Not long after came the point where Ronnie no longer recognized the mountaintop spread he had loved for so long. Open spaces made him terrified and disoriented. On one midweek visit to the ranch, when Nancy had stayed back in Los Angeles, his Secret Service agents called her to say that Ronnie had gone into such a panic that they were bringing him home early. “And so, the lure of that being his place to go and live out the rest of his life evaporated,” his son-in-law Dennis Revell said. “It was never Nancy’s place of choice. She went there and enjoyed it because of him.”
Ronnie’s last visit to the ranch was in August 1995. The following summer, Nancy made the wrenching decision to quietly put Rancho del Cielo up for sale. She listed it with Sotheby’s International Realty, with an asking price of $5.95 million. Patti protested, saying no one else should ever have a place so suffused with her father. “I’ll do what I have to do,” Nancy replied, ending the discussion.
“I know that her answer went beyond finances. It had to do with memories—of days that are painful to revisit because they rolled by so smoothly, with a peaceful laziness that awaits anyone lucky enough to escape the city and retreat into the hills,” Patti wrote. “The ranch was where my father went to restore himself, and my mother settled into the long stretch of days, content to simply be with him and let the hours float by. Now those days are far behind her, out of reach. I watched her when we went to the ranch together recently. I saw how her eyes rested on the lake, the hills, but only for a moment. Then something in her races away from her recollections. At the end of the day, she couldn’t wait to leave, as if the land itself were haunted.”
Patti finally realized the source of her own feelings about selling the ranch: “Losing my father and losing the ranch have become part of the same sorrow; it’s as if I will be losing him twice. And understanding my mother’s motives makes it more difficult, because no one’s right, and no one’s wrong. It’s as if something inside me is crying out, You can’t sell the ranch—he’s everywhere on it. And she is responding by crying out, That’s why I have to.” Later, after it was sold, Nancy told her daughter that memories of the ranch kept coming back to her in her dreams at night: “The weekends we used to spend there—riding, sitting by the fireplace—the way it was before, when we were normal.”
The ranch languished on the market. An effort to turn it into a national park went nowhere, as did one to make it a state historical site. In 1998 Nancy accepted an offer far below her asking price from the Young America’s Foundation, previously known as Young Americans for Freedom, a group promoting conservative values on college campuses. That was a decision Nancy came to regret, according to family members and several confidants I spoke to. “She was, to my mind, in a bit too much of a hurry and could have gotten a lot more money than she did for the ranch, particularly given its provenance. But she kind of snapped up the first offer,” Ron said. More worrisome, it turned out, was how the organization exploited its ownership of Ronnie’s favorite place in the world to market itself. “She was very, very concerned about them,” said Fred Ryan.
One of Nancy’s advisers claimed the Young America’s Foundation “manipulated her” by telling her it would be careful and tasteful in how it managed the site. “They started using it—and Reagan’s name—as a fund-raising vehicle. She was furious about how they were using it,” the adviser said. The Reagan Foundation, to which both Ronnie and Nancy had given the legal rights to their names and likenesses, suddenly found itself facing competition with the Young America’s Foundation as the group raised money for its own programs. “We came very, very close to a lawsuit and were sending a lot of these cease-and-desist letters,” the source close to Nancy added. It further annoyed her that some of the conservatives who had been kicked off the library board had begun making the ranch, under its new ownership, a sort of ideological base camp.
Nancy’s concerns about personal finances deepened. Given her own history of breast cancer, she knew there was a very real possibility that her husband would outlive her. Though her lawyers and other advisers told her over and over that she and Ronnie had plenty of money to see them through, Nancy worried that there might not be the resources to ensure that he could be properly taken care of if she were not around. She wanted to be certain not only that his physical needs were met but also that his dignity and privacy were respected. She knew that would be expensive.
“My mother would be anxious about their financial situation on a more or less constant basis,” Ron said. “She was in a state of kind of controlled panic for quite some time when he really, really became ill. And the idea of money going out the door for nurses and all the rest was pretty frightening to her.” This led to tension—and worse—with the Reagan children. As bills for Ronnie’s care mounted, Nancy backed out of an arrangement under which she had promised to give them and their spouses each $20,000 a year, as a sort of advance on their inheritances. Ron, living in Seattle and facing financial pressures of his own, became so angry with his mother that one year he returned his Christmas presents from her unopened.
Ronnie and Nancy had revised their wills several times after he left office. Most of what they left behind was to go to the Reagan library and foundation, Eureka College, and other causes that were important to them. Each of the children would receive a relatively modest bequest—$100,000, according to several sources I talked to who were familiar with the terms. Each grandchild would receive a smaller amount.
Nancy tried to assist her children in other ways—for instance, by prodding her powerful friends to help them find work that offered steady pay and benefits. “She would, in fact, make calls and things. She was not a big one for filling up your refrigerator or buying you furniture or something like that. But she’d pick up the phone and try and get somebody else to do it,” Ron recalled.
“She was great friends with Merv Griffin. He produced a lot of game shows and things. And he, at one point, offered me—I was working in television, and he offered me a game show,” Ron added. “It didn’t take me two minutes to say, ‘No. Thank you very much, but I’m not a game-show host. I just don’t see myself that way.’ ” Ron assumed that Griffin had made the offer at his mother’s behest. James Baker also recalled getting an appeal from Nancy, who was worried that her son might not have health insurance. “I said, ‘Well, Nancy, he needs to get a job,’ ” Baker told me. Ron denied that he ever went without medical coverage, which he said he received through his membership in the screen actors union, but acknowledged he did get career advice from Baker.
Nancy also became fearful that one or more of the surviving children might sue the estate—or one another—after she and Ronnie were dead. So, she offered them a financial incentive: she would double their inheritance to $200,000 if they all signed a pledge not to contest the terms of their parents’ wills. Ron told me that he was offended his mother would even ask such a thing. It implied she didn’t trust him or that she believed he was after her money. “I don’t even remember the details of it, but I reacted badly to that,” he recalled. He refused to sign, as did Michael.
According to Ron’s version of events, Nancy told her son that “really it had more to do with Mike than anybody else. They were worried that Mike was going to sue the estate, which indeed turned out to be a well-founded concern.” Ron declined to provide further details, saying he was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. However, several other sources familiar with the Reagans’ estate said that Michael did threaten legal action at least twice, after his father’s death in 2004 and Nancy’s in 2016. The terms of the will were renegotiated, giving him a greater share than he would have received otherwise.
Toward the end of Ronnie’s life, Nancy’s relationship with Michael, always fraught, deteriorated to its lowest point. A confidant confirmed: “Michael was, at least in her eyes, getting really out of hand and a bit of a wild card. They didn’t know what he would do.” Nancy believed Ronnie’s older son was exploiting the reverence that conservatives felt for his father in o
rder to burnish his own image and career as a radio talk-show host and commentator. Michael visited Ronnie infrequently, usually appearing right before he was scheduled to do an interview with a radio or television outlet. One of Nancy’s close associates recalls that in the versions Michael would recount of those meetings, he would claim that Ronnie had walked him to the door and waved until he was out of sight. In fact, by that point, the former president was not able to leave his bed.
Things between Michael and Nancy eventually became so bitter that she feared being alone with him. The Secret Service stationed an agent nearby when he visited to keep an eye on how he behaved, according to more than a half dozen people that I talked to on and off the record. One of those who confirmed this was his half brother, Ron: “The Secret Service were concerned enough about Mike that after an incident where he sort of loomed over my mother, who was frail at the time, and screamed at her that we’d all be better off if she just died, or was dead—something to that effect—the Secret Service would no longer leave him alone in the house with her. They would always put somebody outside the door on the rare occasions when he visited.” Robert Higdon told me the episode happened a few years before Ronnie died. “It was so bad that the Secret Service came into the house,” he said.
Nancy appeared less and less often in public. In March 2001 she traveled to Norfolk, Virginia, to christen the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. But otherwise, she got out only occasionally and briefly, usually to meet friends for lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air. Two of her favorite companions were network anchorman Tom Brokaw and actor Warren Beatty, who would take her out together. “Warren and I treasured those lunches because she always arrived with astute political observations and the best gossip from both coasts,” Brokaw said.
What Nancy never offered were any details about what was going on at home. When asked, she would simply say that there were good days and bad days. Eventually her closest pals learned not to inquire. The truth was, even the best days were getting pretty bad. Ronnie was heading farther and farther down a road where she could not follow. Sometimes, she still caught herself asking him: “Honey, you remember when—”
Doctor Hutton recalled one particularly poignant moment when he was visiting. Nancy turned the old romantic song “Unforgettable” on the stereo system that played on speakers throughout the house, and held her arms up to her husband, beckoning him to dance. It was a scene that Hutton had witnessed many times in the past. In the old days, the Reagans would fall together and cling to each other as they moved as one to the music. But this time, Ronnie brushed her away. There were other ordinary pleasures that Nancy could no longer share with him. When the two of them used to watch the game show Wheel of Fortune after dinner in the library of their home, Nancy would cuddle with Ronnie, and they would kiss. The last time Hutton had seen her try to do that, “he obviously didn’t understand at all what she was doing. It was kind of sad. She would tear [up] and just get up and go off to her room.”
In 1999 she shared a bit of what her life was like as she gave a televised tour of the Reagan Library to Brian Lamb, the founder of the cable network C-Span. Lamb, a gentle but persistent questioner, asked Nancy what she had learned about Alzheimer’s over the past five years.
“It is probably the worst disease you could ever have,” she said, sounding as though she was trying not to cry.
“Can you have a conversation that makes sense to you with the president?” Lamb asked.
“Not now,” Nancy answered. Her voice dropped to a whisper: “No.”
Lamb pressed her: “How have you dealt with it when people come to visit and he doesn’t recognize them?”
“Well, now we don’t have visitors,” Nancy replied. “We never let that happen.”
In January 2001, less than a month before his ninetieth birthday, Ronnie slipped at home and broke his right hip. As he recuperated from surgery at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, he was beyond knowing that his daughter Maureen was in the same hospital. For weeks, sixty-year-old Mermie had been at the hospital’s John Wayne Cancer Institute, undergoing aggressive chemotherapy against a deadly and spreading melanoma. Nancy, Maureen’s siblings, and her husband, Dennis Revell, shuttled back and forth between the two rooms. On January 20 Ronnie and Nancy watched television together in his hospital room as George W. Bush was inaugurated the nation’s forty-third president. Ronnie was discharged later that day.
Maureen would not be released from the hospital until March. Despite the treatment, cancer continued its rampage through her bones and into her brain. Ronnie’s fierce, passionate, big-hearted daughter suffered a seizure over the Fourth of July holiday and died on August 8. Her maple casket, decked with a spray of pink roses and white mums, was carried into Sacramento’s 112-year-old Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament by Secret Service agents who were veterans of the Reagan detail. Her mother, Jane, and her stepmother, Nancy, sat together in a pew. The two octogenarians—tiny and elegantly dressed—looked so alike they could have been sisters. Jane, balancing on a cane, laid a cross on the coffin; Nancy placed the book of Gospels on it. Michael, Ron, and Patti offered prayers for their sister. All of which made Ronnie’s absence feel even more painful.
* * *
The disease that was robbing her of Ronnie inspired Nancy, ever the doctor’s daughter, to take up a new and controversial cause: embryonic stem-cell research. Not because it would help him—it was too late for that—but in hopes that other families might one day be spared the ordeal of Alzheimer’s. Film producer Doug Wick, her longtime family friend, sparked Nancy’s interest in the possibility that the burgeoning field of stem-cell research might hold a cure, not only for Alzheimer’s but also for other diseases. Wick’s own daughter Tessa had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when she was eight years old.
Wick began inviting her over to lunches at his house with scientists who were working in the field. Nancy was particularly taken with Hans Keirstead, a movie-star-handsome entrepreneur and leader in stem-cell research. Nancy grilled him for more than two hours, Wick recalled. “The depth of her questions, the understanding and the reading she was doing was so substantial by any measure.” Wick also couldn’t help but notice Nancy was flirting: “She loved men, and she was really cute and charming.”
Quietly, Nancy began opening doors for Wick in Washington. She helped arrange for him to meet with key figures such as Arizona senator John McCain and Utah’s Orrin Hatch, a leader on health issues. She kept asking: “Who else should I call?” But this was a tricky endeavor for a high-profile Republican, given that the most promising stem-cell treatments involved the destruction of human embryos. So, at first, Nancy did her advocacy strictly behind the scenes. As George W. Bush deliberated over banning all federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, she wrote him a letter. Dated April 11, 2001, it read:
Dear Mr. President,
As you know, Ronnie recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday. In earlier times, we would have been able to share our mutual pride in a life filled with wonderful memories. Now, while I can draw strength from these memories, I do it alone as Ronnie struggles in a world unknown to me or the scientists who devote their lives to Alzheimer’s research. Because of this, I am determined to do what I can to save others from this pain and anguish. I’m writing, therefore, to ask your help in supporting what appears to be the most promising path to a cure—stem cell research.
I also know that this is not the first you have heard of this issue. And I know there are others who feel just as strongly in opposition to this. But I ask your help to ensure that this embryonic stem cell research, under appropriate guidelines, be protected as scientists pursue medical miracle possibilities.
Ronnie was very brave in writing to the public about his condition. It was his way of sharing with the thousands of families who are already afflicted. He always believed in man’s ability to make this a better world and I know he would be gratified to know that his own suffering might spare others th
e same wrenching family journey.
Mr. President, I have some personal experience regarding the many decisions you face each day. I do not want to add to that burden, but I’d be very grateful if you would take my thoughts and prayers into your consideration on this critical issue.
Most sincerely,
Nancy Reagan
Bush did not respond for three weeks, Wick said, which wounded Nancy. But the letter, which had also been sent to congressional leadership, was soon circulating on Capitol Hill and among the press. Her appeal did not bring the outcome she desired. Bush put tight restrictions on stem-cell research. Nonetheless, she continued to work the phones, while maintaining a public silence.
Nancy operated stealthily in part because she liked the younger Bush, with whom she shared a July 6 birthday, and he was fond of her as well. When he was still the governor of Texas, George W. Bush chose the Reagan Library as the place to deliver his first major foreign-policy speech as a presidential candidate. He began by paying tribute to Ronnie: “We live in the nation President Reagan restored, and the world he helped to save. A world of nations reunited and tyrants humbled. A world of prisoners released and exiles come home. And today there is a prayer shared by free people everywhere: God bless you, Ronald Reagan.” In 2002 Bush awarded Nancy the Presidential Medal of Freedom and invited her to stay at the White House. It was the first time she had slept there since she and Ronnie left in January 1989.
But the politics around stem-cell research remained heated after Bush’s restrictive order. There were mounting calls, even within his own party, for the president to loosen the curtailment of government funding. In 2003 Senator Hatch—as staunch a conservative as could be found on Capitol Hill—introduced a bill that would permit scientists to clone embryos and then destroy them to extract their stem cells. He used a supportive letter from Nancy as part of his argument. Some Republicans were outraged. Mike Deaver got a call from one member of Congress, who shouted, “Reagan would never have approved of stem-cell research!” Deaver replied: “Ronald Reagan didn’t have to take care of Ronald Reagan for the last ten years.”
The Triumph of Nancy Reagan Page 61
