Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [251]
It was just as well, because that morning brought sad news: Dwight Eisenhower had died at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda after a long Sacramento II: 1969–1974
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struggle with heart disease. The Reagans went on to Phoenix as planned, but then flew to Washington for the March 31 funeral. Edgar Gillenwaters, who worked as the Governor’s liaison in Washington, accompanied them to the National Cathedral and later remembered that General Charles de Gaulle, the President of France, was seated in the pew in front of them. “I was fascinated at one point to notice that his aide was writing on a small piece of paper,” Gillenwaters said. “ ‘Ronald Reagan’ was all I could read; it was in French. De Gaulle put the paper in his pocket and, in a most uncharacteristic move, did a complete turn around in the pew of the church and looked eyeball to eyeball with Ronald Reagan for an extended period of time. He was fascinated and probably had heard—must have heard—so much about him in order to do that uncharacteristic thing in a serious funeral setting. Then after the services were over, as we were leaving the pew, de Gaulle made a move to come to Ronald Reagan and shake his hand. It was a very extended handshake and, if you believe in
‘vibes,’ the exchange was loaded with vibes, back and forth. No conversation, nor [the] usual courtesies, no ‘nice-to-meet-you’ type exchange. He also took Nancy Reagan’s hand and made the same gesture to her.”50
Perhaps de Gaulle, whose government had nearly been toppled by rioting Paris students in 1968, and who himself would pass on in 1970, was trying to express his support for Reagan’s tough stance against California’s alienated youth.
On April 18, the Berkeley Barb, a local underground newspaper, ran a column calling for the establishment of “a cultural, political, freak-out and rap center for the Western world” on a vacant plot of university-owned land four blocks from the campus. Two days later, about one hundred street people, hippies, and New Left activists, dragging sod, plants, and playground equipment, occupied the site, which they named People’s Park.51 On April 30 the university announced that it was going ahead with plans to convert the land into athletic fields, but the squatters refused to leave. At dawn on May 15, 250 policemen moved into the makeshift park and forcibly evicted them; by noon an eight-foot-high steel-mesh fence surrounded the area, and three thousand protesters, mostly students, had gathered in Sproul Plaza outside the university’s main gate. “Let’s go down and take over the park!”
shouted student president-elect Dan Siegal.52
In the ensuing “Battle of Berkeley,” heavily outnumbered police and Alameda County sheriff ’s deputies used tear gas and shotguns loaded with 4 0 4
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House birdshot to control the rock-throwing crowd. When they ran out of birdshot, they switched to buckshot; one demonstrator was hit in the stomach and later died, another was blinded, and a highway patrolman was stabbed.
In response to pleas from local law enforcement authorities, Reagan sent in two thousand National Guardsmen and imposed a curfew on the city, in effect placing Berkeley under martial law. The protesters, he said, were “challenging the right of private ownership in this country.”53 But the marches, violence, and arrests continued for four more days, until May 20, when a low-flying National Guard helicopter tear-gassed the campus, outraging students and professors but quelling the unrest. It wasn’t until June 2 that Reagan withdrew the National Guard, commending its troops for “the remarkable restraint they displayed in the face of extreme provocation.”54
The Governor was weeping a few days later as he delivered the eulogy at the funeral of his close friend Robert Taylor, dead of lung cancer at fifty-seven. Nancy was distraught, too. “I think Bob’s death hit me as hard as anything in my life,