Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  As of January 1989, the plan was for Reagan to go to his new office in Century City for meetings, business, photographs, and such but if nothing was pressing, he wasn’t going to stick around. At their new house in Bel Air, there was a gym in the basement where Reagan would work out. They had traded down from the 55,000-square-foot White House to the 7,000-square-foot home, but if truth be known, he preferred the rustic Rancho del Cielo, only 1,800 square feet, outside of Santa Barbara. Reagan had owned several ranches before finding this “ranch in the sky” in 1974.

  There was a lot of time at the ranch—about one week per month—built into the post-presidential schedule. In his Farewell Address to the nation in January 1989, Reagan made clear that “the sweet part” of going home to California was freedom on his ranch.3 He drew energy from Rancho del Cielo, and he needed to go there often. There would also be a lot involved in the planning and building of Reagan’s presidential library but like many things in his life, there were fireworks too.

  In 1991, Ryan got caught in the cross fire between some conservatives like Lyn Nofziger over the departure of Ed Meese, Bill Clark, and Martin Anderson from the Library board. It was falsely assumed they’d been ousted by moderates there, and that somehow Ryan was the architect of the in-house coup; but in fact, all three men were on the original board, and service on the board was limited. The men’s terms had simply expired, and Ryan was blameless, but this did not stop some from grumbling against him over the matter.4

  Back in the fall of 1988, Ryan had gone to Los Angeles to search for office space. He didn’t tell anyone he was looking for space on behalf of Ronald Reagan, and one building struck his fancy. When he spoke to the owner, Marvin Davis, Ryan was tartly informed the newly built ultra-modern Fox Plaza was booked. Yet when Davis later found out that Ryan worked for Reagan and was looking for a business suite for the Reagans, the top floor somehow became available immediately, even though filming of the movie Die Hard was just wrapping up.

  “They still had all the props up. There were literally spent gun shells on the ground, fake broken windows, all kinds of stuff.” Ryan returned to Washington to tell the Reagans he’d found a great suite in Century City that had a terrific view of both the Pacific Ocean and the hills, plus it was near their home in Bel Air. The Reagans were pleased, though the Secret Service was less so. “You’ve just picked a building where a movie was made about how terrorists can blow it up,” an agent noted to Ryan.5

  There was also a touch of poignancy to the leasing of the office as it was near the location where Reagan’s film career had begun many years earlier. Reagan often liked to go to the top of the building and look out on the Pacific to watch the morning sun burn off the fog and reveal the Channel Islands in the distance, recalled Ryan.6 Reagan also kept a pair of binoculars in his office, and with these he could see his house in Bel Air, said Joanne Drake, who later succeeded Ryan to become Reagan’s final chief of staff.7

  According to a pretty young aide, Peggy Grande, who’d begun as an intern and worked her way up to executive assistant to the former president, he received “buckets and buckets” of invitations and letters immediately upon his return to the Golden State. It was a standing order that all letters were to be answered, and promptly.8 Another aide with his hands full was Mark Weinberg, who was in charge of the post-presidential media relations. Reagan was inundated with interview requests from writers, electronic media, and book authors. Weinberg was an eight-year veteran of the Reagan White House, and because of his yeoman-like work, Ken Duberstein had asked him to go with the Reagans to California, which he gladly did.9

  Reagan was supposed to take off two weeks after January 20, 1989, but after a few days, he got bored and showed up unexpectedly at his new workplace, as Ryan and others were in dungarees unloading boxes, hanging pictures, and the like. When they found out the Gipper was heading in, the staff hastily pulled together a makeshift office for him and after he settled in, they went back to work.

  A couple of hours later, Reagan came out and handed Ryan a sheet of paper, telling him to set up meetings with the people listed. Ryan scanned it and saw no familiar names. “Can I just ask who these people are?” Ryan asked Reagan. “Well, they’ve been calling,” said Reagan nonchalantly. It turned out that the phone lines had been installed incorrectly and while the receptionist sat at her desk, her phone not ringing, the calls were going through right to Reagan, who naturally answered them.

  “The phone rings and he picks it up. ’Hello. Yes, I’m calling for Ronald Reagan. This is Ronald Reagan. What would you like? I’d like to come and see you. OK.’ He’s writing these things down. He hangs up. The phone rings again. It’s somebody else. ’I’d like to speak to Ronald Reagan,’ because everyone who called, they want to speak to Ronald Reagan,” Ryan mirthfully recalled. Those calling just for the heck of it were average John and Jane Q. Citizens, only to find themselves on the line with the former president of the United States!10

  But true to his word, each was invited in for a treasured meeting with Reagan. One guy told Ryan he wanted to bring his neighbor, but Ryan sternly said, “Look buddy, lightning struck once here. You’re not going to get a second chance.”11

  The rule agreed to by Ryan and the Reagans was that anyone who worked in the White House or on the campaigns or in Sacramento or had some professional association with the Gipper would be invited to come to Century City for a photo with President Reagan.12 Even after the Alzheimer’s, he was still going into the office for photographs and meetings. In 1996, Lt. John Shirley—a decorated firefighter from Syracuse, New York—got to meet Reagan again, after first meeting him at a CPAC conference in the 1980s.

  When not at the ranch entertaining the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan was sometimes seen at the local California Pizza Kitchen, or Christmas shopping at a mall near his office in Century City. In the first years out of office, the Reagans often went to Chasen’s restaurant and sat in the booth where he’d once proposed to her. But he did not consider his time back in California as taking his leave from life. “I don’t use the word ’retirement.’ I think there are a lot of things yet to be done.”13 Reagan was planning on writing his memoirs and producing a tome of his speeches. He’d even been approached by some studios about taking up acting again but on this he quietly demurred.

  During Gorbachev’s visit, Reagan had given the former Soviet premier a cowboy hat that the Russian promptly put on backward. Not wanting to embarrass Gorbachev, Reagan said nothing and the two were photographed, Reagan the confident cowboy and Gorbachev the Moscow city slicker. Later in his new blue jeep, given to him by Nancy, he gave the nervous Russian a tour of the ranch, driving over extremely rough dirt roads, some of them barely passable. They met several times, both men long out of office, and Ryan said a genuine affection had grown between the two. They joshed with each other and argued over economics, but it was clear the banter was all in fun.14

  The Reagans got crosswise with the media over their new house in Bel Air, paid for with a loan by some wealthy friends at a cost of 2.5 million dollars. It was later repaid in full by the Reagans. Also, Reagan went to Japan for a couple of short speeches for which he was paid an enormous amount of money, 2 million dollars, and had to eat some crow over that as well, even though he needed the money. The government provided for some staff and offices and franking privileges, but there were more costs associated with being an ex-president than most anticipated. Reagan had never been a wealthy man—though he was fortunate not to have experienced what Jimmy Carter did upon his return to Georgia in 1981. The Georgian found his carefully constructed blind trust a mess, and he was deeply in debt.

  In fact, Reagan was aware of appearances, saying just after leaving Washington, “No . . . there’s a kind of a lingering feeling that would look a little bit like trying to cash in on this job that I’ve had.”
15 He spoke around LA occasionally, both funny and fascinating. In 1991, he was addressing the local Junior Chamber of Commerce and departed from his prepared remarks to quip, “When [Saddam Hussein] was born, they didn’t give his mother a medical bill—they fined her for dumping toxic waste.”16

  They were anything but recluses although he and Nancy never attended another presidential inaugural after 1989.

  Saturday, June 5, began as an uneventful day for the rest of the world, other than for the families of five American troops who were killed in Baghdad. President George W. Bush was in Rome for a meeting with the pope and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi before heading to Normandy for the sixtieth anniversary of the D-day invasion. The practice of speaking at Normandy on June 6 had begun with Ronald Reagan on the fortieth anniversary. Bill Clinton spoke on the fiftieth and now Bush would speak. The ranks of the American and British and Canadian veterans who landed ashore as part of the greatest invasion in history, or parachuted in, or flew missions, like Army Air Corps Lt. Dick Snyder, were thinning quickly. Snyder was the exception even though his P-47 had been shot down flying close air support for the invasion, and he spent eleven months in a German POW camp as a result.

  The highlight for Bush in Europe was the speech at Normandy with a backdrop of 9,387 marble stone Christian crosses—and Star of David cenotaphs—where American GIs were buried.

  Twenty years earlier in 1984, Reagan had started the tradition of celebrating the day when America saved Europe from Nazism. It became a presidential routine, one of many initiated by Reagan. Pointe Du Hoc had become famous for liberation after Reagan spoke, when before it had just been infamous for the tyranny of the German occupation at that very location.

  It was all curious, though, because the man who’d led the Normandy invasion, General Dwight David Eisenhower, did not attend the tenth anniversary of the invasion—even though in 1954 he was president of the United States—yet Ike instead only issued a statement marking the occasion.

  President Eisenhower visited Normandy in 1964 for the twentieth anniversary, but this was three plus years after his presidency and again he gave no speech while there. He was accompanied by Walter Cronkite and a camera crew from CBS for a documentary entitled D-day Plus 20 Years. Cronkite had covered the D-day invasion as a young reporter for United Press. Lyndon Johnson was president in 1964 but he did not visit Normandy, although he did send a delegation headed by General Omar Bradley.17 In June 1974, Richard Nixon was fighting a losing battle, preoccupied with his political survival. The last thing on his mind was the anniversary of D-day.

  Huge anti-war protesters greeted Bush in Italy, and the government deployed more than ten thousand police officers to quell the violence. Pope John Paul II implored Bush to end the hostilities in Iraq. The awful hangover of Abu Ghraib, where Iraqi prisoners had been abused by U.S. troops, still hung over the national debate and the war itself.

  In 1987, President Reagan had sent an unequivocal letter to the Senate—rejecting the advice of Douglas Feith, his own deputy assistant defense secretary for negotiations—stating his belief and his policy that U.S. troops in combat settings must act at all times as gentlemen and officers.18 American soldiers were not to make war or otherwise abuse or chastise civilians and other noncombatants, the fortieth president said.

  Reagan subscribed to the longstanding rules of the U.S. military and the Geneva Conventions, both of which made clear that soldiers should behave correctly and civilly toward the population of invaded countries. Reagan was acting on the advice of his defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. But seventeen years later, there was widespread and sharp criticism of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq about how some were treating the local civilian populations, in contravention of Reagan’s previous orders.

  Senator John Kerry, the soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee, unveiled his own plan for national health insurance and Barry Bonds hit his 673rd home run.19 Everybody was figuring him as a lead pipe cinch for Cooperstown on the first ballot, despite the fact that many fans didn’t like him or his attitude and his antics when he ran the bases. The sportswriters did, at least in public.

  In Granby, Colorado, a local auto mechanic was angered about proposed changes in zoning ordinances by the town government so he proposed to change the landscape more to his liking by taking an armored bulldozer and essentially leveling the entire town as the police repeatedly fired at and bombed the bulldozer, but to no effect.

  Bush sent the nomination of former Missouri senator John Danforth to the Congress for their advice and consent as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Some Democrats squawked about a handful of votes that the moderate Republican had cast against the liberal orthodoxy but Danforth was a man of the Midwest: unshakable, stoic, impossible to anger or intimidate. He was also deeply devout, and in addition to being an attorney and a former U.S. senator, he was also an ordained Episcopalian minister. Danforth was an heir to the Ralston Purina Company, maker of fine products including dog food, but he was anything but a professional inheritor or wastrel.

  Danforth was so well thought of, the Clinton administration appointed him to lead a blue ribbon commission to investigate the tragedy at Waco, when the FBI and the BATF stormed a compound comprised of Branch Davidians, a religious sect, and dozens died, including women and children, at the hands of government agents. Some liberals despised him, however, as he’d been the chief sponsor of the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. He’d been briefly considered as a running mate for Bush in 2000 before they settled on Dick Cheney, who was a well-thought-of quiet man, formerly of Congress.

  The government was debating a new form of identification for American citizens to cross the borders into Mexico and Canada that emitted a radio frequency. The world had changed since September 11, 2001, and a security state, aided by contractors and their lobbyists’ hunger for federal largess, was quickly taking root in what was once the freest country in the world. The concepts of privacy and personal dignity and unfettered freedom of movement were devolving into antiquated concepts, as was the old expression, “It’s a free country!” An unusual coalition of those elites who favored a collectivist state with more economic regulation over the citizenry was merging with a corporate America culture that pursued a bottom line in spite of any risks to the Constitution.

  For all the dismissive concepts by the establishment against left wing and right wing populists, concerned about the agendas of such groups as the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, their fears seemed to be well founded.

  Word was slowly leaking out, rumors spreading, that Ronald Reagan’s last breath was close. After ten years of suffering, of never good news but always bad news, the Gipper’s time was approaching. Some suspected leaks by the Bush White House staffers while others believed that some Reagan family members were talking in the background to reporters about Reagan’s worsening condition.20 ABC News reported, “And just in the last week, his health took a turn for the worst . . .”21 Joanne Drake was desperately attempting to keep control of the story. She’d been through this the year before when CNN inadvertently posted Reagan’s obituary on its website, and it caused a momentary din.22

  The family had been summoned to his bedside at 668 St. Cloud Road in Bel Air. Both his children from his second marriage to Nancy, Ronald Prescott and Patti, had arrived early that morning, summoned when it was believed that the time was near. Ron had been in Hawaii but rushed back to his home in Seattle, packed some clothes, and headed for LA.

  Reagan was now nearer to death. The family and close friends and aides had kept a tight lid on things but inevitably rumors began to leak out that Reagan was fading, going. Though he was physically strong nearly to the end, routinely only Mrs. Reagan and a live-in nurse now saw the failing Reagan. A source close to the situation told a r
eporter, “Don’t be surprised. Time is getting close.”23

  Reagan had been staying for several years in what had been his den, but now converted to his bedroom although it was spare. “His room” was “a hospital bed, an armchair, a small television set for whichever nurse was on duty, and a table full of medical paraphernalia,” recalled Patti.24

  Joanne Drake was forced to deal with more and more media inquiries about Reagan’s condition. Bluntly she said, “He’s 93 years old. He’s had Alzheimer’s disease for 10 years. There are plenty of rumors. When there is something significant to report I will do so.” Drake had more than a plate full of matters to deal with from the Reagans to the staff to the presidential library, the planning for the funeral, and a thousand other things. In the past day, more than three hundred calls had come into her office because of the spreading rumors.25

  Mrs. Reagan took just one phone call from a reporter, her old friend Mike Wallace of CBS. They had known each other since she was a student at Smith College, sixty years earlier. “Is it conceivable that it could happen this weekend?” Wallace asked Nancy. “This is it,” she disconsolately replied.26

  She periodically spoke to two other old friends, Stu Spencer and Mike Deaver, in the days leading up to her husband’s final moments. She also spoke with her confidant, Fred Ryan, and to former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney. “Brian, I think the end is near,” she told him. “It’s a great loss for the United States and for the world,” he reportedly told Mrs. Reagan.27 She also spoke regularly with Joanne and with Robert Higdon.

  Nancy had been Ronnie’s support system and now at the end she needed her own as well. She found it in Patti, with whom she’d battled for years, and who was now her mother’s rock, her port in the storm. They tried to busy themselves with tea and small meals but no one was very hungry—just hungry for memories and the imagined one last conversation with him.