Popular leader’s passing ‘sad day’

Former President Ronald Reagan, regarded as one of the greatest U.S. presidents for having changed the cultural debate in America and the history of freedom worldwide, died yesterday of pneumonia.

With his children and former first lady Nancy Reagan at his bedside in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, the longest-living American president was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. PDT.

“My family and I would like the world to know that President Ronald Reagan has passed away after 10 years of Alzheimer’s disease at 93 years of age. We appreciate everyone’s prayers,” Nancy Reagan saidin a statement.

Son Michael Reagan said, “I pray that as America reflects on the passing of my dad, they will remember a man of integrity, conviction and good humor that changed America and the world for the better.”

The former president was remembered for having faced collapse of what he famously declared the “Evil Empire” in the Soviet Union, for championing the then-radical economic theory of supply-side economics and the largest income-tax cut in history and for seeing through a political realignment in America every bit as dominant and as lasting as former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in the middle of the century.

Mr. Reagan always appears among the greatest presidents when polls are taken. In a 2001 Gallup poll for President’s Day, he was at the top, chosen by 18 percent of Americans as the greatest.

More than the accomplishments, though, his friends and those who served with him remembered him for being a gentleman. Former President George Bush, who was Mr. Reagan’s vice president for both terms, praised Mr. Reagan’s “kindness, his decency, his sense of humor — unbelievable.”

“I think both Presidents Bush learned a great deal from Ronald Reagan,” he said yesterday evening.

“History will give him great credit for standing for deep principles … and thus setting an example for the American people, whether you agreed with him or not,” he said.

When White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. told President Bush of Mr. Reagan’s death, the president said: “It’s a sad day for America,” according to White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.

Mr. Bush, who was in France for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, said Mr. Reagan’s passing was “a sad hour in the life of America.”

“Ronald Reagan won America’s respect with his greatness and won its love with his goodness. He had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility and the humor that comes with wisdom,” Mr. Bush said. “He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.”

Mr. Reagan’s body is expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, Calif., and then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral is expected to be at the National Cathedral, an event likely to draw world leaders. The body will be returned to California for a sunset burial at his library.

Hollywood to Washington

Politics was a second career for Mr. Reagan, and the Republican Party was his second political affiliation.

Story Continues →