I Love You, Ronnie (11 page)

RONALD REAGAN

Dearest Mommie

When a fellow is in love he’ll do the silliest things. — Like breaking promises and everything.

Anyway an Ermine cape seemed sort of impractical so please accept this substitute.

There is no substitute for how much I love you and want you to have the most wonderful Christmas “In the whole wide world.”

I love you

Poppa      

Everyone at San Onofre: Patti, me, Ronnie, Mike, Maureen, and Ron.

R
onnie’s tenure as governor came at a very difficult time in California. The campuses were aflame. Someone even tried to firebomb our house in Sacramento. We were in bed and heard a gunshot. Smart girl that I am, I immediately ran out on the balcony to see what was going on, making myself a perfect target. The police came running into our bedroom and said, “Put your robes on and come downstairs, and above all,
stay away from the windows!
” Downstairs, they found an unexploded firebomb made out of a champagne bottle. “Only in California,” Ronnie said, referring to the fact that it was a champagne bottle.

I had seen Ronnie’s sense of humor get him through a lot of difficult moments, but none more than when he met with enraged college students. They showed up to meet him disheveled, to say the least, and they were often very rude. Once, they greeted Ronnie outside a Board of Regents meeting by lining up on both sides of the sidewalk and giving him the silent treatment. Ronnie slowly walked the gauntlet in silence and then, when he reached the end, he turned around, smiled at them, put his finger up to his lips, and said, “Shhh!”

Another time, a student accused him of being out of touch. “You grew up in a different world,” the student said. “Today we have television, jet planes, space travel, nuclear energy, computers . . .”

“You’re right,” Ronnie answered. “It’s true that we didn’t have those things when we were young.We
invented
them.”

The student rebellion of the late 1960s and early 1970s was difficult for all parents, and we were no exception.

Ronnie never got truly angry—not at Patti or at Ron, Maureen, and Michael, or at me. It simply wasn’t in his nature. At the White House, aides said the only way they knew he was really mad was when he took his glasses off and threw them on his desk. That’s about as bad as things ever got.

At home, Ronnie and I disagreed so rarely that when we did it was a major event. As Ronnie says in the following letter, it kept him up half the night afterward.

RONALD REAGAN

Dear Mrs. Reagan

And you
are
Mrs. Reagan because
Mr.
Reagan loves you with all his heart. Every time Mr. Reagan sees the evening star or blows out the birthday candles or gets the big end of the wishbone he thinks the same wish—a prayer really—that so much happiness will go on and somehow be deserved by him.

It is true sometimes that Mr. Reagan loses his temper and slams a door but that’s because he can’t cry or stamp his foot—(he isn’t really
the type.) But mad or glad Mr. Reagan is head over heels in love with Mrs. Reagan and can’t even imagine a world without her—

He loves her

Mr. Reagan  

P.S. Mr. Reagan had to get up and take a sleeping pill halfway through the night.

We tried never to go to bed angry. And we never let things smolder. We talked it out, and that was that.

RONALD REAGAN

PACIFIC PALISADES

DearWife,

A few days ago you told me I was angry with you. I tried to explain I was frustrated with myself. But later on I realized that my frustration might have been a touch of self-pity because I’d been going around feeling that you are frequently angry with me.

No more.We are so much “one” that you are as vital to me as my own heart—with one exception; you could never be replaced with a transplant.

Whatever I treasure and enjoy—this home, our ranch, the sight of the sea—all would be without meaning if I didn’t have you. I live in a permanent Christmas because God gave me you. As I write this, you are hurrying by—back and forth doing those things only you can do
and I get a feeling of warm happiness just watching you. That’s why I can’t pass you or let you pass me without reaching to touch you. (Except now or you would see what I’m doing.)

I’ll write no more because I’m going to catch up with you wherever you are and hold you for a moment.

Merry Christmas Darling—I love you with all my heart.

Your Husband

Like any other couple, we didn’t agree on everything, of course. But we never really argued.We worked on things. And I think that’s why, beyond our love for each other, our marriage has always been so happy.What we felt was right out there, just as it is in the letters.

I tried to explain this once in a letter to a woman in Washington, D.C., who was about to get married and had written to me in Sacramento to ask if I had any tips for building a good marriage. “I’m very flattered that you wrote me, and I wish I thought I had a surefire formula for a successful marriage,” I wrote back. Then I wrote,

I’ve been very lucky. However, I don’t ever remember once sitting down and mapping out a blueprint. It just became “we” instead of “I” very naturally and easily. And you live as you never have before, despite problems, separations and conflicts. I suppose mainly you have to be willing to want to give.

It’s not always 50–50. Sometimes one partner gives 90 percent but then sometimes the other one does, so it all evens out. It’s not always
easy, it’s something you have to work at, and I don’t think many young people realize that today. But the rewards are so great. I can’t remember what my life was like before, and I can’t imagine not being married to Ronnie.When two people really love each other they help each other stay alive and grow. There’s nothing more fulfilling than to become a complete person for the first time. I suppose it boils down to being willing to try to understand, to give of yourself, to be supportive and not to let the sun go down on an argument.

I hope that yours will be a happy road ahead. I’m afraid I’ve rambled a bit, and of course, I can only speak for myself. However, when I married, my life took on an added meaning and depth and truly began. I’m sure yours will too.

I knew it was very important for Ronnie, at the end of each day, to be able to put politics behind him and come home to his peaceful life with the children and me. He didn’t like to go out after work, to stop off at Frank Fat’s—the place everyone else in government went to for a drink. It had been the same way when he was in pictures—he never stayed around and had a drink with the fellows in the dressing room. He just came home. And in Sacramento, he wanted to close the door of his office and walk away. I think this helped keep him sane in the turbulent years of the sixties and early seventies, when the world seemed to go crazy. I think it also gave him a chance to think calmly, to sort out problems while he puttered around at home.

(“Jess Plain Jess” in this letter is Jesse Unruh, a California state legislator and Ronnie’s Democratic opponent in the 1970 gubernatorial election.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

March 4–70

My Darling

Sometimes it must seem as if the world is made up of Jess Plain Jess, Campus Slobs and Legislators—but that is only the outer layer.

Underneath is the place where I think about you round the clock and across the calendar—I spend most of my time there. I may get mixed up about March 2
^nd
but never March 4—for 18 years it has been March 4 every day. Only this March 4 I’m 18 times as much in love as on that first one when I was really born.

I’m as grateful as I am in love.

Guv

Even though Ronnie’s political career uprooted us to Sacramento, as it eventually would to Washington, our sense of having a solid home together never changed.We didn’t feel the rootlessness that many politicians and their families say they experience. So long as we had each other, we
were
home. That feeling of home was something very special and necessary to Ronnie and is, I think, what he refers to when he calls himself “the most married man in the world” in the next letter. Our home was his base, a source of comfort and strength. It was the same way for me.

Ronnie’s letter on our eighteenth wedding anniversary.

A Valentine and a doodle.

He wrote me this letter to celebrate our nineteen years of marriage (“some say 20,” Ronnie wrote, referring to the fact that in the year before our wedding, we were together so much that we might as well have been married).

STAT E OF CALIFORNIA

GOVERNOR’S OFFICE

[March 4, 1971]

Dear Mrs. Reagan

Your loving, faithful devotion has been observed these 19 (some say 20) years. There are no words to describe the happiness you have brought to the Gov. It is no secret that he is the most married man in the world and would be totally lost and desolate without you.

It seemed to me you should know this and be aware of how essential you are in this man’s life. By his own admission, he is completely in love with you and happier than even a Gov. deserves.

With Love & Appreciation

—Your In Luv Guv.          

Being together made both of us feel whole, which had been true for Ronnie and me right from the start. It was why our lives had merged together so very naturally at first and why, after just a matter of months, it had seemed like we’d been together for years. It was also why, by the 1970s, when we were measuring our time together in decades rather than years, it was almost impossible to believe that we’d ever had separate lives.

(Birthdays became unbelievable for other reasons. “I don’t care what the number is,” Ronnie once wrote, diplomatically. “It only means more and more and more. I love you infinitely much.” )

STATE OF CALIFORNIA

GOVERNOR’S OFFICE

[March 4, 1972]

My Darling Wife

This note is to warn you of a diabolical plot entered into by some of our so-called friends—(ha) calendar makers and even our own children. These and others would have you believe we’ve been married 20 years.

20 minutes maybe—but never 20 years. In the first place it is a known fact that a human cannot sustain the high level of happiness I feel for more than a few minutes—and my happiness keeps on increasing.

I will confess to one puzzlement but I’m sure it is just some trick perpetrated by our friends—(Ha Again!) I cant remember ever being without you and I know I was born more than 20 min’s ago.

Oh well—that isn’t important The important thing is I don’t want to be without you for the next 20 years, or 40, or however many there are. I’ve gotten very used to being happy and I love you very much indeed.