by Sheila Tate
I loved those Christmases. I moved north to Washington State four years ago. I visited her before I left and she told me that Uncle Ronnie would visit her at night. She took great comfort in those visits. I could tell she was ready to be with him.
Aunt Nancy had a big soul. I miss her laugh. And her perfume. (She wore tuberose.)
And like so many others have said, I miss her voice.
* * *
Paul Costello, former assistant press secretary to Rosalynn Carter in the White House, and campaign press secretary to Kitty Dukakis when her husband ran against George H.W. Bush, tells some great Nancy Reagan stories. Sounds unlikely? Not if you knew Nancy or, for that matter, if you knew Paul.
Paul worked at the Washington office of the Edelman public relations firm with Mike Deaver. He told Mike that while flying back from the West Coast he read the Newsweek article by Eleanor Clift (October 1, 1995) entitled “The Long Goodbye.” It was about the pain of President Reagan’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and Nancy’s efforts to reunite their family. Paul told Mike he was touched by it, especially since it appeared at the same time Paul’s father was suffering from dementia brought on by Parkinson’s disease. Mike suggested that Paul write her a note and tell her exactly what he’d just told Mike.
“Mike convinced me to write Mrs. Reagan, but I knew I couldn’t whitewash some negative feelings I had about the Reagans which still lingered from the 1980 campaign loss. So I started out the note honestly,” Paul told me. He said, “I am probably the last person in the world to write to you…”
Just a few days later, Mike walked into Paul’s office, closed the door, and said, “Nancy just called me and she was sobbing reading your letter.” In that note, Paul told me, “I tried to convey the pain I felt watching a loved one mentally diminish so rapidly and I wished her the best in uniting her family.”
On his next trip to California, again at Mike’s urging, Paul took Nancy out to lunch at, of course, the Bel-Air Hotel. “I brought her a copy of Angela’s Ashes; we had a wonderful two-hour lunch. A lot of laughs. She was great fun. I was totally surprised,” he said. I suspect, knowing both Nancy and Paul, Mike knew they would connect.
Days later, Mike said Nancy called him, said how much she enjoyed the lunch. She thought, perhaps, she might have been too open about personal things like her rocky relationship with her children. Paul said he remembered telling Nancy how he, as a parent of young children, learned to forgive his own parents for any transgressions. “I felt much more empathy for my own parents when I had kids, knowing you make a lot of mistakes along the way.” She agreed and thought perhaps he had a point.
Some months later, Mike, his wife, Carolyn, and Paul had dinner with Nancy on a return visit to Los Angeles. It was an evening of a lot of laughs and reminiscing about life in the Washington bubble. “I remember I was sitting there thinking about how life changes,” Paul said. “Here I was sitting with Mrs. Reagan, having given up some hard-core political hostilities and laughing uproariously at jokes we all shared. Never in my life would I have imagined Nancy Reagan might be a friend.” Paul and Nancy kept up a written correspondence for a number of years.
As we talked about Nancy, Paul shared his observation that many of our modern First Ladies were substantial women, especially behind the scenes. His list included Rosalynn Carter whom he said was very instrumental, behind the scenes, in pivotal moments during the Camp David Summit when President Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar Sadat met to hammer out Mideast peace. After getting to know Nancy, he included her in his list.
He also told me he recalled that Nancy had sent Kitty Dukakis a note when Mrs. Dukakis revealed her dependence on prescription drugs. Sounds like something Nancy would do.
* * *
Bob Tuttle says that ever since he can remember, the Reagans were part of his life, an important part. “My dad opened his first car dealership in the late 1950s—a Ford dealership—near Hollywood and he sold one of those Fords to Ronald Reagan. That was the beginning of their friendship.”
His dad became one of the earliest members of the famous kitchen cabinet that formed in 1965 to back the unlikely candidacy of a movie actor for governor of California. “From that time to twenty years later when I headed Presidential Personnel at the White House, I was struck by how close the Reagans were to each other and how much they were truly a couple. It was always the ‘Reagans’ plural, never just him.
“Nancy had a protective streak; she was always making sure her husband’s interests came first. And as welcoming as they both were to new friends joining their circle, Nancy had an almost uncanny sense of knowing pretty quickly if someone was there for Ronnie or out for him/herself. And her instincts were often right.”
Bob told me things that others echoed: “Whatever you told Nancy stayed with her. She never violated a confidence. Ever. And she had the best sense of humor. She loved to laugh.”
Bob said that when he came on board as director of Presidential Personnel, “I heard from Nancy occasionally; her interests were mainly about several specific ambassadorial appointments, appointments to a few boards. When Nancy was interested in a personnel issue, she was very focused. Like other longtime friends of the Reagans, I saw that she had a very good sense of people and their agendas, but interestingly enough, she never tried to run the show in spite of widespread media reports to the contrary.”
19
White House Humor
No one loved a joke more than Ronald Reagan did. Vice President George H.W. Bush had a weekly lunch with President Reagan and he always arrived armed with a good joke. Frequently he had to stop by a number of staff offices on his way to lunch in order to get some new jokes before he met the president. He would also preview some of the newly collected jokes on staffers—a trial run of sorts. When I was the previewer for those jokes, I rated it as fifth-grade boys’ humor.
How can you not love humor when you work with Ronald Reagan? As he was being wheeled into the operating room at GW Hospital to have a bullet removed from his lung, he looked up and saw his wife for the first time and said, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”
I have a copy of the White House transcript of the press briefing after the March 30, 1981, assassination attempt. We were all in various stages of shock. And yet, right there, is Dr. O’Leary’s answer to a reporter’s question:
Q: You said that the president was conscious for much of the time. What, if anything, did he say?
A: Well, the surgeons said that his last remark before he underwent anesthesia was he wanted to make sure that all of them were Republicans.
Q: Were they?
A: They said that today everyone is a Republican.
In that case, his wonderful sense of humor calmed a nation.
And then there was the time when the president was speaking to a group in the Rose Garden. It happened to coincide with a visit to my office by a couple of old college friends of mine, Paul and Molly Mahoney from California. I walked them out to the Rose Garden and we stood in the back near the press corps so they could actually see the president and Nancy. (Cautionary note: this will only be funny to people of a certain age.)
I noticed Molly looking at ABC’s bad boy Sam Donaldson, who loved to be looked at. Sam had one of those sun-reflecting devices and he was turned with his back to the president and face to the sun, obviously soaking up rays while the president delivered a talk that was not in any form news-producing. Sam clearly was not taking notes. As we walked back along the colonnade toward my office afterward, I overheard Molly say to her husband: “That Garrick Utley sure didn’t take the president’s speech very seriously.” I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Sam was a showman. To be mistaken for someone else, someone so different from Sam, would have at least momentarily crushed his ego.
Over the years, Sam and I found ourselves sharing a speaking platform now and again. The last time
was at the memorial for my friend and business partner, Jody Powell. You can bet I often used that story of Sam’s mistaken identity and you can bet he hated it! He occasionally came to the stage and pretended to choke me.
In truth, Sam was great fun off camera and we enjoyed teasing each other. One election day I walked into my polling place and his familiar voice rang out from across the crowded room, purportedly addressing the polling officials but commanding the attention of a long line of voters: “Gentlemen, check that lady’s credentials. She is not old enough to vote.”
It was simply impossible to get mad at Sam. Nancy had the same reaction. She just could not help laughing at him and teasing with him. That’s when Sam, the serious newsman, would move in for the kill with a question meant to make you squirm.
There is such a pressure cooker environment when you work in the White House that humor is required to keep your equilibrium. Much of it is intemperate at best. We made fun of one another and ourselves. We pulled corny jokes on colleagues. No one was immune.
* * *
Mark Weinberg, an assistant press secretary in the West Wing, came to us fresh out of GW University. Mark always had a quirky sense of humor, which, I admit, we all encouraged.
He used to practice “forging” the handwriting of famous people and he’d often send one of us a fake letter from Nancy or Ronnie or some person of royalty. To encourage his habit, I brought him back some official stationery from one undisclosed royal chamber after an overseas trip. Mike Deaver found out about those letters and ordered an end to them, even though he issued that order with a definite note of amusement in his voice.
Mark could easily have been a stand-up comedian. He could imitate anyone. He had Nancy Reagan down to a tee. And you would swear it was Ronald Reagan on the phone when he called you. He could make everyone on the East Wing cry from laughing at his Ronnie and Nancy imitations.
Mark Weinberg wasn’t the only comedian in the West Wing press office. The White House press office met early every morning. I never missed that meeting if I could help it, mostly because they were fun. Robin Gray, another assistant press secretary, could reduce us to tears with his antics. Joe Canzeri, an aide to Mike Deaver with a big ego, was often Robin’s target. Joe was short; Robin was tall. On occasion Robin would come into the press office meeting walking on his knees and issuing “Canzeri-like” orders. Everyone encouraged his Joe Canzeri routine. All in good fun, making for great memories.
* * *
Nancy Reagan was a distant second to her husband in the humor business. He saw humor in just about everything. Her humor was a more gentle, refined, and understated variety.
At one event she was asked to be the one to introduce President Reagan to the audience. She claimed it was the first time she’d done so. Then she asked the audience if they didn’t think he looked pretty confident that she’d be able to handle it. The audience laughed appreciatively.
Then she began the introduction like this:
I’ll tell you a little secret. He didn’t look so confident when I was introducing him to my father for the first time.
Pretty good line. The audience loved it.
There was also an embarrassing incident one time when Nancy took to the microphone to introduce her husband. She got involved in some long story and moved back to sit down at the end of it while the audience politely applauded. Then she jumped up and explained she had forgotten to introduce the president. She called him her “roommate.” The audience loved that one, too.
And then there was the unforgettable moment in Xi’an, China, where the famous Terracotta Warriors were being excavated after being discovered in 1974. The eight thousand or so life-sized warriors were created to honor Qin Shi Huang, the first Chinese emperor, and to protect him in the afterlife.
The president and First Lady were escorted down among the Terracotta Warriors to see these incredible objects up close and pose for a picture. President Reagan could not resist standing behind one of the headless warriors to make it look like he was the warrior. The press was behind a rope line about forty feet away. One short, heavyset, white-haired elderly “reporter” named Naomi Nover kept trying to get closer by ducking under the rope. I put the word reporter in quotes because Naomi didn’t report for anyone that we knew of. Her deceased husband had been a one-person news bureau and he made Naomi his news reporter. Both got White House credentials. When he died, Naomi started attending the daily White House news briefings on her own. She paid for her single seat to take all the overseas trips, and once on board she tried to usurp two seats so that she could keep all her shopping bags full of her belongings next to her. It was an odd situation that went on until she died, some years after I had left the White House. I did everything I could to discourage her inclusion in our travels because it complicated everything, but she outlasted me.
Back to the story. The Chinese guards were having none of her moves. Finally, reporter Gary Schuster, White House reporter for the Detroit News, pulled out his wallet, took out a dollar bill, and showed the picture of George Washington to the guard, pointing from George to Naomi, obviously trying to tell him that Naomi was an important official who was on our paper money. Honestly, she was a dead ringer for George. The guard relented and let Naomi move up close. The press corps behind the ropes erupted in laughter.
20
Searching for Privacy
Everyone needs a little privacy now and then. But for First Families, privacy is a rare thing.
Nancy didn’t complain about a lack of privacy in the White House. Perhaps because of her early career in Hollywood and her years as the wife of the governor of California she recognized it as a fact of life.
But some subjects—like her age—were touchy. Nancy’s birthday was July 6. What year was the question.
I thought I was used to the pervasive climate of age denial among women during those years. My grandmother lived to be ninety-nine and lied about her age to the end. My own mother lied about her age. When she was seventy she filled out a form at her doctor’s office listing her age as fifty. He must have been highly amused.
At the White House age took on a great deal more importance. Every year reporters would torture me with questions about Nancy’s year of birth.
As all press secretaries know, the key to preserving your credibility when you are skeptical of information provided to you was to couch your response with something like this:
Mrs. Reagan tells me she was born in 1922, or
Mrs. Reagan tells me she is fifty-nine years old.
Nancy would occasionally add a casual mention to me that the unnamed hospital where she was born had burned down a long time ago along with all the hospital records. That felt like a step too far so I did not mention that to reporters. If I had, it might have become the first “birther” issue! Nancy Reagan, in fact, was born one year earlier than the date I was given.
At the beginning of the second Reagan administration, just weeks before I was planning to leave government service, I arranged for Nancy to be interviewed by Chris Wallace, then with NBC. He had a good relationship with her since she had known his dad, Mike, most of her life. Chris looked her in the eye and asked his first question.
“Mrs. Reagan, how old are you?” She paused before responding, “I haven’t decided yet.”
Afterward, I said to her, “You could have made my life so much easier if only you’d said that four years ago.” Then we both started laughing.
The other person who made herself unavailable to the media in early July every year was Barbara Bush. Mrs. Bush went to Smith, as did Nancy. Barbara was born in 1925. If Nancy was born in 1922 as she claimed, they might have overlapped at Smith. But if Nancy was born in 1921, they would have missed each other. As far as I know, Mrs. Bush never responded to questions about whether or not they knew each other at Smith.
* * *
The ranch, Rancho del Cielo,
was so important to the Reagans; it was their safe haven, a place where they could be relatively alone. A few days of relative privacy, horseback riding, and magnificent views were what they needed at the end of most nonstop months at the White House.
The conventional wisdom among members of the press corps was that Nancy was not fond of the ranch. But I know better. She dressed like a ranch hand; she rode daily with the president; she read a lot and, yes, she got on the phone, doing her best to keep close to her friends. She and the president also loved to sit outside where they could enjoy the fresh air and the solitude. John Barletta, the former Secret Service officer who served with them for seventeen years, says that it definitely was not true that Nancy disliked the ranch.
Former agent Barletta tells the story that one day while riding with him and President Reagan, Nancy inadvertently moved into heavy brush, so heavy it began to physically pull her off her horse. John had to leap off his horse and throw himself under her as she involuntarily slid off the horse and toward the ground. She got up, brushed herself off, and resumed riding. No drama.
When Nancy first started dating Ronnie, he was an avid tennis player. So she promptly went out and took tennis lessons. And when he rode, at least once a day, almost without exception, she rode. Nancy was just being Nancy, devoted, attentive, and putting Ronnie first.
The Queen of England came to visit the Reagans at the ranch. Because of heavy rains, the Queen’s party had to travel by four-wheel drive instead of helicopter. It sounded like a harrowing drive from press reports, but I suspect the Queen was thoroughly charmed by the experience, at least in retrospect.