by Sheila Tate
The press always enjoyed the formal entertainment in the East Room. That was at the end of the evening for them. Once they left, guests danced to the Marine Band musicians in the Grand Foyer. Only the official photographers were allowed for those final moments. That’s when guests like Princess Diana would really cut a rug. The evening drew to a close when the president and Nancy moved into the foyer and made their way to the elevator to take them upstairs to the residence. I personally enjoyed watching people begin to leave through the “front” door, more formally known as the North Portico, because you could read their emotions as they left. They didn’t want to forget a moment of the evening. They would pause and look out toward Pennsylvania Avenue, then at each other and smile. Like clockwork. It made all our work feel worthwhile. Of course, then I’d look at the clock and head for my car, hoping to be home by midnight since the next day started somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m.
Throughout the years of the Reagan presidency, Nancy continued to use the White House “stage” as an influential platform for American arts and artists. It should always be so.
11
Finding Her Voice
If you were paying attention during the Reagan years, there was a visible change in Nancy Reagan during the first couple of years of the presidency. I watched her transform from a hesitant, ill-at-ease speaker to an effective, confident communicator. She went from giving only short, impersonal remarks to speaking at length on emotional subjects as she became comfortable being personal and passionate in front of an audience. Over time, Nancy realized that it was more convincing to reveal her passions than to speak in generalities. Once a First Lady recognizes her power to influence opinions, she learns to draw her audience in and, before they know it, make them her allies.
Early in 1981 she met with the East Wing press contingent for the first time. These were the female reporters—not a male among them—who would follow her closely and be writing about her regularly. The press was pressuring me to arrange a meeting. Nancy was quite nervous and only agreed to meet with them if we limited the time and the subject matter. She told them a bit about her commitment to the Foster Grandparent Program using language she had repeated so often she didn’t have to think hard about what she was saying. She gave a short, prepared talk, thanked the ladies, and left the room without taking any questions. She just wasn’t ready yet. I felt like it was partly my fault, not having prepared her well enough. And I never made that mistake again.
By later that year, she was regularly visiting treatment and prevention programs for young people with drug problems. On those trips she began to loosen up, learning to listen to the people she met and respond to them directly. She also became increasingly more comfortable talking with the press. Gradually, her interaction with various reporters allowed her to become more confident every day.
I remember when, in the fall of 1982, she traveled to Alabama for the Governor’s Conference on Drug Awareness. She asked her audience to think of Helen Keller who grew up in Alabama.
“Here was a girl whose young life was a void of silence and darkness; a void most of us cannot even comprehend. Yet there are children in this state today who are just as removed from the world, except that the void is inside them. Drugs have killed their hope, their promise, their spirit, their love. Drugs have turned them against their friends and families and toward a world of pain and isolation….
“I’m told that your state motto is ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights.’ Well, what this conference is saying is we dare to defend our children.”
Nancy was beginning to find her voice.
Not long after the Alabama conference, she addressed the first conference of the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth.
She opened her remarks by telling them she hoped this first conference would be their last due to their dogged determination to organize and educate the nation to fight youth drug abuse. If they did a good enough job, we could beat this scourge.
She then used a quote her staff began to enjoy listening for. She used it a lot. We kept count. “There is a saying a woman is like a tea bag—you never know her strength until she is in hot water.”
And then in February 1983, Nancy spoke at the Heart Luncheon. This is one of the best speeches she ever gave and brings tears to my eyes every time I read it.
She began on a light note, mentioning how First Ladies today show their support for good causes like this one a little differently from our early First Ladies. Dolley Madison, for instance, supported the Washington Orphans Asylum by giving them $5 and a cow.
She went on to say: “You know there is a saying that when the heart is full, it’s the eyes that overflow. I’ll try to keep my eyes from overflowing today, but I can’t promise, because I’d like to share something with you. To say that heart disease is the number one killer is such a vast statement, but when it strikes your own family, the statistic is suddenly so personal. As you may have read, my father died last August from heart failure. He was eighty-six and, despite the technical medical explanations, I think his loving heart simply wore out after a long, wonderful life. But I want to tell you why I am thankful, why I feel luckier than many whose loved ones die from heart disease.
“I had some last precious hours with my father. I tried to tell him how much he influenced my life and how deeply proud I was of his contributions to medicine. When he died, he just went to sleep, as if some twilight had overtaken him. And I feel so very thankful for having had the chance to say goodbye and tell him I loved him. There are so many who are taken from us without warning. Their families simply receive the terrible message and the hard reality that the person will never again come through the door.
“Apart from my husband, my father was the most important man in my life and heart disease took him away. As a gifted doctor, he believed deeply in the power of caring and in the potential of prevention, and these beliefs are also the very essence of the American Heart Association….”
She ended this moving personal talk by telling the audience that she was writing an article about her father that would be appearing in the Father’s Day issue of McCall’s magazine and she would be donating the fee to the American Heart Association in memory of her father.
How Nancy Reagan had grown. To stand before a large audience and relive the final moments you had with your father takes real courage. As she used to say: “A woman is like a tea bag…” She proved how strong she was in so many ways over the years.
* * *
Nancy Reagan flew to Boys Town, Nebraska, in late November 1986 to accept an award for her campaign against youth drug abuse. Boys Town had been founded as an orphanage for boys run by Catholic priests and was the subject of a very popular movie classic, Boys Town. In 2017, Boys Town celebrated its centennial and is now sheltering children in facilities across the country. By the time Nancy traveled there, the home accepted both girls and boys. It was run by Father Peter.
With help again from speechwriter Landon Parvin, Nancy gave a short but powerful speech:
Thank you for this distinguished award. I’m very honored. But, as Father Peter knows, the reason I’m here today is not because of the award, but because of you.
I came all the way from Washington this morning so I could talk to you for five minutes. And I’ll tell you the reason why. Because Father Peter told me that there have been times when you thought no one cared about you. I came today because I wanted you to know I care.
To be cared for is what all of us want. And when we don’t get that, it hurts. I know that you sometimes hurt inside. I know you wonder why things keep going wrong in your life. I know you sometimes feel confused and lonely and unsure where you belong.
There was a time when I didn’t quite know where I belonged, either. You see, when I was young, my mother was an actress and so she had to travel. I missed her and she missed me.
My father left us, so I sta
yed with my aunt and uncle. They were very good people but they weren’t my parents. And what I wished for more than anything else in the world was a normal family. I finally got my wish when my mother married a wonderful man, who became my wonderful father. And at last I knew where I belonged.
I know you ask yourself where you belong, too. It’s not easy being here in Boys Town with new faces and new ways of doing things. But isn’t the pain you felt when you first came here less than the pain where you were before? And pain is what I want to talk to you about for a minute.
Do you know what happens when you hurt inside? You usually start closing your heart to people. Because that’s how you got hurt in the first place—you opened your heart.
Another thing that happens is that you stop trusting people. Because somewhere along the way they probably didn’t live up to your trust.
And there’s another thing that happens when you’ve been hurt. You start to think you’re not worth much. You think to yourself “Well, how can I be worth anything, if someone would treat me in this terrible way?”
So, I understand why you feel beaten down by it all. Some of you may have tried drugs in order to escape those feelings. But, please, believe me, drugs aren’t the answer. They’ll only make the pain worse in the long run. It’s pretty hard to imagine that you can hurt worse than you did before you came here, but it’s true. Whatever anyone has done to you, drugs will make it worse.
Boys Town is your fresh start. No matter why you’re here. No matter what you’ve suffered. No matter what you’ve done. If you work at it, you can be free of your troubles. You can be anything you want to be. And you can be happy. But you have to open your heart just a little. You have to trust just a little and begin to believe in yourself.
I believe in you. I’m proud of you already. Because when you came to Boys Town, you signed a paper that you wanted to be here. Whether you realized it or not, that was your way of saying that you believed life can get better. And it can. And all the family—teachers and all the staff and all the facilities of Boys Town are here to help give you a clean start. Boys Town is a wish that takes a little work. But you have to do the work. Because it’s your life.
I hope we will see each other again, but if we don’t I want you to remember something long after I leave here today, and it’s this.
I believe in you. I believe in what you can do. I believe you are important and deserve the very best that life can offer.
And although someone is sitting beside you or in front of you right now, I’m saying this to each one of you alone—I’m saying it just to you. And I hope you’ll always remember it. I know how good you are inside and I would be proud to call you my own.
I am certain that not a single day of the year goes by without some of you, or even all of you, giving thanks that there was a Father Flanagan and that there is a Boys Town.
I asked Landon what he remembers about that day. He said, “You don’t think about kids being emotionally moved but I know I saw kids wiping their noses on their sleeves and using their shirttails for the tears in their eyes.” He also said that Father Peter told him he could live for a full year on what she had told the kids, using it in his talks with them, reminding them of what she said.
For me, thinking back to how timid she was meeting the East Wing press for the first time, fearful of answering questions, feeling like nobody in that room liked her, I was amazed and moved by how far she’d come.
* * *
During those years Nancy would hand me a fat pile of index cards held together with a rubber band. She suggested I look them over and see if we could use them as a model for one of her future speeches.
Until recently those cards were among my files in my basement filing cabinet. I cannot recall our ever using them as a speech template and I do not remember why. I think it’s likely that I never managed to look at them while in the White House and forgot all about them.
These cards—about ninety of them—date back to the president’s time as California governor, making them more than fifty years old. They were typewritten transcriptions of letters he received from schoolkids. He had apparently suggested Nancy read them to see if she could use them at luncheons to amuse her various audiences in Sacramento. She may have done that. They reminded me of the popular TV show Kids Say the Darndest Things.
After waiting on pins and needles to hear from Ron, their son, at his first sleep-away camp, the note finally arrived. It was about his friend, Mike, who apparently got airsick on the plane.
Even more interesting, Governor Reagan had edited them in his handwriting, and Nancy, in several instances, had edited his edits. One of my favorites was from Maria in third grade. She told him that she and her whole family had recently become citizens.
This note was from a third grader named Maria, a recent citizen from Mexico. She wanted her own American flag, promising to treat it with respect. Governor Reagan added a suggested comment for Nancy to make about this note, wondering about what happened to the quality of teaching between third grade and higher education.
“We come from Mexico,” she wrote, and “more than anything I want a great American flag. I will love and care for it.” She signed it: “Your new friend who loves you.”
I have sent these cards to Joanne Drake at the Reagan Library where they belong.
* * *
As year seven of the Reagan administration reached its midpoint, Nancy went to New York and addressed the American Newspaper Publishers Luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria. In 1981 she would never have even considered this, but by 1987 she was a different First Lady. Sit back and enjoy.
“I was afraid I might have to cancel. You know how busy I am—between staffing the White House and overseeing the arms talks.
“In fact, this morning I had planned to clear up US–Soviet differences on intermediate range nuclear missiles…but I decided to clean out Ronnie’s sock drawer instead.
“You know I recently read that I am an ‘unelected, unaccountable’ ‘power-hungry’ ‘political manipulator’ of ‘extraordinary vindictiveness’ who ‘is supported in her power playing by a bloated, expensive East Wing staff, exhibits a zest for combat and presumes to control the actions and appointments of the executive branch.’
“As my son said, ‘Yeah, Mom, that’s you.’ ”
She talked about how naive she was that first year.
“I read that I wanted the Carters to move out of the White House early; that I banned sumo wrestlers from the Rose Garden; that I planned to tear down a wall in the Lincoln bedroom.”
She went on to say: “But what I finally began to realize was this: As First Lady, you will be the object of attention no matter what you do. So, I decided I might as well focus the attention on something that really mattered, on something that had interested me for a long time and on which I’d already started having briefings—the problem of drug abuse among our young people.”
She used her spotlight to good effect. She traveled to sixty cities in thirty-one states and seven foreign countries to raise awareness of the issue. And she traveled several hundred thousand miles in the process.
“Every mile, every meeting has been worth it. My work against drugs has provided me with the most fulfilling years of my life,” Nancy said.
Later in the speech, she talked at length about her husband as an individual.
“A president has advisers to counsel him on foreign affairs, on defense, on the economy, on politics, on any number of matters. But no one among all those experts is there to look after him as an individual with human needs, as a flesh-and-blood person who must deal with the pressures of holding the most powerful position on earth.”
She told them that she was a woman who loves her husband. “I have opinions. He has opinions. We don’t always agree. But neither marriage nor politics denies a spouse the right to hold an opinion or the
right to express it.”
She talked about advice she’d give to the next First Lady.
“First, be yourself. There will be plenty of smart advisers telling you this will be good for you or that will be good for you, but you have to do what you feel is best for yourself.
“Second, do what you’re interested in. No one was enthusiastic about my getting involved in the drug problem. They thought it was too grim and depressing.
“Third, don’t be afraid to look after your husband or to voice your opinions, either to him or his staff.
“Fourth, once you’re in the White House don’t think it’s going to be a glamorous, fairy-tale life. It’s very hard work with high highs and low lows.
“And fifth, my last piece of advice is this: Never wear a ring on your right hand in a receiving line—it’s always a little old lady who will squeeze so hard she’ll bring you to your knees.”
She ended quoting Albert Schweitzer: “One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have found how to serve.”
“Well,” she said, “I am very happy because I have been given the chance to really serve. The peaks are worth the valleys a hundred times over. And I want the American people to know I am honored to be their First Lady.”
And I was honored to be a member of her staff.
12
Press Contacts
Nancy was wary of the press. She’d been disappointed by experiences with national media when her husband was California governor. Her friends thought Nancy never fully recovered from the nasty piece Joan Didion wrote about her when Ronald Reagan was governor of California. She’d been burned during the campaign, too. One day Nancy walked down the aisle of the campaign plane and offered candy to members of the press. Judy Bachrach, with the Washington Post, wrote a snotty story about Nancy pushing candy on everyone and mentioned that Nancy had “piano legs.” I am told that Nancy cried when she read that article.