Nancy Reagan remembered for her forceful, private style

NEW YORK (AP) — Unlike other presidential wives, Nancy Reagan didn't testify before Congress about health care, celebrate controversial Supreme Court decisions or sit in on Cabinet meetings.

Ronald Reagan had promised to champion conservative values when elected in 1980, and Nancy Reagan was in some ways a throwback to a more old-fashioned approach.

Betty Ford had spoken candidly about gun control, premarital sex and her surgery for breast cancer and praised the ruling of Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to abortion, as "the best thing in the world."

The effectiveness of "Just Say No" remains in dispute, but it became a catchphrase (and punchline) for the 1980s and part of an effort that included drug-free zones and "zero tolerance" policies in schools.

Reagan had other causes and in her post-Washington years openly broke with conservatives by advocating (and allying herself with the liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy) for embryonic stem cell research for Alzheimer's, the disease which afflicted her husband.

Often in tandem with such White House moderates as Chief of Staff James Baker and longtime adviser Michael Deaver, she favored better relations with the Soviet Union, opposed high military spending and urged the president to speak openly about AIDS.