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

a vocation out of reading hearts, the human heart,” Kenworthy told me. “She was at peace. There are those people that, when the end is near, they in a sense, turn toward death and say, ‘Here I am. Here are you.’ It’s a part of life.”

The following Friday, a motorcade carried her coffin forty miles from a mortuary in Santa Monica to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, where Ronnie had been laid to rest nearly a dozen years before. Nancy was to finally join him, dressed for eternity in a red Adolfo suit. The procession route took the mourners on a long stretch of road that had been named the Ronald Reagan Freeway.

Her service was more religious than some who knew her expected it to be. That was partly Kenworthy’s doing. “This is going to be a proclamation of resurrection, of faith,” he insisted. Ron and Patti sat in the front row with their uncle Dick, Nancy’s stepbrother. Her stepson, Michael, was not there. He claimed that he had been unable to rearrange an overseas trip and tweeted: “Colleen and I are traveling in Asia on business and will be honoring Nancy next Tuesday on the USS Ronald Reagan in Tokyo, Japan.” Betsy Bloomingdale, as frail as she was, managed to make it and was also seated up front. In attendance were members of every presidential family of the previous half century: George W. and Laura Bush; Michelle Obama; Hillary Clinton; Rosalynn Carter; Tricia Nixon Cox; Steven Ford; Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and Lucy Baines Johnson; Caroline Kennedy.

The tributes to Nancy were lovely and funny, each looking at a different facet of her remarkable life. James Baker noted that Nancy was the one who said: “You need to do this, Ronnie. You need to find a way to negotiate with Gorbachev.” Brian Mulroney, Canada’s former prime minister, read aloud one of Ronnie’s sentimental letters to her. Tom Brokaw described her as a woman who was not just the wife of a president “but his best political adviser.”

The rawest words, and perhaps the truest, were from her two children. “My parents were two halves of a circle, closed tight around a world in which their love for each other was the only sustenance they needed. While they might venture out and include others in their orbit, no one truly crossed the boundary into the space they held as theirs,” Patti said as she stood in front of Nancy’s rose-covered casket.

Ron spoke after his sister. “If my mother had one great talent, I think it was that she knew how to love, and she loved one man more than the world,” he said. “We should all be so lucky as to end up where we’ve always wanted to be. Today my mother comes to rest on this lovely hilltop, with its far-reaching views, next to her beloved Ronald Reagan Library. And by the way, from here, she will be able to keep an eye on things. Just saying. No slacking. How long will it be before tales begin to emerge of a petite, Chanel-clad spirit roaming the galleries and halls, just checking to make sure things are running smoothly?” That image of a ghostly Nancy keeping watch over the place in perpetuity brought some knowing laughter.

But then Ron’s voice began to crack. “Most importantly, she will once again lay down beside the man who was the love of her life. The one she loved until the end of her days,” he said. “They will watch the sun drop over the hills in the west toward the sea as night falls. They will look out across the valley. My father will tell her that the lights below are her jewels. The moon and stars will endlessly turn overhead. And here they’ll stay, as they always wished it to be. Resting in each other’s arms, only each other’s arms.

“Until the end of time.”

Anne Frances Robbins, known as Nancy, 1927. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

The marriage of Edith Luckett and Kenneth Robbins was all but over by the time their daughter arrived on July 6, 1921. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Nancy Robbins, living with relatives in Maryland, holds a tea party for her doll, 1920s. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Nancy Robbins, left, with her stepfather Dr. Loyal Davis and cousin Charlotte Galbraith. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Nancy’s senior year photo in the Girls Latin yearbook, 1939. (Courtesy of the Latin School of Chicago)

Nancy Davis as Princess Lilia in the play Ivory Door, 1938. (Courtesy of the Latin School of Chicago)

In her senior class play, Nancy portrays the conniving wife of a presidential candidate. The title of the play: First Lady. (Courtesy of the Latin School of Chicago)

Smith College senior Nancy Davis hangs a poster for Make with the Maximum: A Factory Follies. She was part of a troupe that performed in 1943 at war production plants. (College Archives, Smith College)

Nancy Davis, atop a piano, in Make With the Maximum, 1943. (College Archives, Smith College)

Nancy Davis plays the sophisticated “Glamour Gal,” a shirker on the factory line who laments that she misses her prewar life of luxury, 1943. (College Archives, Smith College)

James Whitmore with Nancy Davis in a scene from the film The Next Voice You Hear, 1950. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images)

Nancy and Ronald Reagan, with Marilyn Monroe, 1953. (Everett Collection)

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis Reagan costar in Hellcats of the Navy, 1957. Ronnie later said: “That picture ended movies for me.” (Everett Collection)

Newlyweds Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan cutting their wedding cake at the home of their friends William and Ardis Holden in Toluca Lake, California, March 4, 1952. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Ronald Reagan, son Ron, Nancy Reagan, and daughter Patti outside their Pacific Palisades home in California, 1960. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Portrait of a blended family, left to right: Patti Davis, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan,