by Sheila Tate
When they traveled internationally, she was a valuable asset to President Reagan. She developed strong ties with world leaders and their families, particularly Nouha Alhegelan, wife of the Saudi Arabian ambassador, and Jehan Sadat, the wife of Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, who mentioned in her own book that Nancy Reagan became one of her best friends in Washington.
Nancy so impressed Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping on a trip to China that he flirted with her, inviting her to return to visit China again, but without President Reagan. Deng later said to President Reagan, “I hear Mrs. Reagan read a lot about China before you left.” And turning to Nancy, he said, “You have done a lot for our giant pandas, thank you.” He was referring to a campaign we launched in advance of the trip asking kids across the country to collect and send Nancy “Pennies for Pandas.” The children’s contribution would go toward buying bamboo, which was in short supply. It was a great way to connect our two countries with our mutual love of panda bears.
After Nancy accompanied the president as he called on heads of state in France, Italy, England, and West Germany in 1982, the German magazine Bunte featured a four-page article about Nancy Reagan with the headline: “Nancy Reagan—America’s Best Diplomat.” Bunte described Nancy as acting as a hostess for representatives of the American community in front of the Petit Palais in Paris and as diplomatically charming as she sat next to France’s president Mitterrand at the American embassy in Paris. She was described as “benefactor” when she visited the National Institute for the Blind in Paris, presenting them with a much needed stereo. More compliments followed: Nancy as opera fan and art lover, visiting Monet’s Giverny, proclaiming her love for Monet’s work and wishing she could stay forever. And she paid her silent respect as she laid a wreath on the thirty-eighth anniversary of the American invasion of Normandy in 1944. Before leaving she took a tour of Omaha Beach where thousands of Americans lost their lives during the landing. For those of us who accompanied her, it was incredibly moving.
The Denver Post ran an amusing story about one incident on this trip. The reporter says that Hannelore Schmidt, wife of the German chancellor, asked Nancy what she did to keep smiling while posing for the cameras. Nancy told her she always recited the alphabet. So, they stood side by side and posed for the cameras while each whispered the alphabets of their respective languages. That’s how Nancy made it fun and made a friend.
That trip created a great deal of goodwill among Europeans. Nancy left a strong impression. She was graceful, attentive, friendly, and above all, she was quite “diplomatic.”
* * *
Very early in President Reagan’s first term, over Memorial Day weekend in 1981, the White House social secretary Muffie Brandon received a cable from her sister-in-law, Jane Abell Coon, newly appointed ambassador to Bangladesh. President Ziaur Rahman had been assassinated. Ambassador Coon asked if Muffie could arrange for Nancy Reagan to send a note of sympathy and condolences to the president’s widow.
Here is Muffie’s account:
I take the cable up to Mrs. Reagan and explain the situation. Without a word, she goes immediately to her desk. She reached for her private stationery and writes four or five beautiful consoling sentences and hands me the letter with tears in her eyes.
Remember, this was a scant two months after her own husband had been shot.
That letter, Muffie recounts, was reprinted on the front pages of the major newspapers throughout Bangladesh, and copies of the newspaper article were pasted to roadside shrines throughout the country.
Nancy was touched to learn about the national reaction and more than a little surprised that she had made such a difference.
As Nancy tirelessly worked to connect with world leaders, only Raisa Gorbachev continued to confound her. In her book, Nancy candidly described Raisa’s boorish behavior at official teas and luncheons over the years. Nancy saw Raisa as a committed Marxist who was incapable of repressing her need to dominate every conversation with details on the joys of communist life. I can see why Nancy would have found that behavior difficult to tolerate.
When Nancy lost both her father and later her mother, and when Nancy suffered breast cancer, she was inundated with flowers and letters from around the world. She told me she never heard a word of condolence or compassion from Raisa.
Then, in 1988, Raisa accompanied her husband to New York City where her husband was to address the UN. At tea, Nancy said Raisa talked but did not lecture, even noting that the Soviet Union had not done a good job caring for children by providing workplace child care when they would have been better served staying in their own homes. For reasons unknown, Nancy said the atmosphere at this event was very different. Raisa told Nancy that she and her husband would miss them when they left the White House and would very much like them to visit the Gorbachevs in Moscow.
I asked former secretary of state George Shultz how he viewed the obvious dislike between Raisa and Nancy. He said Raisa was a very difficult woman, which is as strong a negative statement any diplomat would make. He added, “They just never clicked.”
* * *
George Shultz was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. Immediately prior to that he was Treasury secretary.
He was a favorite of Nancy’s. He described her as “a terrific person” and he loved talking about her. As secretary of state he was always invited to every White House state dinner, which he referred to as “a real party, great fun for the guests.” He said, “Nancy always took care of me at state dinners; I usually sat next to Hollywood starlets.” He especially remembers sitting with Ginger Rogers with whom he danced at the end of the evening. He has a framed picture of that dance, which Ginger inscribed: “For a minute I thought I was dancing with Fred. Let’s do it again.” For the younger generations, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were the two most wonderful dancers and movie stars in days long gone.
He vividly recalls what he feels was Nancy’s most famous, and perhaps important, diplomatic moment. Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko said to Nancy, “Does your husband want peace?” To which she immediately responded, “Of course he does.”
Gromyko, who was taller than Nancy, leaned down toward her ear and said, “Whisper peace in his ear every night.” She pulled him down toward her to respond into his ear, “And I will whisper peace into your ear. Peace.”
To my mind, Nancy’s greatest diplomatic impact was in South Korea.
We were preparing to depart for Seoul, South Korea, for an official visit late in 1983 when we had a last-minute request from our ambassador there, Richard L. “Dixie” Walker, and his wife that we consider meeting two children in desperate need of open heart surgery. The little boy suffered from a hereditary disease called VSD, ventricular septal defect, and the little girl had ASD, atrial septal defect. South Korean medicine was not yet advanced enough to correct the defects. These children were being “sponsored” by a fledgling organization called Gift of Life started by the Rotary Club in Manhasset, Long Island, New York, in partnership with St. Francis Hospital.
Nancy, a true doctor’s daughter, brushed aside staff objections to meeting the children, based on the concern that we would be inundated with other kids needing some kind of help. She met with the families privately in the ambassador’s residence and we took those two beautiful children with us on the plane when we returned to the United States: a boy and a girl, aged four and seven, named Lee Kil Woo and Ahn Ji Sook.
The reporters on the plane, just like the staff, fell in love with these two engaging children. Because of their conditions, they turned blue after walking more than a few steps and had to squat down to recover. Once aboard the plane, the little boy became fascinated by one reporter’s computer and sat on his lap pretending to type for most of the trip.
After a brief stop at Andrews AFB to unload the travelers, Nancy took the children on to St. Francis Hospital on Long Island where their surgery was scheduled with sup
port from the Gift of Life program. Frank Regnante, the hospital’s director of development, had worked with Rotarian Robert Donno to try to find a way to bring the children from Seoul for the surgery. They found a way, thanks to Nancy.
On December 19, 1983, Nancy returned to visit the children in New York after their surgery. Nancy took Cabbage Patch dolls and T-shirts for the kids, and more presents for the other children in the same hospital. The two Korean children presented Nancy with a Christmas tree ornament they had made for her at the St. Francis Hospital Christmas party the day before.
They made Christmas cards as well. Lee’s card read: To my “hal maw nee” (grandmother in Korean); Ahn signed hers: “Thank you for saving my life.”
Many years later, we discovered, to our surprise, that both children were given up for adoption and ended up as brother and sister in Flagstaff, Arizona. They later moved from Flagstaff with their family to Seattle. Their American names are Brett and Diana Halvorson.
Brett wrote to Nancy in 2007 after reading in the news that she had been hospitalized after a fall. He wanted to thank her for what she had done for him—he credits her with saving his life—and she began corresponding with him, inviting him to visit with her at the Reagan Library, to attend a talk by Tony Snow and then to a small private dinner afterward. In her letter to him after her fall, she said she guessed it was time for her to give up roller skating.
Brett now teaches English as a second language in Seoul and continues to work as a volunteer for the Gift of Life Foundation. He is an incredible example of paying back what you owe, helping to provide access to lifesaving cardiac medical care for children from other developing nations. Now, with real pride, he can bring them to South Korea for their treatment.
Brett told me that Lee Soon-ja, the First Lady of South Korea at that time, started a foundation because of Nancy Reagan’s work, to help children and adults with cardiac problems.
Brett’s adoptee sister, Diana, is also healthy and happy, living a productive life on the West Coast. I can still see her beautiful seven-year-old face as if it were yesterday.
When I located Brett, he had reunited with his birth family. He says that meeting Nancy and being reunited with his Korean family were the two best days of his life. His birth parents are divorced so he met them separately. He spent the night with his father and awoke in the middle of the night crying, feeling guilty for all he had compared to his biological family. He also met his three younger siblings and the older brother of whom he had retained a fuzzy memory.
When he met his mother, she kept repeating the Korean word for “sorry” and crying and hugging him. Brett said that it might sound silly but that was when he finally felt “whole.” I didn’t think it was silly at all. I am sure his mother had grieved for him but gave him up to ensure he would get the best medical care available, not just in the hospital but afterward. She and his father had helped save his life as much as the surgeons at St. Francis.
Mr. Donno says that the decision by Nancy Reagan to help two critically ill Korean children changed the trajectory of Gift of Life in “magical ways.” In 1975 this Rotarian-based program had begun its mission of bringing one child at a time from developing countries to the United States for cardiac treatment. For Gift of Life, the extraordinary media coverage of these two little children captivated Americans across the country and gave it the impetus to expand its reach and capacity that ultimately led, in 2003, to the creation of Gift of Life International. According to recent reports, the organization has transported over thirty thousand children to the United States for lifesaving surgery.
Many years later, Nancy told me she was stunned by the knowledge that those two wonderful children were alive because she had been in a position to help them.
And to this day I think about the goodwill that gesture generated for generations of South Koreans. I’d call it powerful diplomacy.
14
Planes, Trips, and Weather Reports
Nothing compares to the experience of traveling with the president and his wife to events far and wide.
Hundreds of people are involved in a presidential visit. By contrast, several dozen people support a First Lady trip. We call them “advance” men and women. They are responsible for detailed planning of every moment the president and/or First Lady is in public.
The advance team for Nancy had to work twice as hard as the presidential advance because we didn’t have the depth of support that was available to the president. That meant, for example, we needed one member of our advance team to work with the local phone company to set up our communications needs. The president brought his communications system with him. Our visits were lower key, at least when we could have our way.
The president’s motorcade had, in our day, as many as fifteen to twenty cars that moved at high speed with sirens blaring. Nancy was escorted around town in a two- or three-car motorcade and we never used a siren. And we stopped for traffic lights. Most people we passed never noticed us.
On one trip, legendary in the annals of the First Lady’s advance team, we went to Columbia, South Carolina, in October 1984. Nancy was visiting a fourth-grade class at Rosewood Elementary School to learn about and draw attention to its antidrug program called “I’m special.”
The advance team, led by our favorite advance man of all time, Marty Coyne, sat down in a meeting with the chief of police whom Marty described as the salt of the earth, a guy who’d come up through the ranks and was without a doubt “the boss.”
Logistics was the topic, how to get Nancy from one place to the next. Marty explained to the chief that Nancy wanted her presence to be low-key. The chief looked at Marty and said, “Young man, when the First Lady is in my city, we don’t do anything low-key.” And that’s how it came to be that we were escorted to and from the school and from and to the airport by twenty-five motorcycle cops.
And back at the airport Nancy stood with each of them to shake twenty-five hands and have individual pictures taken with each of them.
It was a tradition of the Reagans (and also the Bushes after them) to stand plane side on departure and personally thank and have photos taken with every member of the local police force, as well as other volunteers who helped escort them during their trip.
The other complication for us on that trip: the advance team booked everyone into the Hyatt Hotel. Then Senator Strom Thurmond had his aide call to acquaint our team with the fact that the Marriott was “the Republican hotel.” Nobody argued with Strom; we moved to the Marriott.
Another of my favorite Marty Coyne advance stories I’d describe as “colorful” is when Nancy flew to London for the July 23, 1986, wedding of Prince Andrew and “Fergie.” The Duke and Duchess of York were to be married at Westminster Abbey.
Marty met with Nancy’s chief of staff, Jack Courdamache, when they first arrived and Jack explained there was an issue. The American ambassador’s wife was planning to wear a dress and hat in the exact same color to the wedding as the dress and hat Nancy Reagan had brought to wear.
Being a guy, Marty admitted that at first he wasn’t sure what the problem was. Once it was explained to him, Marty went to the deputy chief of mission (the number two guy) at the embassy and explained the problem. The DCM was no fool and told Marty he needed to go directly to the ambassador, Charles Price.
Marty gets an appointment with the ambassador at 8:00 a.m. the next day and the ambassador tells him that his wife is not going to change her wardrobe.
Our team came up with a masterful solution. By protocol, Nancy was seated at the front of the church. Normally, the ambassador and his wife would be with her. Instead, they were seated with other ambassadors and wives a good distance behind. Nor was the ambassador’s wife ever seen in Nancy’s presence. No one—and by this I mean the press because that was all we press secretaries cared about—ever noticed the similarity in attire.
* * *
Ann Wrobleski—a smart-as-a-whip graduate of Stevens College and a veteran congressional aide before joining the East Wing staff as Nancy’s projects director—told me a great story about traveling with the First Lady:
As part of her drug awareness campaign, Nancy accepted an invitation from the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) to speak to its national convention in Las Vegas.
This was before Las Vegas became a “family” destination.
Nancy Reagan, the PTA, and Las Vegas—tailor-made for a late-night comedy monologue. After the visit was announced, I received a call from the senior aide to Senator Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s senior senator. He was often referred to as “the First Friend” since he and President Reagan had been friends since their days as western governors together. The purpose of the call was to say that the senator hoped Nancy wouldn’t make any Las Vegas jokes during her remarks. The speechwriter would be very disappointed—the best material went down the drain.
Since it was a drug awareness event, I went on what is called the “preadvance” with the Secret Service and a volunteer advance man. Meanwhile, Frank Sinatra had called Nancy and insisted she make use of his apartment at the Sands Hotel.
The agents, the advance man, and I toured Sinatra’s apartment. It was full of beautiful antiques and decorated in muted tones. In the bedroom was a large four-poster bed with tasteful bed hangings. This was in sharp contrast to my hotel room, which featured orange shag carpet and a round purple bed.
We also toured the floor of the casino with the managers of the hotel. At one point, they asked if Nancy would want to come to the casino and play the slots. I replied, “Certainly not.” They then asked if she might want to play in private; they could move a machine to Sinatra’s living room. I mumbled something dismissive and forgot about it.