• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3136 0

Elaine Crispin, who said they were just a little bit detained. And pretty soon the helicopters and the motorcade came—I never saw anything like it. A Secret Service man came in and tapped me on the shoulder, so we knew, Earle and I, to go out and greet them. And he said to us, ‘Now, you know how to do this?’ I said, ‘Sure, I know how to do it. We’ve done this many times before.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no, you haven’t. You haven’t greeted the president of the United States before.’ . . . The minute Ronnie became president, I called him ‘Mr. President.’

And he said to me, ‘Wait a minute. What’s this?’ I said, ‘Well, you are. And that will be forevermore now.’ And he said, ‘Not with you, my friend. Not with Earle. Not with my good friends.’ I said, ‘Well, I will say this: Around anybody, it’ll be Mr. President. When we’re just a few of us longtime friends, O.K., it’ll be Ronnie.’”165

“Oh, what an evening that was,” said Betsy Bloomingdale, recalling the triumphant procession of the Reagans and their friends from the Jorgensen house in Bel Air to the official victory party at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City.166 “Jerry was with us, and Alfred was a fast driver and he followed the Reagan motorcade, and all along Beverly Glen there were crowds 5 0 6

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House of people screaming and yelling and waving flags. Alfred had a Mercedes with a sunroof, and Jerry was hanging out of the sunroof, screaming and yelling, and we were waving at the people—oh, that was such fun! When we got to the Century Plaza Hotel, we all ran in. Alfred just left the car there. He said, ‘The hell with the car.’ And we went upstairs to the suite where Nancy and Ronnie were.”

Acknowledgments

I owe so much to so many, starting with Nancy Reagan, without whose cooperation this book would not have been possible. Mrs. Reagan has been extraordinarily generous with both her time and memories; she made herself available to my seemingly endless phone calls, granted me special access to the personal papers of the Reagan and Davis families held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and on two occasions invited me to her house in Bel Air, which was generally off limits to visitors during the former president’s long illness. I especially valued our lunches at the Hotel Bel Air, sometimes with the tape recorder running, sometimes not. I am also exceedingly grateful for her introduction to her stepbrother, Dr. Richard Davis, at the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, and to Dr. Davis for the five lengthy telephone interviews he gave in which he shared his recollections and insights regarding their family life with frankness and sensitivity.

In addition, because I had Nancy Reagan’s blessing, her closest friends, many of whom have a built-in allergy to journalists and biographers, welcomed me into their homes in Los Angeles and Palm Springs and granted me interviews. These include Betty Adams, Lee Annenberg, Frances Bergen, Armand and Harriet Deutsch, Anne Douglas, Marje Everett, William Frye and the late James Wharton, Merv Griffin, David Jones, Jean French Smith, Erlenne Sprague, Robert Tuttle, Connie Wald, Charles and Mary Jane Wick, William Wilson, and Mignon Winans. I am especially grateful to Betsy Bloomingdale and Marion Jorgensen for opening their social records to me, and for never tiring of my requests for yet another guest list or menu. I am also indebted to Jane Gosden, Wendy Stark Morrissey, and Denise Hale for their wisdom and advice about the world of the Reagans and their friends.

I am deeply beholden to Joanne Drake at the Office of President and 5 0 7

5 0 8

Acknowledgments

Mrs. Reagan for reviewing and granting permission to quote from documents in the personal papers of President and Mrs. Reagan; to archivist Cate Sewell for her cheerful and unstinting help at the Ronald Reagan Library; and to Frederick Ryan, chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, for including me among the foundation’s friends at such events as the Reagan administration alumni reunion in Simi Valley in 1999