Devoted Nancy always at his side
Nancy Reagan was at his side for half a 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.
She was also there as carer 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 the light of his life.
"I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience," Reagan wrote in his poignant 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 seemed to force a smile before saying simply: "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.
Throughout their years together, Mrs Reagan was her husband's champion, helpmate and closest adviser. Admirers and detractors alike insisted Nancy was the real power in the White House. She laughed it off. "This morning I had planned to clear up the US-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.
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 or funding for stem cell research, which could some day help fight Alzheimer's.
"Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him," she said at a fundraiser in May.
:
"Government is just like a big baby an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." 1965.
"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence." Los Angeles Times, January, 1970.
"Government does not solve problems. It subsidises them." December, 1972.
"Heaven help us if government ever gets into the business of protecting us from ourselves." April, 1973.
"The United States has much to offer the Third World War." 1973.
"I've noticed that everybody who is for abortion has already been born." September, 1980.
"History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." Address to the nation, January, 1984.
"We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free." Normandy, June 6, 1984.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'." August, 1986.
"When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well, ladies and gentleman, I'd follow the example of their nominee: don't inhale." Republican National Convention, 1992.
"I hope you're all Republicans." To surgeons as he entered the operating room, March, 1981.
"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough. We have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much." To the National Association of Realtors, March, 1982.
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it." At the White House Conference on Small Business, August, 1986.
"The other day someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket." December, 1986.
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." September, 1987.
"A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist." February, 1988.
"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere." September, 1986.
"She's the best man in England." On Margaret Thatcher.
"We have long since discovered that nothing lasts longer than a temporary government programme." Undated.
And what his wife Nancy Reagan said about him: "He doesn't make snap decisions, but he doesn't overthink, either."
