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Ronald Reagan’s final curtain

By Paul Kengor, Ph.D.

It was a year ago that Ronald Reagan passed away. The week that followed his death was extraordinary; it was a week not witnessed since the death of John F. Kennedy.

Nielsen Media said that 21 million viewers watched the Friday, June 11, memorial ceremony for Reagan in Washington and another 35 million tuned in for the evening burial service in Simi Valley, Calif.

A number of dramatic occurrences happened that week, many of which were never seen by those millions of TV viewers. I’d like to share a few:

On Saturday afternoon, June 5, 2004, Ronald Reagan lay unconscious. As his final heavy breaths became apparent, something shocking happened: At the last moment, his eyes somehow opened one final time, and he stared directly at the love of his life, at Nancy, with eyes that had not opened for days.

“They weren’t chalky or vague,” said Patti. “They were clear and blue and full of love, and then they closed with his last breath.”

Ron confirmed: “[L]iterally, with his last breath, he turned his head, opened his eyes wide, and ... looked right at my mother, and then he was gone.”

Ron remembered that his father had once written to Nancy that he wanted her to be the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing he ever saw, and that is precisely what happened.

A stunned, sobbing Nancy summoned a handful of parting words, telling her husband that his goodbye glance was the greatest gift he could have given her.

Just a month earlier she had announced, “Ronnie’s long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him.” Now, her husband of 52 years had somehow reached her.

Ronald Reagan had been granted one last look of appreciation to the woman who cared for him all those years, who held his hand until the very end.

Numerous letters of condolence immediately followed, from names like Gorbachev and John Paul II to Orland (Illinois) Park Police Chief Timothy McCarthy, the secret serviceman who in March 1981 turned himself into a human shield as John Hinckley’s bullets zipped toward the president.

McCarthy took a bullet and ensured eight years in the White House for Ronald Reagan, not to mention another two decades of life.

Religious leaders came forward with reflections. Billy Graham revealed that he had often visited Reagan as he lay suffering. Reagan was unable to respond, though Nancy told Graham, “When you prayed, I think he knew you were here.”

An intriguing story was shared by a Dr. Roger Peele, who divulged a secret he carried for decades: Though Reagan had already forgiven John Hinckley, he was inspired to do so in person.

In 1983, he tried to arrange a private meeting. Peele was Hinckley’s doctor, and he discussed the option with Reagan. “[H]e really wanted to do it,” said Peele over 20 years later. But, Reagan “said he only wanted to do what was in Mr. Hinckley’s best interests.” Peele advised against the meeting; the president accepted his decision.

As Peele finally talked, so did the former “captive peoples” of Eastern Europe, as Reagan called them.

In Romania, unshackled from the chains of the Iron Curtain, President Ion Iliescu praised Reagan for ending the Cold War.

In free Prague, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, once a political prisoner under communism, said he was deeply moved by the news of Reagan’s death, a man who “undoubtedly contributed to the fall of communism.”

From liberated Estonia, a writer named Juri Estam wrote a piece titled “Ronald Reagan: the late ‘President of Eastern Europe.’”

In unified Berlin, a proposal was immediately offered to name a square or street after Reagan.

The most moving day of that week was the Friday, June 11, memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington. Rabbi Harold Kushner read Isaiah 40:31: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.”

Ronald Reagan had once called this verse his “formula” for completing his “crusade for freedom” to undermine Soviet communism.

Rabbi Kushner could not have known that the verse was also a favorite of the late Rev. Ben Cleaver, who in the 1920s became the spiritually most formative male figure in Ronald Reagan’s long life.

Of all the emotional moments that day, among the most meaningful happened Friday evening in California during the final procession to Reagan’s casket:

Lady Margaret Thatcher, who more than any leader supported Reagan’s anti-communist crusade, and who flew to California in her weak condition from Washington, slowly stepped to the casket alone and gradually bowed. It was literally at that moment that the sun dropped completely below the horizon.

Thatcher’s stoic goodbye was perhaps the most fitting image of the week: Though Reagan had lived a multi-faceted life, the Cold War struggle provided the bookends and the core of his life.

Since the late 1940s, he had publicly opposed Soviet communism. In the 1980s he pursued a comprehensive plan to reverse the Soviet empire. In 1989, the final year of his presidency, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe. Two years later, the USSR literally disintegrated.

The Cold War was the grand ideological battle of the 20th century, born in Russia in the 1910s, the decade Reagan was born, and ending there in the century’s last decade. The final chapter in that story closed a year ago with the death of Ronald Reagan.