She died on Sunday, March 6th 2016, at age 94, from congestive heart failure. Apart from being the First Lady of the United States (1981-1989), she was also the only woman that stood as an entire influence to Ronald Reagan.
Particularly dear to Americans – even after 1989, when she ceased to be the First Lady. Famous for her campaign against drug use in the 80s and after her husband’s death, known as a staunch advocate of the stem cells’ use in the research on Alzheimer’s illness. But few know about her contribution to the fight against Aids, at a time when Reagan even refused to speak publicly about it…
More specifically, he has always been the most hated President of the United States amongst the LGBT community, because he had avoided to give any public speech on the epidemic until 1987, despite the huge number of people who had already been dead from the virus. In fact, Nancy Reagan was the one to persuade him to approve Aids funding, on the occasion of the death of their faithful friend and actor Rod Hudson. Hudson himself had asked for their help – since he was not French – in order to be sent into a military hospital in France, which promised a miracle cure for Aids. The Reagans refused it, but Nancy wanted to alert the Press that her husband had spoken with Hudson on the phone… Even if the former was talking about hepatitis whenever he was referring to the latter’s condition…
As Nancy Reagan has said in an interview in Marie Claire: “The woman is like a tea bag. You don’t know how strong she is until you put her in hot water ..”
Sources: advocate, huffingtonpost
