Grande Peggy - The president will see you now: my stories and lessons from Ronald Reagans final years

March 6, 2016

A s the jet banked over Los Angeles International Airport, I felt happy to be coming home after an exhausting two-week, three-state business trip. When the plane was wheels down, I instinctively switched on my phone and it vibrated so frantically I feared it was broken. A steady stream of text messages and emails scrolled pastone at a timenot stopping long enough for me to read each in full. They continued one after the other: dozens of emails and nearly a hundred text messages. My pulse was racing as I caught key words and phrases that jumped off the screen: Peggy, you must be heartbroken. My thoughts are with you. Im sorry for your loss. The world will never see another First Lady like her. She will be missed. I put the phone down for a second to absorb the news. Mrs. Reagan had passed away while I was in the air. I had anticipated this day for years, but that did not lessen my shock and sorrow now that it had arrived.

At that momentas the plane taxied to the terminalI was transported back to that first day twenty-seven years ago. I had been a young woman still in college when I joined the presidents staff. This was my dream job, one I held for a decade, from just a few months after he left the White House until he withdrew from public life. The experience transformed my life. Although it had been seventeen years since I worked for him full-time, my response to the news was automatic. I knew I would be going from the airport directly into action, to do whatever the former First Family needed from me.

My phone rang and I startled.

Peggy, where have you been? asked a former Office of Ronald Reagan colleague. We have been trying to reach you for hours.

My plane just landed, I said, gathering my things as quickly as I could. Im still on the plane. I cant really talk but I can listen. What do you need me to do?

We need you to go straight to Gates, Kingsley and Gates Moeller Murphy funeral home in Santa Monica. A Secret Service agent just arrived there. We will meet you there in about an hour.

Im on my way.

The people who had emailed, called, and texted me while I was in the air were colleagues in the years I worked for the Reagans, people who knew of my close personal connection, and friends who knew I would step back into action professionally but also would be personally grieving. They all assumed that I already knew. I was always in the know. Yet this was not like when President Reagan passed away and I was among the first to hear before it was released publicly. This time I felt as if I was the last to hear. It was devastating both ways. Knowing how quickly Reagan staffers leap into action, I assumed that the previously established funeral arrangements were well under way, and I would need to jump in with both feet at full speed.

Every death results in a wave of decisions and tasks that can overwhelm friends and family members. In the case of a former First Lady, the additional layers of logistics and complexity are enormous. Implementation would require an army, yet, as I would discover, none would manifest. A few dozen dedicated people would do as I had donewalk away from their lives, families, and other commitments to ensure that Mrs. Reagan was properly laid to rest and would be remembered in a way that was fitting.

As I waited for the other passengers to disembark the plane, I took out two stapled sheets of paper folded neatly into eighths that I had carefully and purposefully tucked in a secure pocket of my purse. I had transferred that now dog-eared document from purse to purse for three years, since my role in the plan for the First Ladys funeral was last updated. My husband, Greg, often teases me about my perpetual, and perhaps compulsive, state of readiness, but small things like this are part of my routine so that I am always prepared for a day just like the one that stretched before me. I unfolded the paper carefully, knowing that the creases made it fragile. On it was a list of people I had been assigned to call the moment that I knew Mrs. Reagan had died. As I walked through the airport to the baggage claim, I started making those calls.

The names on the list were people I knew well, part of the core group. We all had the honor of serving the Reagans, a high point in our lives. We were proud to be associated with them and were very much a family. There were a few people on my list who had preceded me working for the Reagans, and a few who had stayed on after I left. We had shared a unique experience and now, this loss.

As I glanced down the list, I pictured the presidents stately offices in Century City and remembered the awestruck young woman who had arrived for a job interview twenty-seven years earlier. Many of the people I was about to call had helped guide me in my journey from nave college student to someone who was comfortable in the world of motorcades and private jets, and could remain composed when surrounded by some of the most famous people on Earth. I knew when I called Id be catching some of them in airports on their way to Los Angeles. All of us, the moment that we heard, would clear the week ahead to do what we could to ensure that everything came off perfectly, pulling together for one final event, our last time to collaborate as a fine-tuned machine.