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Nancy transformed from harridan to heroine

Los Angeles
June 12, 2004 - 10:15AM

Nancy Reagan, left, is escorted by Major General Galen B. Jackman, during an arrival ceremony for her husband, former President Ronald Reagan.

Few tears were shed for former US first lady Nancy Reagan when she and Ronald Reagan left Washington in 1989 for what promised to be a privileged California retirement.

Now a nation is in mourning with her and hailing her as a heroine.

In the 1980s, she was the White House harridan, the power behind the throne criticised for her lavish spending and designer wardrobe and ridiculed for consulting astrologers to schedule presidential events.

But in the last decade, Nancy Reagan has been transformed into a national heroine as the devoted caretaker of a much-loved former president struck down by a disease so cruel that he could no longer recognise the woman he affectionately called ''Mommie''.

Few Americans could fail to be moved at seeing the tiny, 82-year-old widow place her cheek beside her husband's casket and let her hands linger lovingly over the coffin after it was placed in the US Capitol.

The steely woman who 20 years ago had perfected the art of the adoring public gaze toward her man somehow became more human in grief.

''Even up until five years ago I think the public had not wonderful, shall we say, feeling toward her. But since then it has turned around,'' said Anne Edwards, author of the 2003 book The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage.

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''They look at her as a person with a great deal of courage, with the strength of character to stick with it to the very end. And certainly what she has done this past week has been incredible,'' Edwards said.

Nancy Reagan's new image was forged not by a Hollywood makeover team but from behind the closed doors of the Bel Air mansion where she took care of her husband of 52 years during his struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

As what she called ''the long goodbye'' turned into a 10-year ordeal, Nancy shunned the parties that a former actress and first lady might have felt entitled to enjoy in favour of a husband who was inexorably slipping away from her.

She refused to have Reagan transferred to a hospital or other facility, spent most nights at home watching television, and hated being away from the man she said ''completed'' her when they married in 1952.

''She was adamant about the idea that he should remain at home. She made a point every day to spend at least three hours a day with him, to talk to him, touch him, hold his hand,'' Edwards said.

Displaying the same fiercely protective instincts she used to keep presidential advisers at bay during the White House years, Nancy turned down interview requests and managed only a brave smile when asked about her husband's deteriorating condition.

''For any number of years after the diagnosis, when she would talk about it ... you could hear this incredible sadness in her voice. And in the past three years I've heard acceptance in her voice,'' said family friend Sheila Tate.

Only rarely did she allow the public a glimpse of her emotions. If she still consulted an astrologer to work out good, bad and ''iffy'' days, she never spoke of it.

''The golden years are when you can sit back, hopefully, and exchange memories and that's the worst part of this disease. There's no one you can exchange memories with and ... we had a lot of memories,'' she said in a 2002 interview.

After years of behind-the-scenes lobbying in favour of stem-cell research to speed a possible cure for Alzheimer's, Nancy Reagan went public with her support last month.

''Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him,'' she told a fund-raising event for stem-cell research.

Edwards said Nancy Reagan has long ago put behind her the sniping of the White House years, when she was dubbed ''dragon lady,'' accused of being a spendthrift on items like china and derided as naive for her ''Just Say No'' anti-drug campaign.

She has even drawn closer to her children, whose books about family life portrayed her as a distant mother who popped tranquilisers.

''She had more or less figured that's politics, that's life. (For her) the important thing was what they think about Ronnie and how he goes into history, and I don't think she cared much how history was going to view her,'' Edwards said.

- Reuters