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The 94-year-old Reagan died Sunday of heart failure at her home in the LA suburb of Bel Air suburb — 12 years after the death of former President Ronald Reagan.
Nancy Reagan holding the Reagans’ pet Rex, a King Charles spaniel, as she and Ronald Reagan walk on the White House South Lawn in 1986.APAmong the notables at the star-studded send-off at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley were reps of 10 White House families, including First Lady Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Japan.
Hillary Clinton took a break from her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to attend. Rosalynn Carter and Laura Bush comprised the rest of the contingent of former first ladies.
The Reagans were former actors and Hollywood also was well represented at the invitation-only hillside funeral overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a cool, overcast day.
The casket of former first lady Nancy Reagan is carried by pallbearers to her gravesite.EPAAn eclectic array of 1980s stars turned out, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bo Derek, Anjelica Huston, Tom Selleck and Mr. T, who helped Nancy spread her “Just Say No” anti-drug message and showed up in camouflage attire.
Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Larry King and Tom Brokaw also paid respects.
“Make no mistake, she would bop journalists, and I mean bop any journalist in this room — and we know this — if she didn’t like a report you had done,” said Sawyer, who also read from the Gospel.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney read an adoring letter Ronald Reagan wrote Nancy on their first Christmas in the White House in 1981.
Reagan wrote her about “several much beloved women in his life,” including my “First Lady.”
“She brings so much grace and charm to whatever she does that even stuffy, formal functions sparkle and turn into fun times. Everything is done with class. All I have to do is wash up and show up,” the former president wrote.
Ron Reagan (left) and Patti Davis leave to pay their final farewells to their mother, Nancy Reagan.EPAHe then described “the girl” who went to the ranch with him, a “sentimental lady” whose laughter is like “tinkling bells” and a “gal who is a nest builder.”
“Fortunately, all these women in my life are you – fortunately for me that is, for there could be no life for me without you,” he wrote, lovingly.
TV host Melissa Rivers recalled the many conversations her mother, Joan Rivers, had with Nancy.
“One of the last great grand dames,” Rivers said, the Washington Post reported. “She was an elegant, wonderful woman.”
A stickler for detail, the former first lady planned much of the memorial service before her death, including the roses and white peonies on her mahogany coffin, which was made by Marsellus Casket Co. in Syracuse, the paper reported.
The service, which reflected her sense of elegance from a bygone era, featured a photo of her dressed in one of her signature red gowns.
The pair had two children, Patti Davis and Ron, both of whom smiled at reminiscences during the funeral.
Davis told mourners her folks were “two halves of a circle,” recalling a distant memory of seeing them sitting on a Southern California beach at sunset in what she called an impenetrable “island for two.”
The couple married in 1952 after Ronald divorced actress Jane Wyman. Their inseparable union has been described as a love story to rival any that the couple acted out on the silver screen.
“My life didn’t really begin until I met Ronnie,” she said often.
With Post Wires



