SEATTLE — Up on the ridge in the little Craftsman-style bungalow, tucked among the Buddha statues on the mantel
No photos of Dad hang on the walls here. There isn’t a single image visible of Dutch, the Gipper, the Great Communicator.
Ron’s brother, Michael Reagan, doubts their father was suffering from Alzheimer’s while in office. “Maybe he was just trying to forget Ron,” he cracks in an interview.
Edwin Meese, a longtime confidant who served as Reagan’s attorney general from 1985 to 1988, accuses Ron of “a cheap trick to sell books.”
Larry Kramer, one of the earliest and most prominent AIDS activists, was one of the louder voices, saying publicly that Ron was gay.
The couple, who met at a Los Angeles dance studio, married Nov. 24, 1980 - 20 days after Ron’s father was elected the 40th president of the United States. They didn’t tell his parents in advance, who at the time weren’t fans of Doria, who is seven years older than Ron. They were suspicious of her motives. (Later, their relationship with his parents would improve, Ron says.) Ron and Doria slipped into a judge’s office in New York, planning to pick up a marriage license, but the judge suggested he marry them on the spot to avoid a media frenzy. The Secret Service agent assigned to guard them served as witness.
The marriage survived the presidential years and the lean ballet years, too - he earned just $11,000 a year as a performer. Fed up with Los Angeles - a place they considered vapid- they settled into the bungalow in Seattle 16 years ago. They paid about $250,000, which was “a stretch” for them, Ron says. The couple have no children but share the home with three cats: Howdy, Binky and Arturo. They park their Subaru Outback in the driveway because the garage is stuffed to the ceiling with “detritus,” as Ron puts it: portable closets, a canoe, a punching bag.
“People think because your father was president of the United States you must be rich,” Ron says. “As it turns out, that’s not true.”
He wends his way to a University of Washington hospital, where Doria, a psychologist, is undergoing treatments for a mysterious degenerative ailment that first hit several years ago. Ron emerges from the hospital holding Doria’s left arm while she leans heavily against a crutch in her right hand.
Although Doria is working, Ron isn’t employed these days. He worked as a television political commentator and radio host, but his show on Air America, on which he tended toward liberal flame-throwing, ended a year ago amid the talk radio network’s bankruptcy. The couple were relying on his union health insurance. But now that he’s got no gig, the insurance expires in a few months. He’s not sure what they’ll do then.
Prime example of stupid is as stupid does.