NANCY REAGAN DEAD AT 94 – AT 11:58 A.M. ET:   She served as first lady for her husband's two presidential terms.  With her at his side he became the most consequential president of our times.

She was never that popular, never as active or outgoing as, say, Eleanor Roosevelt, or as glamorous as Jacqueline Kennedy.  But her devotion to her husband and his well being was touching, and continued until his death.  She maintained a dignified, reserved presence in the years since leaving the White House.   From Fox: 

Nancy Reagan, the widow of President Ronald Reagan and passionately devoted keeper of his flame, died Sunday at 94, Fox News has confirmed.

Her cause of death was not immediately released, however, Reagan, whose husband died in 2004, had appeared frail after suffering several falls in recent years. In May 2012 it was disclosed she had broken several ribs in a fall at her Los Angeles home six weeks earlier.

Although she initially worked as an actress, the former first lady was, first and foremost, Mrs. Ronald Reagan.

"My life really began when I married my husband," Nancy Reagan once said and for 52 years of marriage they were a fiercely close and devoted couple.

"Thank God we found each other," she said in a 1998 interview. "Can't imagine life without him."

Nancy Davis Reagan was born July 6, 1921 in New York City as Anne Frances Robbins. Her father was Kenneth Seymour Robbins, a used car salesman, and her mother Edith P. Luckett, was an actress. She became known as Nancy as a child.

Her parents divorced when she was young and her mother remarried Dr. Loyal Davis, a Chicago neurosurgeon, who adopted her.

She took his name and attended private school in Chicago, followed by Smith College, where she majored in drama.

COMMENT:  Her death will remind us of the Reagan era.  Reagan came to office laughed at by many as a warmed-over movie actor, and feared by the Republican establishment as a man who might actually mean what he said.  When he left office, the Cold War was essentially over, ended largely on our terms, and without firing a shot. 

Reagan's great gift domestically, in my view, was to restore American morale, which had taken a beating during the upheavals of the sixties and early seventies, and had shrunk during the administration of Jimmy Carter. 

March 6, 2016