by Sheila Tate
Nancy and the president often reminded Muffie that they wanted these dinners to be fun as well as memorable. They wanted an atmosphere of relaxed glamor where people could get to know one another a bit before more serious meetings began the next day. They wanted their guests and friends to feel the warmth of their hospitality.
One of the best-kept secrets was the role of Frank Sinatra in the selection of the entertainment for these state dinners. Muffie said, “I would propose names of singers, opera stars, musicians, ballet dancers and if ‘Old Blue Eyes’ objected to my recommendations, he would come up with an alternative.”
Added to all the complexities of planning was the presence of photographers and reporters who captured and opined on every detail. This is where I came in, along with my hardworking assistants, Barbara Cook Fabiani and Betsy Koons Robertson. At the beginning of the evening we escorted photographers to the North Portico to cover the arrival of our honored guests. Then I picked them up again in the press office and took them to cover the foursome as they descended the grand staircase to the State Floor at the conclusion of a short visit in the private residence. As guests arrived downstairs at the Diplomatic Reception Room, they had to walk a gauntlet of photographers and reporters asking questions and taking pictures.
We had several “reporters” who held very old credentials and didn’t actually write for anyone. They were always there to cover a state dinner. I used to enjoy watching guests like Henry Kissinger or Douglas Fairbanks stop to answer questions from the faux reporters, completely unaware of whom they were talking to.
After the actual state dinner began, we working staffers had a quick dinner in the White House mess with the White House doctor and several other aides who were required to be in the building. Next, we ushered photographers into the State Dining Room with their stepladders to photograph the president’s toast. During a short social hour after dinner, I took several social reporters to the State Floor where they could mingle with guests for a few minutes and get some quotes for their stories. Next, all the press were moved into the East Room where they watched and photographed the entertainment from risers.
The event was not exactly relaxing for the First Lady’s East Wing press operation. But the media with whom we worked were usually seasoned White House reporters; the photographers knew where they needed to be and the social press were usually well behaved as well. Not that we didn’t have a few confrontations. The Reagans did not want the reporters who mingled with guests to use tape recorders; I took a lot of heat for that decision. The reporters argued that they used tape recorders to make sure they reported guest remarks accurately. Sometimes I thought it was because they got lazy and didn’t want to take careful notes. Occasionally some photographers got elbowed out of a good photo opportunity by a photographer from the guest country. I got good at giving them both the eagle eye. The diplomatic eagle eye.
It’s great fun now to think of the celebrity guests at one state dinner or another over the years, people like Richard Chamberlain, Douglas Fairbanks, Claudette Colbert, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Art Linkletter, Ann Landers, Dinah Shore, Lee Trevino, Jacques Cousteau, Benny Goodman, Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Charlton Heston, Rhonda Fleming, Mary Martin, Dina Merrill, Debbie Reynolds, John Updike, Edgar Bergen, and Andy Warhol just to name a few. But it was hard work at the time.
Nancy told me she wanted every person who attended an event in the Reagan White House to remember it as the highlight of his or her life. A few years after leaving the White House, I returned as a guest for the state dinner for President Mubarak. It was a glorious evening. I truly loved knowing that was why the First Lady worked so hard to make sure each event was special. Or, in other words, perfect.
* * *
Funerals are always time for reflection. When Nancy died in 2016, many of us attended her memorial service at the Reagan Library and started reminiscing, telling stories, laughing and crying.
We all agreed on one thing: her funeral was perfect. Of course it was. She had planned it. That is what a perfectionist does.
Even the weather acceded to her wishes. She did not like rain. The winds picked up during the service, but the rains held off until it was over. Then, the skies opened up.
Just as the rain began to pour, she was reunited with her greatly loved husband in the tomb on the Reagan Library grounds looking west to the mountains.
I leave it to the reader to decide if being a perfectionist is a bad thing. I suspect you know my conclusion.
8
Family Ties
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—From Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
When Nancy Reagan came into this world, she was named Anne Frances Robbins. Born in Queens, New York, on July 6, 1921, she had no silver spoon in her mouth.
Her mother, Edith Luckett Robbins, was born in 1888 and was a native of Petersburg, Virginia. She was the youngest of nine children. Edith (Edie) Luckett’s family moved to Washington, DC, but the story goes that for each of the nine births her mother returned to Petersburg because she didn’t want her children to be “damn Yankees.”
Nancy Reagan’s father, Kenneth Seymour Robbins, came from a prosperous New Jersey family and was educated at Princeton. Apparently, what he lacked was ambition. He was working as a car salesman when he met his future wife.
Edie had enough ambition for both of them. She quit school at age sixteen to pursue an acting career, performing up and down the East Coast with a number of well-known actors—Walter Huston, Spencer Tracy, and the silent film star named Alla Nazimova who would in time become Nancy’s godmother.
Edie and Ken married in 1916 and eventually moved to New York so Edie could pursue her career. Ken became an insurance salesman. In 1917, when the United States entered the war, Ken enlisted. He returned two years later, and two years after that Nancy was born.
The couple separated in 1922. Ken moved to New Jersey to live with his mother; Edie took over full responsibility for the baby. She refused alimony, believing she could support herself and her child on her own. Nancy went everywhere with her for the first two years. When it became impossible to care for Nancy alone and continue to pursue her career, Edie arranged to leave Nancy with her sister and her husband, Virginia and C. Audley Galbraith, in Bethesda, Maryland.
When she was age-eligible, Nancy and her cousin, Charlotte, three years her senior, attended the Sidwell Friends School together in Washington, DC. Whenever Edie visited, which she did regularly, she’d teach Nancy and Charlotte the latest dance craze. Nancy caught the acting bug.
Edie met neurosurgeon Loyal Davis in 1927 when both were sailing to Europe on the SS New York. Before Loyal and Edie married in 1929, when Nancy was eight, Edie insisted on getting Nancy’s permission. The answer, you may safely assume, was yes. Nancy moved to Chicago to live with the newlyweds and eventually attended Girls Latin School there. Loyal’s son from his first marriage—Richard—remained, at first, with his mother in Beverly Hills.
Speaking of Girls Latin, I have a copy of the letter dated May 4, 1982, that Nancy sent to Mrs. Peterson’s third-grade class who had invited her to visit and have lunch. She asked the boys and girls to save her a seat in the lunchroom on May 14. I vividly remember Nancy sitting in that cafeteria surrounded by third graders and having a wonderful time. It was as if she was transported back to her happy childhood memories when Girls Latin played a big role in her life.
Nancy’s biological father gave her up for adoption when Nancy asked him to. She’d seen Kenneth Robbins only sporadically for many years. By then she thought of Loyal Davis as her father. She bristled when, during the White House years, reporters referred to him as her stepfather. And, at the same time, she never uttered a negative word about Kenneth Robbins as long as I knew her.
Anne Frances Robbins—called Nancy from birth—was adopted by Loyal Davis
and officially became Nancy Davis.
And it stands to reason that she would adore the man who brought her the first taste of permanent family stability when she was eight years old and allowed her to spend the rest of her youth with two devoted parents and a younger brother.
I spent some time talking with Nancy’s little brother, Dr. Richard A. Davis, to explore those early years. Dick was four years old and Nancy was eight when his father and her mother married and they became a family. Though he lived with his mother, he would spend summers and holidays in Chicago with his dad, Edie, and Nancy. When his mother died from TB while he was still quite young, he moved to Chicago to join his father’s family. Dick said that from the very beginning Nancy was thoughtful and kind to him. She even used to take him with her on her dates.
Dick Davis spent his adult years as a neurosurgeon, just like his dad. He trained at Northwestern and practiced at the University of Pennsylvania in the Philadelphia area. He and his wife, Pat, were always close to Nancy.
His first memory of Nancy is playing their favorite game together: it was called “Help, Murder, Police.” Thinking I had misheard him, I asked Dr. Davis to repeat the name of the game. I hadn’t misheard. So then I asked him what the rules of the game were. He laughed and said, “It mainly involved jumping on the furniture.” It makes me laugh just thinking of Nancy jumping on the couch, yelling “Help! Murder! Police!”
* * *
I believe that to understand the unique dynamics of a family you must be one of its members. And even then, family members may have differing memories of the same event.
The media portrayed the Reagan family as peculiar, with the children frozen out of the exclusive husband/wife nucleus. To some degree, the children reinforced that image. Maureen Reagan was the eldest, the daughter of Ronald Reagan and actress Jane Wyman. Michael Reagan was her brother, adopted by Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman. The president and Nancy had two children, Patti and Ron. Even at Nancy’s funeral, Patti in her moving, sad, and funny eulogy referred to her parents as “two halves of a circle, closed tight around a world in which their love for each other was the only sustenance they needed.”
Early in the first term, Nancy asked me to spend a day with her at her California home where she was packing the last of their belongings for storage or transfer to the White House. I jumped at the chance to see material I might use to help acquaint the American public with the Reagans.
Nancy had drawers in the master bedroom overflowing with pictures of the family: it seemed like each child’s birthday party was photographed or videotaped; there were photos of Ronald Reagan tossing children in the air in the middle of the family swimming pool. Nancy spent hours with me, sitting on the bedroom floor, reminiscing about each event with genuine fondness and love in her voice.
There were wonderful photos of the entire family including Maureen and Mike.
As an outsider, I became skeptical of the media description of the family. In their rush to judgment they seemed to draw the worst possible explanation for any and every event in the Reagan family life.
From my personal observations, Nancy Reagan was very family oriented. Her devotion to her mother knew no bounds. As I mentioned earlier, she called her every single evening, just to check in and say she loved her. I stood with her in the White House residence living room where she held a photo album close to her chest, stroking it while she told me about her father, Loyal Davis, who had recently died. She spoke through tears about how much he enhanced her life. As a youngster, she loved going with him to the hospital and watching from the observation area as he operated on people. To say she idolized him would be an understatement.
When Loyal Davis died, Nancy had been at his bedside for days. Nancy’s father died quietly one August morning and Nancy stayed with him and mourned. She didn’t want her father moved until her brother could arrive from the East Coast. After that, the only thing left was to make the sad trip to her mother’s home to tell her. Edie was wheelchair bound by then and suffering from early signs of dementia.
I had asked Dick Davis where he thought that Nancy’s protectiveness came from. I expected him to bolster my opinion that it rose out of the insecurity of those years when her mother was on the road and she was left with her aunt and uncle. But he said he was sure that Nancy’s behavior exactly mirrored the example set by her mother. Dick said Edie was very protective of Loyal Davis throughout their marriage; she would brook no criticism of him. “If you should dare, the wrath of Edie came down upon you,” Dick explained with amusement in his voice.
While Edie Davis had limited her acting career when she married Loyal and moved Nancy to Chicago, she did occasionally participate on a local radio program with a young broadcaster named Mike Wallace. Mike loved telling stories about Edie’s “lively” sense of humor. That was Mike’s way of saying that Edie loved a dirty joke.
My favorite story about Edie centered on when she and Dr. Davis, along with the extended Reagan family, were staying at Blair House in the days leading up to the 1981 inauguration.
Legend has it that Edie was just pulling herself up out of the bathtub when a Secret Service agent mistakenly opened the door. You can imagine that his life must have passed before his eyes as he saw his career aspirations come crashing down. The spritely Mrs. Davis looked at him and said, “Well, young man, now you are going to have to marry me.”
Years ago, one of the Reagans’ LA friends, film producer A. C. Lyles, told me that when Edie visited the Reagans, she constantly embarrassed her daughter by telling ribald jokes to their guests. He said he could still hear Nancy say, “Mother! Please!,” horrified each time Edie indulged in sharing the latest vulgar jokes with the assembled and adoring guests. I suspect Nancy secretly enjoyed watching her mother entertain their friends.
Every time Nancy flew west she stopped in Phoenix to visit her mother in the Biltmore Estates. In later years, as her dementia worsened, Edie insisted on wearing red woolen gloves at all times regardless of the weather. Nancy catered to her every need when she was visiting and made careful arrangements to keep her comfortable in her absence. When her mother died, Nancy kept those red woolen gloves.
When my own mother died in the late 1980s, Nancy sent me a touching note of sympathy, saying she knew how hard it was to lose your mother because it meant you were nobody’s child anymore. That was how she really felt about losing her mother.
Nancy was especially close to her niece, Ann Davis Peterson, who lived in the Washington area and was a frequent visitor to her aunt’s temporary home on Pennsylvania Avenue. Dick Davis describes his daughter as a very positive, happy person with three great sons. He said Nancy loved Ann’s company; they talked about “girl things.”
The Reagan children each had strong personalities. Maureen was close to her father and she worked hard and successfully to develop a good relationship with Nancy. Maureen lived in the White House for about a year during the close of the Reagan presidency while she was working at the Republican National Committee. Maureen’s brother, Michael, had become a strong conservative voice on radio, not dissimilar to the early career path of his dad who started out as a sportscaster.
Neither Patti nor Ron Jr. had much use for staff. They avoided us like the plague. And frankly, I didn’t blame them. I suspected they saw us as a wedge between them and their parents. And after all the years their dad had spent in public life, they had to be tired of the omnipresent staff. It has to be difficult to be the children of a president when you have ambitions of your own to pursue.
When I step back and try to observe the children through the lens of time, it becomes obvious they all struggled to have their own identities. In the end, they each worked in areas that reflected their parents’ identities—Republican activist Maureen, broadcasters Michael and Ron, and actress and author Patti.
When both Ron and Patti spoke at their mother’s memorial service, the room was stil
l. Between the two of them, their eulogies were the perfect balance between sorrow and joy. They truly rose to the occasion and I could feel their mother’s pride.
I thought about something Nancy told me after President Reagan’s services were concluded at the Reagan Library at sunset. She said she dreaded more than anything else going back alone to their empty house. But Ron and Patti took her home, brought in some pizza, and they all sat at the kitchen counter, eating pizza and talking. Nancy told me that story with love in her voice. She said it made all the difference.
I suspect Nancy had been reminded that she needed her children as much as they needed her. Maybe more. They completed the circle.
9
Christmas at the White House
I have never known anyone who loved the Christmas season more than Nancy Reagan. The busier the better. And the more traditional the better.
It’s a good thing she so loved Christmas because, believe it or not, we had to begin serious planning for Christmas in August. Honest. Many of the national magazines planned and printed issues months in advance, which meant every August we had a day when the president and Nancy had to pretend it was Christmas. They dressed in their winter best and posed for color pictures in a room decorated for the holiday. You’d never know it was 100 degrees outside. The president, with all he had on his plate, always was unfailingly patient and polite while posing for endless “one more shot” requests in his red wool blazer.