On the 13th death anniversary of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States of America and the former Governor of California, we remember this iconic politician.
A Republican, he was the oldest President of the States at 69 and had won against Democrat Jimmy Carter. His two terms spanned between 1981 and 1989.
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He was born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois to Democrat parents, Jack and Nelle Reagan. He had an older brother Neil. Reagan majored in Economics at Eureka College in Illinois.
He worked as a radio broadcaster before turning to professional acting and featured in 52-odd movies. While his parents were liberals, Reagan got more inclined towards conservative ideologies by his adulthood.
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Reagan would be remembered for exuberant spending on the defense budget and the eventual end of the Cold War between America and Russia in 1991.
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He had divorced actress Jane Wyman with whom he had two children - Michael Reagan and Maureen Reagan who died of brain cancer three years before his death.
He divorced Wyman, and a few years later married Nancy Davis and had two children, Ronald Jr. and Patty Davis. They led a happy marriage for five decades with Davis as a highly influential and encouraging figure in the President’s life.
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In 1981, he was shot in an assassination attempt by John Hinkley outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. The bullets barely missed his heart.
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The professional boxer and an influential American personality, Muhammad Ali had endorsed the Republican Reagan for the 1984 re-election, much to critics’ shock and disapproval.
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He had a surgery for colon cancer in 1985, and prostate and skin cancer surgeries in 1987. In 1994, Reagan declared that he had Alzheimer’s. As his health gradually declined, he receded to his house with his wife Nancy and their children.
(Image Courtesy: People)
On June 5, 2004, he died at his home in LA, California. He was 93 when he breathed his last.
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