The Triumph of Nancy Reagan Karen Tumulty (motivational novels .TXT) 📖

had not campaigned with enough enthusiasm for the nominee during the general election season. And they were right about how Ronnie felt. Those around him could see that he had not let go of his anger at how the Republican contest had played out. “To my surprise, Reagan, who is seldom bitter, went to California a bitter man, convinced that Ford had stolen the nomination from him,” Nofziger wrote later.

As the Reagans looked toward returning to a more normal life and figuring out their next move, there was a new family drama to deal with. Just weeks after the election, eighteen-year-old Ron announced that he was dropping out of Yale University to pursue… ballet. Dance, he declared, was his true passion. Nancy was flabbergasted: “I had never heard the word ballet cross his lips.”

Ron, who had barely begun his freshman year, broke the news to his parents as they were making a two-hour drive from New York to Connecticut. The three were to be Thanksgiving guests at the waterfront home of the Reagans’ old friends conservative publisher William F. Buckley Jr. and his socialite wife, Pat. There was a holiday meal planned and a traditional football game, which that year had Reagan father and son as opposing team captains. In between the festivities, just about everyone took a turn trying to talk Ron into abandoning his new ambition, or, at least, into finishing his first semester. It was futile, Bill Buckley recalled: “Individually and in groups—my brother Jim, a Yale graduate, had a round or two—we attempted to make the point that Ron Jr. should give the academic life a better try. He in turn stressed the point that already, at eighteen, he was far behind in studying dance.”

Ronnie and Nancy realized their son had given them no say in the matter, so they tried to figure out how to make the best of it. Ronnie turned for advice to Hollywood movie and dancing legend Gene Kelly, who suggested that Ron should study at the Stanley Holden Dance Center in Los Angeles. Though Ron was older than other beginners—some started serious training as early as age twelve—it turned out he had some talent. Within four years, he would work his way up the esteemed Joffrey Ballet and be named to its senior company.

At the Holden Dance Center, Ron met and fell in love with Doria Palmieri, who worked there and was seven years older than he was. Nancy was not thrilled. “Frankly, I didn’t particularly like Doria then. I guess I was thinking back to Ron’s other relationship, and because Doria, too, was older, I was afraid this one would come to the same disastrous end, and Ron would wind up hurt,” Nancy wrote. His romance with Doria notwithstanding, Ron’s decision to pursue ballet also set off speculation that he was gay. The rumors would continue for decades and were awkward, given the social conservatism of his father’s political supporters.

Though Ronnie and Nancy could not deter their son from the path he was determined to take, they also chose not to make it any easier for their son by providing him financial assistance. Ron and Doria moved to New York, where he made less than $300 a week as a dancer and was laid off periodically. Ron was so strapped for money that he sometimes put water instead of milk on his cereal. Years later, at the depth of the 1982 recession, national headlines would reveal that the president’s own son was collecting unemployment, one of millions out of work at a time when the jobless rate was higher than it had been since the Great Depression.

In his parents’ willingness to let him struggle, Ron saw several impulses at work, particularly on the part of Nancy, who was the one who kept the closest watch on the family finances. The youngest Reagan had left the nest, but his mother wanted to make sure he could not fly too far. The allure of independence, she hoped he would learn, was just an illusion. “It was sort of mutual, I suppose. I mean, they weren’t offering, I was not going to ask,” Ron told me. “My father was, by nature, very generous. He’d pick up the check anytime. But my mother was not. My mother was one of those personalities—if somebody else was getting it, it’s being taken from her. You know, your gain is her loss. Controlling the purse strings is a way to control the person. If you’re financially comfortable, then you could decide to leave, you could decide to just walk off. And so, it was a way to keep you on a tether.”

Ronnie and Nancy also had their own life choices to consider. Chief among them: would he run again in 1980? They were settling back into Pacific Palisades, which had much to recommend it. Ronnie was spending time at his new ranch and making a handsome living on the speaking circuit. Nancy returned to the embrace of her friends in Los Angeles, and an even busier social schedule than she had enjoyed before they entered politics. After a presidential campaign that had often kept them apart, they could savor the simple and pure joy of being together. On Valentine’s Day 1977, shortly before their silver wedding anniversary, Ronnie left this note:

Dear St. Valentine

I’m writing to you about a beautiful young lady who has been in this household for 25 years now—come March 4th.

I have a request to make of you but before doing so feel you should know more about her. For one thing she has 2 hearts—her own and mine. I’m not complaining. I gave her mine willingly and like it right where it is. Her name is Nancy but for some time now I’ve called her Mommie and don’t believe I could change.

My request of you is—could you on this day whisper in her ear that someone loves her very much and more and more each day? Also tell her this “someone” would run down