Nancy Reagan Remembered

by Ken Schwartz

Former first lady Nancy Reagan was remembered with laughter and tears Friday by 1,000 invited mourners during her funeral at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Nancy Reagan was 94 when she died of heart failure Sunday in Bel Air, California.

Current first lady Michelle Obama represented the White House at Friday's service. President Barack Obama said in his weekly address Saturday that "as president, I know just how important it is to have a strong life partner and President Reagan was as lucky as I am."

A long list of Reagan family friends, ranging from conservative Republicans to left-wing Democrats, attended the funeral. They included members of White House families going back nearly 60 years, including Caroline Kennedy, Steven Ford, former President George W. Bush, and ex-first ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Rosalynn Carter.

Actors Tom Selleck and Bo Derek and singers Johnny Mantis and Wayne Newton were among the Hollywood elite.

Tough, dedicated to husband

Nancy Reagan was remembered as a tough and often stubborn woman, but someone who was 100 percent devoted to her late husband, President Ronald Reagan.

Daughter Patti Davis said the one sure way to get on Nancy Reagan's bad side was to show even the smallest bit of disrespect to her husband.

She recalls seeing them sitting together on a California beach at sunset — not talking or moving, just sitting.

Davis recalled how, as a young girl, she fell and cracked her skull, and Nancy Reagan tenderly held her head with one hand while driving with the other to a hospital emergency room.

She also had the mourners laughing with a story about his father getting a rubdown from a massage therapist. She said Nancy Reagan sneaked into the room, kissed her prone husband on the back of the neck, and snuck out, leaving the perplexed Reagan to believe it was the burly massage therapist who kissed him.

Advocacy for stem cell research

When Ronald Reagan died from complications of Alzheimer's disease in 2004, Nancy Reagan became an inexhaustible advocate for stem cell research, which doctors believe could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's.

Obama said he was "proud" that Nancy Reagan was one of the first people he called when he signed an order to resume federal stem cell research.

"Nobody understood better than Nancy Reagan the importance of pursuing treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives," the president said.

Obama ordered all U.S. flags on government buildings flown at half-staff until Friday night, when Reagan's casket was put in the ground next to her beloved husband at the presidential library named for him.

Besides Patti Davis and son Ron Reagan, Nancy Reagan is survived by a stepson, Michael, who Ronald Reagan adopted during his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman.

US Representative Donald Payne Dead at 77

Representative Donald Payne, the U.S. state of New Jersey's first black congressman, and a dedicated advocate for democracy in Africa, has died after a battle with colon cancer.

Sources close to the 77-year-old Payne say he died Tuesday at a New Jersey hospital. Payne announced last month that he was undergoing cancer treatment.

The Democratic lawmaker had held his congressional seat since 1988 and was elected to a twelfth term in 2010.

Payne was well-known for his work on African issues, serving as ranking member of the House subcommittee on Africa and previously, chairman.

Payne visited the African continent many times for foreign affairs matters. During a visit to Somalia in April 2009, insurgents fired mortar shells toward the Mogadishu airport as he was departing the capital city by plane.

Payne left the airport safely, but there were civilian injuries from the mortar fire.

Payne had been in Somalia to meet with the president and prime minister on piracy, security and cooperation.

About a month later, he led a fast for Sudan's Darfur region, calling on Congress and the Obama administration to increase opposition to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, whom he accused of “unspeakable atrocities.”

In 2004, Payne helped win passage of a resolution declaring the killing in Darfur genocide, and he also authored the Sudan Peace Act, facilitating famine relief efforts.

Payne also was a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and headed the group's nonprofit foundation.

Vaclav Havel Dies at Age 75

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who led the peaceful revolution that toppled communism in the former Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 75.

A spokeswoman said Mr. Havel died in his sleep early Sunday at his weekend house in the northern Czech Republic with his wife and a nun at his side. A former chain smoker, he had a history of chronic respiratory problems that physicians traced back to his Cold War years in communist prisons.

Mr. Havel was his country's first democratically-elected president after the 1989 non-violent “Velvet Revolution” that ended four decades of communist repression. On taking office, he oversaw Czechoslovakia's transition to a free-market economy and democracy, as well as its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in a statement Sunday, praised Mr. Havel's “moral leadership,” saying he “lived with a spirit of hope.” He said the Czech leader's peaceful resistance “shook the foundations of an empire” and “exposed the emptiness of a repressive (communist) ideology.”

In Prague, where black flag flew over Prague Castle, the presidential seat, Czech citizens lighted candles at the monument to the Velvet Revolution.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Mr. Havel as “a great European” who fought for freedom on the continent, while British Prime Minister David Cameron said all of Europe owes the former president a “profound debt” for bringing freedom and democracy to the continent.

Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who spurred the fall of communism in his homeland, said Vaclav Havel's voice will “be greatly missed” in Europe, “above all now when it is experiencing a great crisis.”

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, in a message posted on Twitter, called the Czech icon “a voice for freedom” and “one of the greatest Europeans of our age.”

Mr. Havel left office in 2003, just months before the Czech Republic and Slovakia joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought the Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when the republic joined NATO in 1999. But he said his proudest presidential moment was the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact – the Moscow-led military alliance that lasted until 1991.

Mr. Havel first rose to prominence after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the “Prague Spring” reforms of Alexander Dubcek and other liberally-minded communists in the former Czechoslovakia. His plays were then banned by hardliners installed by Moscow who sought to crush any traces of those reforms.

However, he continued to write a series of underground essays widely seen as some of the most damning critiques of what communism did to society and the individual in post-World War Two Europe.

Photo by Henryk Prykiel: Václav Havel, 1991.