Thanks for the ping, CK.
I dread the news that will evenutally come, and thought at first this might be it.
But like Michael says, it would be a merciful release.
Bob Hope w/President Reagan & Nancy 1985
Posted on 09/28/2002 10:53:56 PM PDT by MadIvan
HE was a key figure in ripping down the iron curtain and ending the cold war, which brought the 20th century to a close with America as the only superpower. Yet Ronald Reagan’s horizons have shrunk to his bedside as Alzheimer’s disease ravages his mind.
Michael Reagan, his elder son, believes that death would be a merciful release for the former American president.
“It’s time for him to go. It’s very sad,” he said in an interview. “I’m going to hate the day Dad dies. You think you are ready for it, but you never are. But I sometimes pray that if God wants to take him home, then take him home.”
Reagan, 91, sleeps on and off for 18 hours a day, according to his son. He was always a sound sleeper, even when his policies were under attack in the 1980s.
His waking hours are a nightmare of befuddlement.
Reagan fell in the bedroom of his Bel Air home in California in January 2001, broke a hip and has been bedridden ever since. He is fed, washed and cared for 24 hours a day by medical staff, but can neither leave his bed, even for the most basic functions, nor make himself understood.
“Some days are better than others but they are all sad days. You see a man who is referred to as the Great Communicator and he can’t communicate because he doesn’t know who he is. He talks gibberish,” said his son.
Reagan does not know that his daughter Maureen died last August of melanoma at the age of 60. On the day of her funeral he stayed at home. “You wouldn’t have wanted to tell him,” said Michael. “Even if he could comprehend, he would have no way of expressing his feelings.”
Michael, 57, was adopted as a baby by Reagan and his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman. According to family legend three-year-old Maureen was in a Hollywood chemist’s when the pharmacist asked what she wanted. She put 97 cents on the counter and said: “I want a baby brother.” Her birth had been difficult, so the family chose to adopt.Today Reagan’s son is a radio chat show host in California who buried some of his family demons with an autobiography more than a decade ago. The children had many run-ins with their emotionally distant father but Michael now visits him once a month. “He doesn’t know me, but I go there for Nancy, to show up. I hug and kiss him,” he said.
“In some ways I go there out of guilt. We’re not like every family — I was at boarding school from the age of five, so I’m seeing him more than I used to. It’s the way our family works, by appointment — it’s always been by appointment.”
Nancy, who was 81 in July, still looks at Reagan adoringly, said Michael. She wants others to remember him the way he was but even she confessed last week that she was lonely. She was not sure that her husband knew her any more and said: “When you come right down to it, you’re in it alone and there’s nothing anybody can do for you.”
The strain is beginning to tell on her. “She’s frail,” said Michael. “She’s much frailer than she would have been because of Dad’s illness. She’s a professional worrier. She’s always carried a burden of some sort. She worries about what people are saying about Dad, about his place in history.
“I worry that when Dad goes Nancy won’t be far behind because she lives and breathes for Dad.” She need have no fear about history’s verdict on Reagan, whose virtues are frequently invoked in this post-September 11 world.
“George W is closer to my father’s ideology than he is to his father’s,” said Michael, who believes that the September 11 attacks would not have happened under Reagan. “He responded to the Muammar Gadaffis. They knew where he stood.” Despite backing Bush, he thinks his father would have disapproved of the “giant conversation” under way over Iraq.
Libya was bombed in 1986 after a terrorist attack on Americans in West Berlin. “Dad didn’t hold a press conference saying what we’ll do with Gadaffi. He just did it,” said Michael.
Reagan’s descent into Alzheimer’s was remarkably rapid after he left the White House in 1989 and soon became impossible to conceal.
Michael said Reagan’s great ally, Margaret Thatcher, was guest of honour at a birthday party for him in 1993.
“Dad gave Maggie a great introduction, as he always did, and she got a standing ovation. Then the applause stopped and Dad reintroduced her. Everybody stood up and applauded again as if nothing had happened.
“After that Nancy and Dad felt it was time to start thinking about getting the word out about Alzheimer’s.”
In 1994 Reagan published a touching letter about his plight in which he said: “I only wish I could spare Nancy from the painful experience.”
He could not. By 1997 he was still active — some golf, walking on the beach — but his mind was faltering. He would spend hours sweeping leaves from the swimming pool and his secret servicemen would quietly put them back, simply to keep him occupied.
Every now and then he would show a flash of insight, his son recalled. “My daughter Ashley hugged him and said, ‘Grandpa, I love you.’ He looked directly at me and said in a full voice, ‘You know why I’m hugging her? Because she’s a she.’ ” He’d remembered how Michael had complained about his lack of hugs as a child.
Now Michael understands that Reagan was a typical post-war father. At the time, however, the children were often unforgiving and even today the family is politically divided.
At the launch of the battleship USS Ronald Reagan last year, Nancy’s children Patti Davis and Ron Reagan stayed away. “They’re the 1960s generation, the liberals. To them the ship was a killing machine,” said Michael. “I felt sorry for Nancy that day. She fought hard to have the ship commissioned before my father died. It had never been done in anybody’s lifetime before, so it was an honour. I was there with my wife and children. George W Bush was there.
“Nancy and I have not always had the greatest of relationships and I began to wonder if the problem was not that she’s so angry with me but that she’s jealous that the Wyman kids — Maureen and I — would show up no matter what was going on in the family.”
Maureen was Nancy’s chief support until she succumbed to her own illness. In the past year Patti has grown closer to her mother and believes the reconciliation makes her father happy. Nancy said last week: “She thinks he has a feeling of the two of us together. As she says, his soul doesn’t have Alzheimer’s.”
Michael is grateful. “When Maureen passed away, Patti stepped up and she’s there with her mother all the time. It’s been good for Nancy and it’s great for Patti. She’s finally getting close to Dad.”
Maureen sacrificed her own health, Michael believes, by campaigning non-stop for an Alzheimer’s cure instead of fighting her cancer.The time is nearing when Reagan will join her. “Maureen has been waiting for him for a year and has probably got a good spot for him beside her. She’d love it. No brothers, no sisters, no moms. Just her and Dad.” For Michael, it is a consoling thought.
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Reagan wasn't stupid. He just wasn't neurotic and didn't speak in the pathological riddles that currently pass for intelligence. His vocabulary and sentence structure indicated high intelligence levels.
I dread the news that will evenutally come, and thought at first this might be it.
But like Michael says, it would be a merciful release.
No. It means he did what he thought was right,and didn't worry too much about what other people thought about it.
He's talking about Clinton.
Regards, Ivan
What a poignant article this is, and that was so kind of you to put up the contact with the Alzheimer's association. I fortunately have not had to deal with this dreadful disease, but a couple of my friends' parents are in the early stages. It is heartbreaking for them.
I also agree with you. One hopes that God will intervene in some manner to keep WJC away from the funeral. It is not to be borne.
Crying for him and his family.
I frequently prayed that he would quietly slip into Gods's hands before he became this bad, now I will pray that God takes him soon.
I can deal with that. Make room.
Lucky you. Jimmah Cartah was the first president I voted for...and the last Democrat I ever voted for. At least I wised-up fast. Jimmah taught me well.....and continues to be a waste of good oxygen to this very day.
“George W is closer to my father’s ideology than he is to his father’s,” said Michael, who believes that the September 11 attacks would not have happened under Reagan. “He responded to the Muammar Gadaffis. They knew where he stood.” Despite backing Bush, he thinks his father would have disapproved of the “giant conversation” under way over Iraq. Libya was bombed in 1986 after a terrorist attack on Americans in West Berlin. “Dad didn’t hold a press conference saying what we’ll do with Gadaffi. He just did it,” said Michael.
I hope Peggy Noonan reads the line about W's ideaology being closer to Reagan's than his father's. If Reagan was in after the Clinton era however, I don't know if even he could have stopped 9/11. I distinctly remember the Libya bombing though, and Reagan acted swiftly there. Gadaffi had a transformation after that--thanks to President Reagan. The only time Gadaffi came out of his hole after that day was to express his support of America's actions. I believe history will remember Ronald Reagan for the true statesman he was, and perhaps learn from his belief in a strong America. I am sure he is safely in God's hands as he sleeps, and I pray his passing is peaceful.
Are We Spending Too Much on AIDS?
[...]
This year, AIDS dropped from being the 14th biggest killer of Americans to number 15. Heart disease this year will kill about 775,000 Americans, a figure perhaps 20 times as high as the number of Americans who will die of AIDS in the next twelve months. In the next two months cancer will kill almost as many people as have died of AIDS in the course of the entire epidemic.
Nevertheless, the current PHS allocation of about $1.6 billion for AIDS research and education higher than that allocated for any other cause of death. In 1990, the CDC will spend $10,000 on prevention and education for each AIDS sufferer as opposed to $185 for each victim of cancer and a mere $3.50 or each cardiac patient.
Total federal research expenditures on AIDS this year will be more than 100 percent of nationwide patient costs in the case of cancer, the corresponding ratio of research-and-development spending to patient costs is about 4.5 percent, in the case of heart disease about 2.9 percent, and in the case of Alzheimer's disease, less than 1 percent.
AIDS activists have answers to these statistics. Since AIDS strikes most often in the prime of life, they urge us to consider the years of lost productivity as a cost that could be avoided by more spending now on AIDS research. Yet every year cancer and heart disease each kills more than 150,000 Americans below the age of sixty, while this year AIDS will kill around 30,000 persons of all ages. Nor do the calculations of years lost take account of the fact that intravenous drug abusers, who make up a growing portion of those affected by the disease, have a very low life expectancy and an even lower expectancy of productivity.
[...]
There's no question that federal AIDS spending has gone up tremendously in recent years. President Bush's proposed fiscal 1993 budget calls for authorized spending of $4.9 billion, up from $4.4 billion in the year ending Sept. 30. The budget boasts of a 118% increase in AIDS spending authority since Mr. Bush took office in 1989. In research, the government now spends more on AIDS than on any other disease except cancer.
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