Former AP reporter recalls Nancy Reagan

The president was delivering a speech that evening at the Century Plaza Hotel and I was tipped that Mrs. Reagan was stopping to look at the gated home at 666 Saint Cloud Rd.

While touring the special Reagan suite at the Century Plaza, Mrs. Reagan was thrilled to see a video of that film playing on a TV.

[...] she looked at me and tersely said: "I'm starving."

In 1992, I was the only reporter at the Reagan's Rancho del Cielo in Santa Barbara County when former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, stopped for a visit.

Mrs. Reagan smiled when Gorbachev shook his head in disbelief upon seeing his onetime Cold War adversary had his own Chevron gas pump next to the tack house.

Mrs. Reagan was the gatekeeper of the Reagan legacy, showing up year after year for Ronald Reagan Presidential Library board meetings, dignitary speeches and special events while her husband's Alzheimer's disease progressed.