Nancy Clark Reynolds has been Ronald Reagan’s best friend since the 1930s, when she arrived as the daughter of the New Deal, and finally established herself as one of the city’s finest figures. -A lobbyist connected in the 1980s died on May 23 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was 94 years old.
Her son Clark Wurtzberger confirmed his death.
Reynolds lived a life in Zeligesque in the capital of the country. Her father played poker with Harry S. Truman. As a young woman, she dated JD Salinger and Jack Valenti. Jack Valenti became one of Lindon B. Johnson’s closest aides and later led the American Film Institute.
She was a close friend of Nancy Reagan, but also of Anne Wexler, a former adviser to President Jimmy Carter, known as the “Queen of Lorodex” for her broad political ties.
Reynolds lived in Washington, which is very different from today’s bipartisan battlefields. In her time, a member of the House with a distinctly different politics may still clink her glasses at the reception in Georgetown and hash the deal over canapés. Reynolds is a type of rapidly disappearing DC fixative, sometimes derogatoryly known as a hostess. They knew how to create the social conditions to achieve these breakthroughs.
As part of the Reagan transition team, Ms. Reagans has an important connection between the establishment of Washington and the West Coast’s imported presidential counsel, including the next Deputy Chief of Staff, Michael K. Diver, and the White House’s Edwin Meese III. Provided. Counselor and future Attorney General. When celebrity Brooke Astor was planning a Regans reception in New York, she went to Reynolds for advice.
Reynolds began his career as a television journalist in the late 1940s, when the media was still in its infancy, and became one of the first women to establish a major evening news program in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. I did. She landed her high-profile interviews, including an interview with Sonny Barger, the founder of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Gang, and an interview with Ronald Reagan, who was successful in the 1966 Governor of California campaign. Was known.
The interview she went on a horse at Reagan’s ranch near Santa Barbara impressed him so much that he hired her as his spokesman. During her two terms as governor, and throughout the 1976 presidential election, she treated celebrities (a non-critical job in California), eased tensions among the governor’s harsh staff, and became Mrs. Reagan’s best friend. I helped her. She navigates her new role as a politician’s wife.
“Some people immediately feel like they’re completely at home, right?” Reynolds told The Washington Post in 1980. “Well, she’s friendly and warm, but she has a lot of reserves. It’s not easy to get to know her at first. It takes time, but it’s worth it.”
She wasn’t in the administration, but stayed close to the administration, hosted a party, and opened the door to the White House in Capitol Hill. She was close enough to give President Reagan a reading recommendation, including a 1984 thriller by the then-unknown writer Tom Clancy. Reagan loved his novel “Hunting the Red October”, and his very public support made it one of the bestsellers of the decade.
Reynolds used her political experience and connections in her career as one of a new breed of super lobbyists in Washington, opening DC offices in large corporations and later one of the most powerful lobbying companies in the 1980s. Wechsler, Reynolds, Harrison & Schule co-founded. And some are the first one led by a woman.
“It’s the reaction of old instincts that has helped you over the years,” she told The New York Times in 1983. The city is a tremendous fusion of incredible people from all disciplines elected politicians. You must be fascinated by the political process. “
Nancy Lee Clark was born on June 26, 1927 in Pocatello, a small city in southeastern Idaho. Her father, David Worth Clark, was a lawyer who won a special election in 1935 and became one of the state’s two members of the US House of Representatives. Her mother, Virgil Irwin Clark, was a housewife.
Moving to Washington, Clarks lived at the Shoreham Hotel — a delegation for a new member of Congress who felt buying a home might look like a luxury. Clark didn’t have to worry. He was reelected in 1936 and won the Senate seat in 1938. He was a New Deal Democrat, but became friends across factions and political parties. His friends included Richard Russell, a Conservative Democrat in Georgia, and Robert Taft, a Conservative Republican in Ohio.
Washington in the 1930s was very different from where Reynolds returned to the 1970s. In many respects, it was still a sleepy southern town, where bridle paths crossed, where she rode a horse with her father. Her family returned to Idaho every summer, but she graduated from high school in Washington and studied English at Goucher College in Maryland. She graduated in 1945.
An experienced journalist who interviewed movie stars such as Lauren Bacall and Anthony Quinn in college newspapers, she got a job as a reporter for the Baltimore television station WBAL.
She met JD Salinger in New York, where she guided Greenwich Village and told her the story of “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish” working for New Yorkers. She advised him to change the title. He didn’t.
Shortly thereafter, she married Bill Wurtzberger, had three children, and settled in the suburbs. When they divorced in 1961, she decided to start over and tow her boy back to Aidaho.
Another marriage to journalist, Republican campaign aide, and lobbyist Frank Reynolds also ended in a divorce. With her son Clark, she survived by her partner, Bob Kemble. The other three sons, Kurt Wurtzberger, Dean Wurtzburger and Michael Reynolds. And four grandchildren.
Returning to Boise, Reynolds got a job as a host for a talk show during the day. A few years later, she moved to San Francisco, where she eventually joined Governor Reagan’s staff.
After Reagan failed in the 1976 presidential election, Reagans worked as a government official at the building materials company Boise Cascade. She later did the same job at maker Bendix and stayed until she joined Ms. Wechsler in 1983, except for a six-month leave in 1980 to work on Reagan’s transition to the White House.
In 1981, Reagan nominated her as the US representative of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. This is a part-time role that took her to Africa several times. She fell in love with the continent, especially its prehistoric times. After she became friends with paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, she joined some of his bargains in the Rift Valley of eastern Africa.
She and Ms. Wechsler sold the company in 1990, and shortly thereafter Ms. Reynolds moved to Santa Fe.