Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [75]
During Nancy’s freshman and sophomore years at Smith, Hitler would conquer most of Europe, and in her junior year the United States entered the war, but for her “those were very happy and carefree days.” As she wrote forty years later, “The students were much less serious than they are today, much less politically involved. I knew nothing about politics. I don’t say this with any pride, but it didn’t seem important then.”9 As her stepbrother said on a television show decades later, “I used to like to kid Nancy at Smith: 1939–1944
1 2 3
her that she spent more time at Princeton with her boyfriends than studying. But she was extremely well liked and very personable, had a great sense of humor, and didn’t seem to be burdened by anything.”10
She was, however, in need of occasional reassurance, as evidenced by a letter Loyal sent her on December 6, 1939, a week before she would return home for her debutante party. “Nance dearest,” he wrote. “I’m sure you know I love you, but I’m afraid I haven’t told you so enough. I’m re-paid more than enough by your love and respect . . . and by knowing that you are honest, frank, direct and dependable. These are things which many of us have to acquire in later years, but you have them already. There has never been, and will not be ever, any question in my mind that you are trying to do a good job.”11
The Davises enrolled Richard in the ninth grade at Boys Latin School, where he became friends with Homer Hargrave Jr. and Joseph Kelly, one of the mayor’s sons. Like his father, Richard was an avid Civil War buff, and in previous summers Loyal and Edith had taken him on trips to some of the historic battlefields. Much to the delight of Edith, who had given him a biography of Robert E. Lee, The Gray Knight, young Richard saw himself as “an unreconstructed rebel.”12 Loyal’s son was fascinated by military matters, so for the next three summers the Davises sent him to camp at the prestigious Culver Military Academy in Indiana.13
While Edith was happy to have her stepson living with them, there was a certain amount of tension involved in suddenly having a teenage boy around the house. “Edith was very, very sensitive,” Richard Davis told me.
“I remember one Saturday afternoon when I was about fifteen, the three of us were sitting in the library. And my father and I were going down to the Drake to get a magazine or a chocolate soda. Dr. Loyal said, ‘You and your mother ought to kiss each other before we go out.’ So I turned my cheek, because I thought Edith was going to kiss me. Jesus, she interpreted that as me turning away from her. Edith could be very, very tough, especially when it involved my father. If anybody said anything critical of Loyal, Edith didn’t mince any words. It didn’t matter where she was or who was there.”14
This was “the same sort of protective attitude,” Davis pointed out, that Nancy would later show toward Ronald Reagan. On the surface everything at the Davises’ seemed to revolve around the husband’s career, schedule, and wishes. “Nancy and me,” Richard Davis recalled, “if we said, ‘Oh, it’s chicken again tonight, DeeDee.’ Not exactly a complaint, 1 2 4
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House but she took it very seriously. ‘Your father likes chicken.’ And therefore you like chicken. It was just about that simple.”15
There was an underlying insecurity, Davis thought, in Edith’s feelings toward Loyal. As a teacher, his father “was constantly promoting young people and stimulating their interest,” whereas Edith sometimes seemed threatened by the younger generation, including her own daughter. Perhaps this was because she was hiding the fact that she was eight years older