes by Cuban exile pilots knocked out the majority of Castro's air force on the ground. The invasion plan called for repeated strikes until Castro's air force was completely destroyed in order to ensure air superiority over the beachead.
At this point, Kennedy put his tail between his legs and panicked. He was afraid that the U.S. role in the invasion may be discovered when it was obvious to anybody with an IQ above room temperature that the U.S. was involved. Kennedy ordered that the follow up air strikes agasinst Castro's air force be cancelled.
Now that a key point in the invasion plan, air superiority over the beachead, had been thrown out the window, Kennedy should have:
A. Reconsidered his order and carried out the original plan or
B. Called the whole thing off.
Instead, Kennedy opted for:
C. Give the Green Light to a fatally gutted invasion plan and dump those men on the beachead while Castro had complete air superiority over the landing beach.
At the landing beach, Castro's few remaining jet trainers roamed the invasion beach at will, sinking the invasion transports along with equipment and ammunition. World war II era B-26 bombers flown by Cuban exile and CIA pilots went on suicide missions against those jet trainers. Dogfighting against jet aircraft was not what B-26's were designed for.
As the invasion fleet was sunk and the B-26's were massacred by a handful of Castro's jet trainers, U.S. Navy aircraft carriers were off the beach with orders not to engage Castro's jet trainers. Airborne Naval aviators had to listen to Mayday calls from the B-26's and follow orders to do nothing. While in the Navy, I heard stories from one Naval aviator aboard the carrier about how those Naval aviators would land on the carrier with tears of rage and frustration. They could have so easily blown away those few Communist jet trainers out of the sky with their A-4 Skyhawks and yet they had to allow the CIA and Cuban exile pilots to die in their B-26's because President Kennedy had so ordered.
Of course, in the Kennedy mythology, poor JFK was the victim of a bad CIA plan. How Kennedy's cowardice gutted the plan and doomed it to failure before the invasion landing even began is swept under the rug by the Camelot crowd.
It is my opinion that Kennedy's cowardice led the Soviets into believing that they could get away with putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. Weakness breeds contempt. Without Kennedy's initial cowardice, there would have been no 1962 Missile Crisis.
It is also worthwhile considering if the the subsequent emphasis on Vietnam was a reaction by the Kennedy-Johnson Administration to compensate for the Bay of Pigs humiliation.
After his venerable body has breathed its' last...
Ronald Reagan's body will EVEN then possess . . .
more than one Bill Clinton has known or will ever know about:
truth, freedom, or integrity,
Even while Clinton still draws a million breaths.
This is a time when we need to be reminded of the difference between a great President and scum that somehow managed to invade the office. W is much closer to Reagan than he is to his immediate predecessor. We were either right or lucky twice in my lifetime to have been given good Presidents when we needed them.
I hope one day soon we'll find the cure for this disease. Right now the only available treatment that I know of are drugs which merely improve intellectual performance in some patients but death generally comes within eight to 12 years of the diagnosis.
Thank you for that one.
I have no doubt that she will follow him shortly afterwards. You can easily see her complete love and adoration of Ronnie in pictures like the ones in replies #41 and #62. God blessed them with a wonderful marriage.
Eight to 12 years, huh? Well, from this article then, it sounds like he is near the end of that range and beyond....
Reagan’s descent into Alzheimer’s was remarkably rapid after he left the White House in 1989 and soon became impossible to conceal.
Michael said Reagan’s great ally, Margaret Thatcher, was guest of honour at a birthday party for him in 1993.
I know that there is an article just posted on FR here that concerns the stem cell research and the promise it may hold for Alzheimer's patients. Too late for Ronald Reagan, but maybe it can help future Alzheimer's victims.
"At the launch of the battleship USS Ronald Reagan last year..." We have a battleship? News to me...
We’re not like every family — I was at boarding school from the age of five, so I’m seeing him more than I used to. It’s the way our family works, by appointment — it’s always been by appointment.”
How sad.
Yes, I too dreaded that the Clintons would be hosting the State Funeral. PIAPS would have pushed the body into the grave with a nasty smirk on her face.
Now we can be comforted that the outpouring of love from the American people will be honored by a president and first lady who genuinely loved the man, too. It will be handled with tact, good taste, and sincerity, character traits the Clintons have never possessed.
That is nothing for you to worry about, Mrs. Reagan. He will be remembered as one of the great leaders of the 20th century, and his place in history will perpetually be one of honor and immense respect.
His detractors, if remembered at all (which is doubtful), will be only a hackling crowd of wannabe, has-beens nipping at the heels of greatness, never able to attain it themselves. They will be remembered only for being in the great man's shadow, never for anything they have done on their own.
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