As President Obama stated that she redefined the role of the first lady but did the late former US First Lady Nancy Reagan really redefined that role?
By: Ringo Bones
On March 6, 2016, it was announced that the former US First
Lady Nancy Reagan passed away aged 94 of congestive heart failure. Well known
for her fierce support of her husband and former US President Ronald Reagan
even back when he was still the governor of California. As stated by US
President Barack Obama that former US First Lady Nancy Reagan redefined the
role of the first lady, I wondered if she just advanced what former First lady
Betty Ford when she established the Betty Ford Clinic by tackling the then
endemic substance abuse problem of America. Nancy Reagan eventually launched
her “Just Say No” anti-drugs program back in 1986 which, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, managed to keep millions of Americans away from drug addiction
during the latter half of the 1980s.
A former actress who met Ronald Reagan back in the 1950s, Nancy
Reagan advocated for worthy causes that previous first ladies have previously shied
away from. During the first half of the 1990s, Nancy Reagan advocated for
stem-cell research for the cure for Alzheimer’s which her husband was affected
before passing away back in 2004. Her advocacy for stem-cell research seems to
ran counter with the hard-line pro-life anti-abortion stance of the US
Republican Party which her husband former US President Ronald Reagan was
affiliated to.
After her husband Ronald Reagan passed away back in 2004,
she largely withdrew from public life although she recently spoke out against
the current GOP frontrunner Donald J. Trump and said that she was glad her
husband Ronnie is no longer alive to witness this fiasco. Nancy Reagan will be
laid to rest beside her husband Ronald Reagan in the Ronald Reagan Memorial
Library in Santa Barbara, California.
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