Former First Lady Nancy Reagan moved to California to pursue a career in acting, but a meeting with the president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1950 led her to a different kind of role that would take her from Southern California to Sacramento and on to the White House.
Reagan died Sunday at her home in Bel-Air at age 94. She moved with husband Ronald Reagan to the Los Angeles neighborhood after his second term as president ended, marking the couple's return to California -- the place where they met and shared much of their remarkable lives together.
"She served our country and the state of California with class," former First Lady of California Maria Shriver tweeted Sunday morning.
Born Anne Frances Robbins in New York City, she was adopted and gained a new last name from her stepfather, Dr. Loyal Davis, a Chicago physician. Anne Davis went by the nickname Nancy as she grew up and graduated from Smith College in 1943, did some acting on the Broadway stage, and broke into the movies when MGM's George Cukor gave her a bit part in 1949's "East Side, West Side."
The studio changed her first name to Nancy.
It was during her Hollywood career -- she made eleven films -- that she met the love of her life, Ronald Reagan. In her memoir, "My Turn," she wrote that her life really began when they met in 1950.
He was president of the Screen Actors Guild and she was seeking help with a problem: Her name had been wrongly included on a published list of suspected communist sympathizers. They discussed it over dinner, and she later wrote that she realized on that first blind date "he was everything that I wanted."
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They dated for about three years, often spending time at his Southern California ranch. They wed on March 4, 1952 at the unassuming Little Brown Church in the Valley on Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Studio City.
Actor-friend William Holden and his wife served as witnesses. Reagan later said acting was never really a career for her -- just something to do until she got married.
"I was the happiest girl in the world when 'I' became 'we,'" she said.
Together, they purchased a home in the Pacific Palisades, where they lived until a move to Sacramento in 1966. They had two children together, Patty and Ron Jr., and she also helped raise Ronald Reagan's two children with his first wife, Jane Wyman.
"Hellcats Of the Navy" in 1957 was the only movie they appeared together in, but she continued to act in TV and minor movie roles.
But she is best known for her role as adviser, counselor and protector of Ronald Reagan. After he delivered a well-received speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention, a group of wealthy Southland donors convinced the couple that he should run for governor in 1966, thrusting Nancy Reagan into the political spotlight.
They were a team, and Nancy Reagan actively peppered campaign advisers with strategy and tactical recommendations, according to memoirs written by the campaign team. Ronald Reagan won the governorship, and they moved to Sacramento, into a dilapidated Victorian governor's mansion that she hated. Gov. Reagan's term ended in 1973 and the family returned to Pacific Palisades.
That's where donors met with the couple in 1974, planning a White House run to challenge the incumbent G.O.P. president, Gerald Ford. Reagan narrowly lost the race for the nomination. Nancy Reagan played an active role in the 1980 presidential campaign, playing what the New York Times called "a leading role in the firing" of one campaign manager.
In October, 1987, the First Lady received a mastectomy fro breast cancer, and she later went on television from the White House to promote cancer awareness and mammograms. In 1988, at the end of Reagan terms in Washington, the couple retired to a house in Bel Air: the street number was changed from 666 to 668 at the request of Nancy Reagan, who was superstitious and who had made use of a psychic to guide her husband during his presidency.
The Reagans travelled between Bel Air, and the Reagan's ranch at Rancho del Cielo, in the mountains above Santa Barbara. The ranch was sold when the ex- president was diagnosed with Alzheimer's June, 2004.
Alzheimer's awareness became Nancy Reagan's new campaign, along with burnishing her husband's name and reputation.
"Nancy Reagan lived a remarkable life and will be remembered for her strength and grace," said California Gov. Jerry Brown. "On behalf of all Californians, Anne and I extend our deepest condolences to the Reagan family."
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described her as a First Lady "with unbelievable power, class and grace" who "left her mark on the world."
After Ronald Reagan's death in 2004, Nancy Reagan turned over her husband's diaries to biographer Douglas Brinkley with the admonitions not to use them to interpret current events, and that her husband was a pragmatic conservative, not an ideologue.
Nancy Reagan made one of her last public appearances at the centennial of her husband's birth, in February, 2011, on the sun-drenched western porch of the Reagan Library. The Pacific Ocean was on the western horizon, his grave to her side.
"I know that Ronnie would be thrilled, and is thrilled to have all of you sharing his 100th birthday," the frail-looking widow said. "It doesn't seem possible but that's what it is."
Nancy Reagan died of congestive heart failure Sunday in her sleep, according to a spokeswoman. Plans were being readied Sunday for burial next to her husband at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, said the foundation's spokeswoman, Joanne Drake.
Flowers were left at the main entrance gate of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. The library is closed and visitors were being turned away Sunday morning.
Library officials said there will be an opportunity for the public to pay respects ahead of the funeral.
