E-mail a friendPatti Davis
airdate November 23, 2004
The daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Patti Davis was often portrayed as the "wild child" of the family. She was politically liberal and appeared in TV shows and films before writing her first novel. She's continued to pen best-selling books, including The Long Goodbye, a memoir of her father, and has had articles published in many magazines and newspapers. Her new book, The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us, is a series of interviews with well-known women about their relationships with their mothers.
Patti Davis
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Patti Davis to the program. The accomplished author is of course the daughter of President Ronald Wilson Reagan. Her latest book is a moving memoir about her father's final years called 'The Long Goodbye.' There you see the cover on your screen. Patti Davis, nice to meet you.
Patti Davis: Thank you.
Tavis: Glad to have you here. You were working double time. You did the book and the audio book at the same time?
Davis: Uh, well, no. I'd finished the book, and then they--
Tavis: Well, I mean 'cause it came out... Yeah. You know what I mean.
Davis: Yeah. I mean, they asked me if I wanted to read it, so read it. I actually read the audio in one day.
Tavis: Is this your fir--In one day?
Davis: Mm-hmm.
Tavis: This your first audio book?
Davis: Um, I did--I think I did my autobiography years and years ago.
Tavis: Yeah. I was about to ask you what you--what the experience of doing the audio book was like. If you enjoy...
Davis: I did. I had a little--I got a little emotional toward the end of the part. I was--I was fine through-- It's an abridged version. I was fine through the bulk of it. Then when I got to the end, I had to go, 'Can we stop for a moment, please?'
Tavis: Was there a particular passage or moment that you recall that got you a little choked up near the end?
Davis: Yeah. I think it was after my father's death and how we would remember him, how we would think of him and sort of feel him everywhere and look for him. I remember it was the passage.
Tavis: There were-- Admittedly I didn't always share your father's politics, but-- And many Americans didn't. Clearly many Americans did, because he won two terms. But there are two things about him that I always--that I've come to admire. The first is really silly, but it means a great deal to me. I have never seen anybody make a brown suit look as good as your father did. I mean, it's such-- That's just a Tavis Smiley thing. I mean, brown does not look good on everybody, but Ronald Reagan could make a brown suit really--a chocolate brown suit look really nice, and I always liked that about your father, number one.
That said, there are two things I've come to respect about your father. One is--And I shouldn't just respect your father. About your family, really. The way that you all protected his privacy. I mean, for someone to lived with Alzheimer's for 10 years after the diagnosis to be in the public eye and the way that your father lived his life, you all respectfully shut that thing down. I mean, the privacy around this-- Tell me how did you all manage to do that? And--Yeah. How did you manage--How'd you pull that off?
Davis: Easily, I think. You know, once in a while, there was some sort of intrusion or somebody trying to intrude, but I don't think there was a huge appetite for it, actually, because I think people did care about my father so much and really adored him as a man that I don't think, even in a tabloid sense, there was this desire to, you know, unearth details of his disease.
Tavis: What were--I mean, you say, 'easily.' What were the challenges, though, to trying to keep that zone of privacy? Because people might not have been, you know, trying to break--jump over the wall and take pictures through the window, but we do live in a world where people place a value, a high value on being able to get information that other folk don't have, so if anybody thought they had something on Ronald Reagan, you would say--You would see 'Exclusive. So-and-so has--'
Davis: I'll tell what did happen often during the years is there would just be--These rumors would flare up that my father was--that was it, he was dying, or sometimes that he was already dead. And my mother would pick up the phone sometimes, and it would be a journalist on the other end going, 'Hi. Uh, we're just checking. Is Ronald Reagan dead?' You know? And she would-- Well, it was rather appalling for her, but I mean, in a certain sense, you sort of get used to that. It's not devastating, but it's rather unpleasant. So that would happen.
But, you know, I think we also got a little bit more relaxed about Alzheimer's and about what it is the longer it went on. When he did break his hip, when he was bedridden, we couldn't lie and say, 'Oh, he's up walking around and having conversations,' you know. I mean, that wouldn't--He wouldn't have wanted that. That wouldn't be fair to other families who are going through this. So the longer it went on and the more comfortable we as a society got about talking about Alzheimer's, we got a little bit more relaxed.
One interviewer for this book said to me, she said, 'I sense that you were always very careful in this book about sort of staying on one side of a line, not giving too many details, you know, about his--' And she said, 'Was that deliberate?' And I said, 'Well, of course.' I mean, I didn't have to think about it all the time, but subconsciously, it was-- Absolutely it was deliberate. I mean, I wanted to protect my father's dignity. And she said, 'Well, you know, but some people think those details are important in the realm of knowing about the disease.' I said, 'Well, fine. They can get them from someone else, then, because you're not gonna get 'em from me,' you know.
Tavis: The other thing I have really come to admire and respect about your family is the way that you all put your father to rest. Um, the whole way that this thing was rolled out, the services, the time of day, the sunset, the trip back East, the trip back West. I mean, like Ronald Reagan or loathe Ronald Reagan, you have to respect the way and the style and the grace with which he was laid to rest. How much were you involved in that planning? How aware of that were you? Because it was just--it was handled, I mean, so smoothly.
Davis: I wasn't involved in any of it. With any President, they do--they sort of do updates, I think, every year, you know, with the military and all of that. And so I knew that everything had been planned, but I didn't--I sort of knew, you know, Washington and the library and everything, but I didn't know in detail until that week. I don't think any of us did.
Tavis: Did you get a certain bit of comfort, though, from not just being able to see how people responded to his death, but indeed just the dignity with which the thing, the way it was rolled out?
Davis: Yes. It was-- That week was magical and tremendously comforting to my whole family. And part of it was the pageantry and the ceremony of it, and, you know, Joseph Campbell has written a lot about the importance of ceremony, and I really understood that to the depth of my being. Whether it's--I mean, somebody doesn't have to have that kind of pageantry and Air Force One and the military, but to have something, something that is ceremonial is very--It sort of bathes your wounds for a while, you know?
Tavis: Did you at any point, though, during that week, although you appreciated the way it unfolded, at any point in that week, as we were watching you day after day, did you wish that this were over at this point?
Davis: No. I didn't want to be over.
Tavis: Oh, wow.
Davis: No, I didn't want it to be over. No. And I think I probably speak for my family. Because it held us above the water line. You know, that week with all of hundreds of thousands of people everywhere we went crowding freeways, standing on freeway overpasses. I mean, it was unbelievable, and it really did kind of keep us above the water line. And when the week ended--And we knew that that obviously was coming, that we would have to inhabit our grief and wake up every morning and sort of, you know, slog through the day learning how to miss our-- my father differently, I said to my brother the last day before we got to the library, you know, 'I don't want this week to end. Maybe--maybe they'd let us keep Air Force One a little longer and we'd just fly around a little more, go to some more states.'
Tavis: I'm glad you said you had to learn how to miss your father differently. I think I know what you meant by that. 'Cause I was just about to ask, when one has essentially been incapacitated for a number of years, one would think that you didn't have the most active engagement with him anyway. So explain what you mean by 'miss him differently.'
Davis: Well, this whole book, 'The Long Goodbye,' is about learning to miss my father in the stages of Alzheimer's and also learning that past that disease is his soul, which I don't think can have Alzheimer's. So, the whole journey has been one of missing him and also finding him. But there is something very powerful about the physical presence of that person not being there, walking past that room. You can still smell him, you know, in the room. His scent was there, and to not... When I went back up that night, that evening, I mean, I ran home and changed clothes and went back to be with my mother. Just to walk by that room and it was empty of him, it does hit you with a different place in your being.
Tavis: So even when--even though someone for 10 years is not the person that you knew prior to that period...
Davis: Right.
Tavis: Prior to the illness, are you telling me that you'd still rather have that person around, even in that condition, rather have the disease?
Davis: No.
Tavis: Transition that person earlier?
Davis: Well, you know, it's a whole cocktail of emotions that you go through. I think in any long, fatal disease, but I would think particularly with Alzheimer's, you do see how relentlessly the disease chips away at that person, and you don't want it to steal. And I write about that a lot in here. At various stages I go, 'Oh, God, I don't want any more of him to be eroded.' But then of course the only other choice is death, you know, and we feel very, I think, very self-conscious talking about that in this society. But it's-- If you-- I don't believe the soul can be sick. I don't believe the soul can die, so my father is still around. Yet those are in the realm of that disease, so those are the only two choices.
Tavis: I have just about 45 seconds left here. You say that the only disease--the only alternative is death. That's true as we speak, but with research, that may change, and you all in your family are very supportive of stem cell research.
Davis: Yes. I do think that Alzheimer's will be cured by stem cell research, after many other diseases. Diabetes, Parkinson's are more--are easier to treat with stem cells. Alzheimer's more complicated, but I do think it will happen.
Tavis: I assume you were happy again that here of California, at least, first state to really pass legislation to increase funding for stem cell research.
Davis: Yeah. I hope that other states--Well, that's our only option for the next four years, because this administration is not going to do it.
Tavis: The book is 'The Long Goodbye,' by Patti Davis, the story of her life and relationship and the process of dealing with the loss of her father, the former President of this country, out of California, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Patti, nice to see you.
Davis: Thank you so much.
Tavis: You got to sign this for me before you leave.
Davis: Sure.
Tavis: All right. We'll get a pen for you. Just a second. Up next on this program, actor Craig T. Nelson. Stay with us.
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