Last Act by Craig Shirley

Author:Craig Shirley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

ASSAULT ON JENKINS HILL

“It enrages them still, which is why they’re so eager to diminish him, to peel him, even in death.”

She told me that as he neared death and it became evident it was close, he opened his eyes and he gazed at her. His eyes were as blue as ever and he closed them and died. She told me it was the greatest gift ever.”1 The day before the funeral of the fortieth president of the United States, Joanne Drake related this emotional and deeply personal story of Nancy Reagan’s and Ronald Reagan’s last moments together to the American people, in the hopes they would understand that in death he remained dignified.

Patti Davis echoed her mother’s recollections but was surprised how hard she was taking her father’s passing. “I thought I was prepared. So many waves of grief crashed over me during these years.”2

At his final breath she said, “At the last moment, when his breathing told us this was it . . . and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that hadn’t opened in days did, and they weren’t chalky or vague. They were clear and blue and full of love.”3

Most commentators had noted by now that Reagan had been out of the public eye for almost a decade. It had also been noted that Nancy Reagan had not and would not make any public statements during the week leading up to the funeral, other than the short release announcing her husband’s passing and thanking people for their support. The three children were scheduled to speak at the committal ceremony at Simi Valley but Mrs. Reagan would remain silent. She did tell her friend Merv Griffin, in confidence, of her surprise at the outpouring. “I thought they forgot Ronnie because nobody had seen him for 10 years.”4

But even now, only five days after his passing, Ronald Reagan and his legacy were still being harshly knocked by some commenters and columnists alike, and on both sides of the Atlantic. Garry Wills, an erstwhile conservative writer for National Review and author of the book Reagan’s America, said that Ronald Reagan played “the heartwarming role of himself.”5 When Wills left conservatism, many on the Right were not sorry to see him go. His thought patterns and writing style could best be described as “macaronic.” Men and women of the Right said Conservatism, si; Wills, no.

Jet-set-celebrity-editor Tina Brown wrote a retrospective piece for a national paper about Reagan, and a photo shoot and another article in 1985. However, the article was more about her stewardship at Vanity Fair (from which she was long departed), though she did manage to get to the second sentence of her piece without using a first person pronoun.6

Even the history of Reagan was getting all tangled up. Glenn Kessler, a writer for the Washington Post, said Reagan won the election of 1980 with “a simple but devastating question: Are you better off than you were four years

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