Years earlier, Reagan couldn’t resist jerking Stockman’s chain when the young man had to testify before Congress. “We won’t leave you out there alone, Dave. We’ll all come to the hanging,” the Gipper said, laughing.103
When CNN returned to their Reagan coverage they aired a short documentary somewhat like that on ABC, though the CNN video paid more due to the Gipper’s theatrical career, including Knute Rockne, All American, and, of course, Bedtime for Bonzo. A clip of the movie aired with Reagan conversing with the chimpanzee. “Well, Bonzo, I never did thank you for saving my life this morning, did I?”104
Throughout his life, Reagan had been painfully and acutely aware that some of the movies he’d made were real dogs. Indeed, Reagan hated his last movie, The Killers, his only portrayal of a bad guy.
The Tinseltown to which Reagan was introduced in the late 1930s really was a factory town. The Great Depression–era American public had an unquenchable thirst for the movies, and at the time Americans went to the theater on average twice a week and, all told, nearly fifty million people—well over one-third of the population—happily forked over nickels and dimes to see their favorite actors and actresses, including Ronald Reagan. By 1941 he had an active and large fan club numbering in the thousands.105
He wasn’t a great actor (although he steadily improved) but he was competent and reliable—he oozed sincerity and likeability—he was the boy next door without the earthy sex appeal of Clark Gable or the cavalier bon vivant Cary Grant. He was the boy every parent would be happy to have date their daughters or befriend their sons, even if some thought he was just too good to be true. Even when signing up with Warner Bros., studio executives did not try to change his name like so many other leading men, including Grant.
Reagan had a devilish side, but he kept it mostly in check. He and his brother, Neil, got in scrapes as kids, including setting off fireworks from a moving car as teenagers in Dixon that landed him in the local police precinct where his father had to pick him up. He could enjoy a drink, but knew when to say when. After a SAG meeting, Reagan went out for cocktails with Dana Andrews and Robert Taylor, two good friends. They drank the first round but when it came time for a second, Reagan balked and gave both his friends grief for ordering more. Both Andrews and Taylor ended up alcoholics (although Andrews did eventually stop drinking in 1972). Reagan could enjoy playing the field and dated many starlets before and after his first marriage, but he really liked being married. He liked the clubs and the nightlife and the celebrity culture, but he also enjoyed intimate dinners talking about politics and world affairs.
He let on to columnist Bob Novak years later how many women he’d been friendly with in between marriages and Novak was astonished, saying he’d never seen this side of Reagan before.106
Reagan was a rootin’ tootin’ supporter of FDR and the New Deal (his father Jack had gotten a New Deal job during the Depression) and had been part of “Hollywood for Truman” in 1948; even as late as 1950 he had campaigned for the “Pink Lady” Helen Gahagan Douglas and against Richard Nixon when they battled for the U.S. Senate seat in California. It didn’t hurt that Reagan and Douglas’s husband, Melvyn Douglas, were friends, despite Douglas’s avowed support for collectivism. He expressed admiration for Adlai Stevenson, said Doug Brinkley.107 Reagan had many friends who were liberals and many enemies who were conservatives.
There was probably never a time in the 1930s or ’40s in which he said to someone that he was going to one day be president of the United States, but politics were becoming more and more important to Reagan. His movie career was on the wane as “good guy” roles became less and less and film noir roles for leading men increased. In 1950, he made only one movie, the forgettable Louisa, and even worse it featured Reagan in a comedic role, not his strongest suit. Humorous banter he could do with the best but as a straight man for ninety minutes was something else.
Westerns had always been popular, but in the late ’40s Reagan was being passed over by other male actors who were flawed in the style of the era, such as Humphrey Bogart, Randolph Scott, and Montgomery Clift. And by his friend John Wayne, who defined the imperfect Western hero for all time in the American cinema. Still, Reagan made several westerns post–World War II, including Cattle Queen of Montana with Barbara Stanwyck and Stallion Road with Alexis Smith.
But it had been a long, slow decline from the heady pre-war days of Kings Row when Reagan won plaudits from all. Nearly all. The movie reviewer for the New York Times, Bosley Crowther, trashed Reagan’s performance and the movie.108 Over the next fifty-plus years, Reagan often got the “treatment” from the old Grey Lady.
He was a success at many careers but not all. At a particularly low point in his life, he headlined a review show in Las Vegas as kind of a song and dance man, but he wasn’t very good. After two weeks the Last Frontier resort cancelled the floor show. “He was never invited back by the Frontier or any hotel,” said Harvey Diederich, the PR man for the resort.109
Later that night CNN brought on Jeff Greenfield, longtime liberal, to discuss the Gipper; but unlike others and like Cannon, he demonstrated more sophistication in explaining and understanding the deceased man, including the self-deprecating humor that Reagan had used to great effect throughout much of his political career. “In politics, humor is like nitroglycerin. Powerful but dangerous. In the wrong hands, attempts at humor have ended political careers. In the hands of a master like Ronald Reagan, there is no better tune,” said Greenfield. Ted Turner’s cable system then astonishingly turned to former liberal congresswoman Pat Schroeder for her take on Reagan, who blurted out, “I wish he had more substance.”110
By this point, there was some cross talk involving Greenfield, Cannon, Mike Deaver, and Paul Wolfowitz (who’d worked in the State Department under the Reagan presidency) with Paula Zahn trying to act as traffic cop. Zahn cut away to a CNN correspondent, Thelma Gutierrez, at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley who reported on the growing number of flowers and cards left along the wall and sidewalk, at the foot of the hill, and the long road that led up to the top where the huge presidential museum and record-storing structure resided on twenty-nine acres. It was nearly a quarter of a million square feet and cost initially sixty million dollars to build. “You make me proud to be an American,” read one of the cards. The Reagan Library was closed on June 5. On average, it saw four hundred visitors each day, but that was about to change.111
Officers from the Military District of Washington were already winging their way to California to begin the implementation of the plan that had been created and edited and revised and tweaked over the past number of years. Some called it “The Book.”
The Book was quite literally a playbook for the Reagan procession including places, times, distances, names, phone numbers, etc. It had been assembled with the precision of a Swiss watch and the timing all mapped out. “They’ll confer with Mrs. Reagan tomorrow because the president’s funeral will be of enormous importance to the nation and to the world and for the country, of course, particularly.”112
For their planning, they’d studied past state funerals and drew some inspiration and insight from each, especially those of Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy, all of which were marked by an astonishing amount of outpouring from the American people.
What was interesting and overlooked, however, was these three men had all died in office—two by assassination and the other, the commander in chief, near the victory of a great world war—and thus it was understandable how great was the emotional outpouring for these men.
Reagan, on the other hand, had been out of office for more than fifteen years and yet he still had a tight grip on America’s imagination.
The planning had begun in 1981 and progressed throughout the years. Fred Ryan assumed the responsibilities late in the second term when he agreed to g
o back to California to run the Century City office. Each time he sat down with the Reagans to discuss the funeral arrangements, Reagan resisted. Ryan pressed him on choices of honorary pallbearers and speakers but he “outlived almost every one of the people he wanted to be an honorary pallbearer. He outlived a lot of people who were going to be speakers. It was a constant revision because he lived so long,” Ryan recalled.113
Bush’s press secretary Scott McClellan announced that Bush would keep to his schedule, including speaking at Normandy on the next day. Rain had begun the fall in the hot and humid city of Washington but it did nothing to cool things. It simply evaporated into the atmosphere, thus did not diminish the sticky and clammy feeling everybody had.
Over the next few days the city, the political world, and America would see Reagan men and women they hadn’t seen in quite a while, in some cases years. The networks and the cable stations were already gearing up for extensive coverage of the Reagan funeral and would need guests and commentators and polemicists on the life and times of Reagan. After all, Lou Cannon could not be everywhere.
Most of Reagan’s old friends—like Caspar Weinberger—knew what had been going on out of the public view in Bel Air and what Reagan and Nancy had been going through. Weinberger said frankly, “I think it’s a release from what had only been pretty much agony the last few years, unable to recognize anyone or do anything that he loved most doing.”114
Weinberger told the story of an important meeting between Reagan and Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney for which they were both given enormous black briefing books. Reagan looked at his and pushed it aside and Mulroney did likewise and they spent the meeting telling each other Irish jokes and “at the end of that . . . Mulroney was ready to agree to almost anything that President Reagan wanted.”115
By the afternoon of June 5, the street outside the Reagans’ concealed house on St. Cloud was jammed with media and satellite trucks. The growing “whap, whap, whap” of helicopters overhead was beginning to drown out the television correspondents. A media riot was quickly growing, and the LA police were trying to maintain order, finally herding the throng off the street and onto the sidewalks so vehicles could get to and leave the Reagan home. In deference to the moment, some were being polite and hushed.
Shortly, a lone and empty hearse escorted by one motorcycle cop arrived at the Reagan home to take him to the Gates, Kingsley & Gates Moeller Murphy funeral home.
His casket was supposed to be moved from the house to the funeral home somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. (PDT).116 From the funeral home, a procession would move to Simi Valley—where the Reagan Library had opened in 1991—and place the casket in the vestibule where citizens could pay their respects. From there, Reagan would make one last trip to Washington to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol, on the same catafalque used for Abraham Lincoln and JFK. Lincoln had been the first president afforded this honor in the Capitol in April 1865. The last was LBJ in 1973.
A service would be held at the National Cathedral and then back to the Library—his last trip back to California—for an afternoon interment ceremony on Friday, where he would be buried facing West.
His last White House chief of staff, Ken Duberstein, was with Reagan when he chose the location for his burial during the groundbreaking event for his presidential library. Fred Ryan said that at Reagan’s request, bagpipes would play “Amazing Grace” at the conclusion of his committal service at the Library.117
No fewer than four former presidents and the current president, George W. Bush, were expected to attend the services in Washington for the fallen member of the most exclusive club in the history of the world. Hundreds of world leaders and thousands of power brokers were also expected at the U.S. Capitol and the National Cathedral, but so, too, were hundreds of thousands of what he’d called the “quiet, everyday heroes of America.”118
The casket finally left for the funeral home at 5:15 p.m., with a full police motorcycle escort and now a half dozen helicopters overhead.119 Also, some Secret Service agents accompanied Reagan’s body. Abraham Lincoln’s remains were rumored to have been stolen in the years after his death and held for ransom and the Service was sure this would not happen to their beloved protectee. From the day they met him until the day he passed away, the men and women who guarded Reagan did so with devotion and affection. They were sworn to take a bullet for the president and in March 1981, Agent Tim McCarthy did just that, but all knew there were some presidents who the agents were more enthusiastic about putting their lives on the line for than others. Stories about the mutual affection between the Reagans and the agents had been going around for years.
Joanne Drake, dressed in black with the wind gently mussing her hair, stepped before the throng of media, read a short statement, and then calmly and coolly explained how the week of the Reagan memorial services would play out. It was a typically gorgeous California day.
Behind the scenes thousands of men and women were already at work preparing for this day. Skilled in organization, travel, security, traffic control, theology, printing, advance work, media relations, crowd control, and on and on, for which few were paid, all pitched in because of their devotion to the Gipper. Everything was being done with a maximum amount of professionalism and courtesy and solemnity and a minimal amount of friction. Invitations to the various ceremonies were being handled by phone, by the distribution of tickets, and by fax machine.
As it would be a state funeral, the military had a central role, as did the State Department, but Mrs. Reagan’s personal invitation list was being handled in a suite of offices at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Hundreds of volunteers were actively engaged, though as noted, they were “grayer, broader and two decades older . . .”120 Rick Ahearn was in charge of the Washington events, and Jim Hooley was in charge of the California events.
It was debated whether or not when Reagan’s remains traveled on a military plane if that plane would be designated “Air Force One.” (Reagan’s remains were indeed moved out and back on the big plane, but designated as SAM “Special Air Mission” 28000.)121
As a state funeral, everything came under the jurisdiction of the Military District of Washington, including the invitation lists to the various memorial services in California and Simi Valley. The Reagan funeral was going to be huge, along the lines of a presidential inaugural, and would involve thousands of local police and firefighters and federal security. More than three thousand military personnel alone would be involved and thousands of VIPs, both foreign and domestic. On the side, plans were going forth for unofficial gatherings of many Reaganites, especially in Washington. One featured a gathering of some former Reagan speechwriters while another was a dinner for the 1976 Reagan campaign staff. Mrs. Reagan had always said of Ronnie’s five campaigns (neither of them ever included the 1968 presidential campaign), 1976 was the more exciting and the staff from that effort utterly agreed.
As with all such large Washington events, a social cast was evident and some were already finagling and squawking behind the scenes to make sure they were invited to the “right” events for the week. Some things never change in Washington.
John King on CNN speculated that the upcoming week would be mournful but also “a celebration of his [Reagan’s] optimism, a celebration of his spirit.” In his yearbook at Dixon High School, Reagan had said his motto was, “Life is just one grand sweet song, so start the music.” The week ahead would attempt to follow at least part of that maxim.122
For most Reaganites, the memories of the revolution filled them with wistful joy, a smile through tears.
“It hadn’t been that long ago, had it?” Was it really sixteen years ago that they were all together, all brought together by this man, this vision, these goals? For some, it had been even longer. California. Sacramento. The roller coaster of 197
6, the wilderness, the uphill climb of 1980, day one of 1981, doing battle with the liberals in the national media, who gave no quarter to this man they hated and whose followers they reviled. He didn’t care and they didn’t care.
Those who knew him in Sacramento were engaged in a bit of revisionism about what had gone on for eight years but they also chose to put the best light on those days. “There are very few people left in Sacramento from that period, but those that are never say anything against Reagan personally,” recalled Kevin Starr, the “state librarian emeritus.”123
Memories fly though the mind, rushing back. Images of things that did not seem so consequential then but now in retrospect became important history. This campaign, that speech; this legislation, that convention. They were all just doing their jobs then, happily, merrily, a band of brothers and sisters in common cause. It wasn’t about a love of power but a love of camaraderie and a belief in the individual.
They fought among themselves but to a greater good—how to achieve a more perfect union. Few were there for the money and nearly all were there for the joy. There was something joyful about working for Reagan that outsiders would never understand; refused to understand; possibly could never understand. These Reaganites didn’t care as it made it all the more special that they got it and the Washington elites did not.
Fellini said one must live his or her life spherically, and Reagan did, and his followers tried to. The time as soldiers and captains and generals in Reagan’s Revolution was merely one part of their lives, but it was a very important part of their lives, one they would cherish and never forget. As they now streamed back to Washington, all were burdened with the sadness of the inevitable but also deeply, deeply proud they’d had a chance to be a part of history, to witness great things being done by a great man who believed in a great country.
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