The Triumph of Nancy Reagan by Karen Tumulty (short books for teens txt) 📕

That day in the White House, Nancy, with her customary directness, turned the conversation in a direction that Glaser hadn’t anticipated.

“How is it for your husband?” the first lady asked.

“It’s horrible,” Glaser answered. “It has been very difficult for Paul, but he has been remarkable. He is our hero, and he has stood by us.”

Nancy pressed: “What is your relationship with him?”

Glaser, startled, suddenly began to understand what Nancy was getting at. “Relationship. What does she mean? Is this woman asking me about my sex life?” This, after all, was an administration that didn’t even want to talk about condoms. But she sensed that Nancy was asking out of a genuine sympathy. So, Glaser told her that, yes, she and Paul continued to have a sexual relationship, taking all the precautions that her doctors had recommended, and added: “My husband kisses me and touches me, and he is really quite wonderful.”

A meeting that was supposed to have lasted for twenty minutes stretched into an hour. As Glaser and Wick were getting ready to leave, Ronnie’s eyes locked with the distraught mother’s.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” the president said.

“I want you to be a leader in the struggle against AIDS, so that my children, and all children, can go to school and continue to live valuable lives; so that no one with AIDS need worry about discrimination,” Glaser replied. “Secondly, you have commissioned a report on the epidemic that’s been written by a phenomenal man. I ask you to pay attention to that report.”

Ronnie responded: “I promise you that I will read that report with different eyes than I would have before.”

The Watkins Commission’s report, released on June 27, 1988, was unsparing, starting with its contention that there had been a “distinct lack of leadership” from the federal government. “It was a stunning repudiation of just about every aspect of the Reagan administration’s handling of AIDS, as well as a sweeping battle plan for how the nation might cope with the epidemic in coming years,” journalist Randy Shilts wrote. Among its 579 specific recommendations was a call for the administration to drop its opposition to needed laws that would prevent discrimination against people who carry the AIDS virus; an increase of $3 billion a year in funding for the fight against AIDS at the federal, state, and local levels; comprehensive education about the disease, starting in kindergarten; and a new public health emergency response system, giving the surgeon general broad powers.

Despite his assurances to Glaser, Ronnie took only modest actions in response to the report and ignored its central recommendations. “Time went by, and nothing happened. It was almost unimaginable, but the White House took the report and put it on the shelf. Hope for thousands of Americans and people around the world sat gathering dust in some forgotten corner of some forgotten room,” Glaser wrote later. “I was with President Reagan for an hour. I know his commitment was genuine and his intentions sincere, but the decision not to act wasted more precious time. Each step of the way when nothing was done, thousands more people became ill or died. I looked at my country, my government, and the only conclusion to draw was that they still just didn’t care.”

Glaser pondered whether there was anything she could do on her own. She had learned on her trip to Washington that her story could move people. But that meant she had to sacrifice her privacy—and that of her two HIV-positive children—to get it out. After Ariel died, Elizabeth and a group of friends started the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which went to work putting millions of dollars in the hands of researchers more quickly than the government seemed capable of doing.

Around that time, she and her husband got word that the tabloid National Enquirer was working on a story that would reveal their family’s situation; the couple decided to step forward ahead of it, granting an interview to the Los Angeles Times that was published on Friday, August 25, 1989. By then, Ronnie was out of office and living in Los Angeles. He saw the story and called Janet Huck, the reporter who wrote it, to ask for Glaser’s number. Her phone rang on Sunday morning. Ronnie told her how sorry he was to hear about Ariel’s death, asked whether there was anything he could do, and promised to set up a meeting with his staff. Shortly after she hung up, the phone rang again. It was the ex-president, calling back because Nancy wanted to talk with her.

“Nancy was extremely compassionate and told me how saddened she was by Ari’s death,” Glaser wrote in her memoir. “She said she knew from her own experience with breast cancer how hard it was to go through an illness in public. But she said as difficult as it is, it can do a great deal of good. She was astounded by the number of women who wrote to say that they went in for mammograms after her mastectomy.

“Mrs. Reagan said that she felt our being out in public would help bring attention to the issue of pediatric AIDS and the problems families face. She also offered to be of any help that she could to the foundation.”

Two days later, Glaser was in Ronnie’s suite of offices in the Century City section of Los Angeles, meeting with Mark Weinberg, the former White House press aide who headed up communications for the ex-president’s office. He said Ronnie was eager to cut a public service announcement. In the 1990 spot, Ronnie offered what sounded like a note of regret. “I’m not asking you to send money. I’m asking you for something more important: your understanding. Maybe it’s time we all learned something new.”

Ronnie and Nancy also sat on the foundation’s advisory board, and attended its first big fund-raiser, which was themed “A Time for Heroes.” The Hollywood Reporter wrote later that at the June 2, 1990, party, a reporter asked the former president whether he