The First Ladies: Nancy Reagan
Nancy Reagan will always be remembered for her "just say no" campaign in response to the problem of drug abuse and perhaps for her practice of consulting an astrologer for advice while first lady. But there is much more to her story. Like "Pat" Nixon, "Nancy" was actually her nickname. Her full name is Anne Frances Robbins Davis Reagan, and she was the ninth of ten first ladies to be born in New York. (The others were Elizabeth Monroe, Hannah Van Buren, Julia Tyler, Abigail Fillmore, Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, Frances Cleveland, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy and Barbara Bush.)
She was born on July 6, 1921 in Sloane Hospital, Flushing, Queens, New York. Her parents were Kenneth Seymour Robbins, a used car salesman, and Edith P. Luckett. Her mother was an actress who played a socialite and a maid on an NBC radio soap opera program "The Betty and Bob Show." Living to 99 years old, Edith Davis was the longest-living mother of a First Lady. Following her parents' divorce in 1928 Nancy was sent to the home of her mother's sister Virginia and her husband Audley Galbraith who raised her in their Bethesda, Maryland home. Nancy Reagan made visits to her mother whenever she was in New York for a lengthy theater run. Edith Luckett married a second time to Loyal Davis, a neurosurgeon on May 21, 1929 and she and Nancy moved to his home in Chicago. Nancy is an only child. She has a stepbrother, Richard Davis (born 1927), from the first marriage of her adoptive father Loyal Davis.
Nancy Reagan is 5' 4" tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes. She is Presbyterian, and was educated at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. from 1925-1928; Girl's Latin School in Chicago from 1929-1939; and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1939-1943, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in dramatic arts. After graduating from college, Nancy Reagan worked as a sales clerk in the Marshall Fields Department store in Chicago, and then as a nurse's aide, also in Chicago. Through her mother's friends in the acting profession, Nancy Reagan received a non-speaking role in the touring company of Ramshackle Inn, and the play eventually came to Broadway. Nancy Reagan settled in New York and landed a minor role in the musical Lute Song, starring Yul Brynner and Mary Martin. In 1949, after a successful screen test, Nancy Reagan accepted a seven-year contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer, moved to Hollywood, California, and performed in the first of her eleven feature films, The Doctor and the Girl.
On March 6, 1952 Nancy Davis married Ronald Reagan, who was then divorced from actress Jane Wyman. Reagan was President of the Screen Actors Guild and a film and television actor. They were married at the Little Brown Church in North Hollywood, California. After a honeymoon at the Mission Inn, in Riverside, California and Phoenix, Arizona, the Reagans lived in a series of homes, settling in a modern home in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles, built and provided for by General Electric, the company for whom Ronald Reagan served as a national spokesman. The GE house was outfitted with all of the company's state-of-the-art technology. The couple had two children together: Patricia Ann Reagan ("Patti Davis"), born October 21, 1952 and Ronald Prescott Reagan, born May 20, 1958. Her husband had two children from his previous marriage: Maureen Reagan, born January 4, 1941 (who died on August 8, 2001) and an adopted son Michael Reagan, born March 18, 1945.
Nancy Reagan made three films after her marriage. Her last film, at Columbia in 1956, was Hellcats of the Navy, in which she and her husband appeared together. During her husband's two terms as California Governor, she advocated for a number of causes, including the welfare of returned and wounded Vietnam War veterans, fundraising and lobbying efforts on behalf of those Vietnam War servicemen who were either Prisoners of War or Missing In Act. As California's First Lady, she wrote a syndicated column and donated her salary to the National League of Families of American POW-MIA. She also regularly visited state institutions that cared for the elderly and physically and emotionally handicapped children. After observing a program that successfully brought these groups together as a form of therapy, the "Foster Grandparent Program," she promoted it throughout California and, eventually, the nation.
Nancy Reagan preferred to campaign with her husband rather than on her own, but during the 1980 primaries she began to make her own appearances and make remarks that reflected her husband's views on issues. In the 1984 presidential campaign, Nancy Reagan was especially helpful during the last of a several televised debates. After concluding that the President had done poorly in a previous debate, she urged his advisors to no ask him to memorize endless statistics. They did as she suggested and he proved more effective in the ensuing debate.
When Nancy Reagan first became First Lady, she raised private funds, rather than use government funds to redecorate and renovate the floors, doors and other hardware. The cost of new china set was underwritten by the private Knapp Foundation. Her acceptance of free clothing from designers resulted in her unknowingly violating the new Ethics in Government Act of 1978, causing a public relations dilemma at a time of high unemployment in the nation.
Nancy Reagan’s primary project as first lady was promotion of drug education and prevention programs for children and young adults. To this end, she traveled nearly 250,000 miles throughout the U.S. and several nations to visit prevention programs and rehabilitation centers to talk with young people and their parents, appeared on television talk shows, taped public service announcements, and wrote guest articles. At one California school, when Nancy Reagan had asked the children what the best and most immediate response should be when they were offered drugs, there were shouts of "just say no." She became associated with the catch-phrase "just say no" and it was eventually adopted as the name of a loose organization of clubs formed in grammar, middle and high schools in which young people pledged not to experiment with the harmful drugs.
In April 1985 Mrs. Reagan expanded her drug awareness campaign to an international level by inviting the wives of world leaders to attend a White House conference she hosted on youth drug abuse. In October of that year, during the U.N.'s 40th anniversary, she hosted thirty international First Ladies for a second such gathering. When President Reagan signed the October 27, 1986 "National Crusade for a Drug Free America" anti-drug abuse bill into law, she considered it a personal victory and made an unprecedented joint address to the nation with him on the problem. In October 1988, she became the first First Lady to address the U.N. General Assembly, speaking on international drug interdiction and trafficking laws.
Nancy Reagan assumed a role as the President's personal protector. Much of this grew out of the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt on his life. After this, Nancy Reagan made it her concern to know his schedule: in what public venues would he be speaking, before what groups, at what time, as well as with whom he would be privately meeting. In time, her concern to protect her husband's personal well-being led her to consult an astrologer to attempt to discern precisely what days and at what times would be optimum for safety and success, and which slots were to be avoided because potential dangers as reflected in the astrological readings. Both Reagans admitted that the President had a tendency to trust all those who worked for him, while the First Lady tended to perceive those who, in her words, might "end run him," essentially using their positions to further their personal careers or agendas rather than that of the President and the Administration. The President's long-time aide Michael Deaver also served as a trusted and important advisor to Nancy Reagan and he often approached her when he felt a problem might be developing. To this end, Nancy Reagan effectively supported decisions to replace various personnel, including National Security Council member William P. Clark, and the hiring of others such as Secretary of State George Schultz. After the fall-out he generated in mishandling the Administration's reaction to the Iran-Contra scandal, she felt that the President would be better served by replacing Chief of Staff Donald Regan. The deposed Chief of Staff reacted by publishing a sensational memoir in which he disclosed her request that astrology be used in the president's official scheduling.
Nancy Reagan promoted the idea of the President forming first a personal relationship with the new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when the latter assumed power in 1985. The resulting friendship and then political negotiations resulted in the 1987 INF Treaty. Nancy Reagan underwent breast cancer surgery and shortly thereafter grieved the death of her mother, all just prior to the treaty signing.
After her husband left office, Nancy published her memoirs entitled My Turn, in 1989. She established the Nancy Reagan Foundation, to support educational drug prevention after-school programs and it merged with the Best Foundation for a Drug-Free Tomorrow, out of which emerged the Nancy Reagan Afterschool Program, a drug prevention and life-skills program for youth.
When her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, they together let their name in support of the Ronald & Nancy Reagan Research Institute in Chicago, Illinois for research into the illness, in affiliation with the National Alzheimer’s Association. Over the next decade her public activities were largely limited to the Los Angeles area, since she was the primary caregiver to the former president. One exception was the 1996 Republican National Convention in nearby San Diego, making her only the second former First Lady - and the first of her party - to do so. (The other was Eleanor Roosevelt).
After former President Reagan's death in June 2004, she became an outspoken public advocate for stem cell research, a scientific effort that promised hope for patients of Alzheimer's and other illnesses, despite the fact that her view was in direct opposition to that of the incumbent Republican president. She has remained highly active in both public and private, despite a 2008 fall requiring hospitalization, from which she fully recovered. She has grew especially close to her daughter Patti Davis, as recounted in the latter’s 2009 book, The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us.
He primary focus as a presidential widow has been to bring public attention to the legacy of her late husband. In July of 2007, Mrs. Reagan accepted the government of Poland’s most distinguished honorary recognition, the Order of the White Eagle, which was given in memory of her husband. Two years later, she was awarded an honorary degree from Ronald Reagan’s alma mater, Eureka College. In June of 2009, she returned to Washington, D.C. for the unveiling ceremony of a statue of former President Reagan that was placed in the U.S. Capitol Building. She was active in planning for his 2011 centennial. She also praised President Obama for his decision to reverse a Bush Administration federal funding ban on stem cell research.
Two of the earliest 2008 presidential candidates’ debates among those vying for the Republican nomination were hosted by Nancy Reagan at the Reagan Library, in May 2007 and January 2008. She attended both events, but did not endorse any candidate during the primaries. She publicly endorsed John McCain in 2008, and in the 2010 mid-term elections, she endorsed two female Republican candidates for state and national office from California, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorini, who ran for Governor and U.S. Senate, respectively. Encouraging the presidential library to again serve as a venue for debates, she attended one held there in late 2011 among 2012 Republican presidential candidates. She continues to attend important Library events, notably those with speakers active in political life and the media. She resides in Bel Air, California.
She was born on July 6, 1921 in Sloane Hospital, Flushing, Queens, New York. Her parents were Kenneth Seymour Robbins, a used car salesman, and Edith P. Luckett. Her mother was an actress who played a socialite and a maid on an NBC radio soap opera program "The Betty and Bob Show." Living to 99 years old, Edith Davis was the longest-living mother of a First Lady. Following her parents' divorce in 1928 Nancy was sent to the home of her mother's sister Virginia and her husband Audley Galbraith who raised her in their Bethesda, Maryland home. Nancy Reagan made visits to her mother whenever she was in New York for a lengthy theater run. Edith Luckett married a second time to Loyal Davis, a neurosurgeon on May 21, 1929 and she and Nancy moved to his home in Chicago. Nancy is an only child. She has a stepbrother, Richard Davis (born 1927), from the first marriage of her adoptive father Loyal Davis.
Nancy Reagan is 5' 4" tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes. She is Presbyterian, and was educated at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. from 1925-1928; Girl's Latin School in Chicago from 1929-1939; and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1939-1943, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in dramatic arts. After graduating from college, Nancy Reagan worked as a sales clerk in the Marshall Fields Department store in Chicago, and then as a nurse's aide, also in Chicago. Through her mother's friends in the acting profession, Nancy Reagan received a non-speaking role in the touring company of Ramshackle Inn, and the play eventually came to Broadway. Nancy Reagan settled in New York and landed a minor role in the musical Lute Song, starring Yul Brynner and Mary Martin. In 1949, after a successful screen test, Nancy Reagan accepted a seven-year contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer, moved to Hollywood, California, and performed in the first of her eleven feature films, The Doctor and the Girl.
On March 6, 1952 Nancy Davis married Ronald Reagan, who was then divorced from actress Jane Wyman. Reagan was President of the Screen Actors Guild and a film and television actor. They were married at the Little Brown Church in North Hollywood, California. After a honeymoon at the Mission Inn, in Riverside, California and Phoenix, Arizona, the Reagans lived in a series of homes, settling in a modern home in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles, built and provided for by General Electric, the company for whom Ronald Reagan served as a national spokesman. The GE house was outfitted with all of the company's state-of-the-art technology. The couple had two children together: Patricia Ann Reagan ("Patti Davis"), born October 21, 1952 and Ronald Prescott Reagan, born May 20, 1958. Her husband had two children from his previous marriage: Maureen Reagan, born January 4, 1941 (who died on August 8, 2001) and an adopted son Michael Reagan, born March 18, 1945.
Nancy Reagan made three films after her marriage. Her last film, at Columbia in 1956, was Hellcats of the Navy, in which she and her husband appeared together. During her husband's two terms as California Governor, she advocated for a number of causes, including the welfare of returned and wounded Vietnam War veterans, fundraising and lobbying efforts on behalf of those Vietnam War servicemen who were either Prisoners of War or Missing In Act. As California's First Lady, she wrote a syndicated column and donated her salary to the National League of Families of American POW-MIA. She also regularly visited state institutions that cared for the elderly and physically and emotionally handicapped children. After observing a program that successfully brought these groups together as a form of therapy, the "Foster Grandparent Program," she promoted it throughout California and, eventually, the nation.
Nancy Reagan preferred to campaign with her husband rather than on her own, but during the 1980 primaries she began to make her own appearances and make remarks that reflected her husband's views on issues. In the 1984 presidential campaign, Nancy Reagan was especially helpful during the last of a several televised debates. After concluding that the President had done poorly in a previous debate, she urged his advisors to no ask him to memorize endless statistics. They did as she suggested and he proved more effective in the ensuing debate.
When Nancy Reagan first became First Lady, she raised private funds, rather than use government funds to redecorate and renovate the floors, doors and other hardware. The cost of new china set was underwritten by the private Knapp Foundation. Her acceptance of free clothing from designers resulted in her unknowingly violating the new Ethics in Government Act of 1978, causing a public relations dilemma at a time of high unemployment in the nation.
Nancy Reagan’s primary project as first lady was promotion of drug education and prevention programs for children and young adults. To this end, she traveled nearly 250,000 miles throughout the U.S. and several nations to visit prevention programs and rehabilitation centers to talk with young people and their parents, appeared on television talk shows, taped public service announcements, and wrote guest articles. At one California school, when Nancy Reagan had asked the children what the best and most immediate response should be when they were offered drugs, there were shouts of "just say no." She became associated with the catch-phrase "just say no" and it was eventually adopted as the name of a loose organization of clubs formed in grammar, middle and high schools in which young people pledged not to experiment with the harmful drugs.
In April 1985 Mrs. Reagan expanded her drug awareness campaign to an international level by inviting the wives of world leaders to attend a White House conference she hosted on youth drug abuse. In October of that year, during the U.N.'s 40th anniversary, she hosted thirty international First Ladies for a second such gathering. When President Reagan signed the October 27, 1986 "National Crusade for a Drug Free America" anti-drug abuse bill into law, she considered it a personal victory and made an unprecedented joint address to the nation with him on the problem. In October 1988, she became the first First Lady to address the U.N. General Assembly, speaking on international drug interdiction and trafficking laws.
Nancy Reagan assumed a role as the President's personal protector. Much of this grew out of the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt on his life. After this, Nancy Reagan made it her concern to know his schedule: in what public venues would he be speaking, before what groups, at what time, as well as with whom he would be privately meeting. In time, her concern to protect her husband's personal well-being led her to consult an astrologer to attempt to discern precisely what days and at what times would be optimum for safety and success, and which slots were to be avoided because potential dangers as reflected in the astrological readings. Both Reagans admitted that the President had a tendency to trust all those who worked for him, while the First Lady tended to perceive those who, in her words, might "end run him," essentially using their positions to further their personal careers or agendas rather than that of the President and the Administration. The President's long-time aide Michael Deaver also served as a trusted and important advisor to Nancy Reagan and he often approached her when he felt a problem might be developing. To this end, Nancy Reagan effectively supported decisions to replace various personnel, including National Security Council member William P. Clark, and the hiring of others such as Secretary of State George Schultz. After the fall-out he generated in mishandling the Administration's reaction to the Iran-Contra scandal, she felt that the President would be better served by replacing Chief of Staff Donald Regan. The deposed Chief of Staff reacted by publishing a sensational memoir in which he disclosed her request that astrology be used in the president's official scheduling.
Nancy Reagan promoted the idea of the President forming first a personal relationship with the new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when the latter assumed power in 1985. The resulting friendship and then political negotiations resulted in the 1987 INF Treaty. Nancy Reagan underwent breast cancer surgery and shortly thereafter grieved the death of her mother, all just prior to the treaty signing.
After her husband left office, Nancy published her memoirs entitled My Turn, in 1989. She established the Nancy Reagan Foundation, to support educational drug prevention after-school programs and it merged with the Best Foundation for a Drug-Free Tomorrow, out of which emerged the Nancy Reagan Afterschool Program, a drug prevention and life-skills program for youth.
When her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, they together let their name in support of the Ronald & Nancy Reagan Research Institute in Chicago, Illinois for research into the illness, in affiliation with the National Alzheimer’s Association. Over the next decade her public activities were largely limited to the Los Angeles area, since she was the primary caregiver to the former president. One exception was the 1996 Republican National Convention in nearby San Diego, making her only the second former First Lady - and the first of her party - to do so. (The other was Eleanor Roosevelt).
After former President Reagan's death in June 2004, she became an outspoken public advocate for stem cell research, a scientific effort that promised hope for patients of Alzheimer's and other illnesses, despite the fact that her view was in direct opposition to that of the incumbent Republican president. She has remained highly active in both public and private, despite a 2008 fall requiring hospitalization, from which she fully recovered. She has grew especially close to her daughter Patti Davis, as recounted in the latter’s 2009 book, The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us.
He primary focus as a presidential widow has been to bring public attention to the legacy of her late husband. In July of 2007, Mrs. Reagan accepted the government of Poland’s most distinguished honorary recognition, the Order of the White Eagle, which was given in memory of her husband. Two years later, she was awarded an honorary degree from Ronald Reagan’s alma mater, Eureka College. In June of 2009, she returned to Washington, D.C. for the unveiling ceremony of a statue of former President Reagan that was placed in the U.S. Capitol Building. She was active in planning for his 2011 centennial. She also praised President Obama for his decision to reverse a Bush Administration federal funding ban on stem cell research.
Two of the earliest 2008 presidential candidates’ debates among those vying for the Republican nomination were hosted by Nancy Reagan at the Reagan Library, in May 2007 and January 2008. She attended both events, but did not endorse any candidate during the primaries. She publicly endorsed John McCain in 2008, and in the 2010 mid-term elections, she endorsed two female Republican candidates for state and national office from California, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorini, who ran for Governor and U.S. Senate, respectively. Encouraging the presidential library to again serve as a venue for debates, she attended one held there in late 2011 among 2012 Republican presidential candidates. She continues to attend important Library events, notably those with speakers active in political life and the media. She resides in Bel Air, California.