For the first five or six years of his illness, she was the person he remembered, friends said. Even when his memory faded, he still didn't want her to leave the room. "Occasionally, she went to lunch," says Tate. "She came east to christen the USS Ronald Reagan. But she always went right back." Mrs. Reagan spent her days reading and watching television. She had her friends and her children, Ron Jr. and Patti Davis. She was once estranged from Patti, but they have reconciled in recent years, and Patti's presence seemed especially comforting to her mother last week. Mrs. Reagan had also gone to a few small dinner parties over the years. She often visited the Reagan presidential library, for which she has raised money. It was a lonely life, but "she never complained, never," says Tate. "During the first five years, she seemed extraordinarily sad. What I heard change over the years was an acceptance. She came to accept his disease and the inevitable."

Since her husband announced that he had Alzheimer's disease, in 1994, Mrs. Reagan has occasionally appeared in public. She was cheered at the 1996 Republican National Convention when she said, "I can tell you with certainty he still sees the shining city on the hill." And she represented her husband at the GOP convention four years ago.

She has also pushed for embryonic stem-cell research, which scientists believe can help cure a range of diseases, though its benefits for Alzheimer's may be modest; on May 8, she spoke out publicly for the first time about the issue. Her stand puts Mrs. Reagan at odds with the Bush administration, which has limited federally funded research to 78 embryonic stem-cell lines in existence in August 2001. President Bush has argued that broader stem-cell research would require destroying more human embryos, a process opposed by abortion foes. Just last week, Laura Bush repeated the president's position in TV interviews. "We need to balance the interest in science with moral and ethical issues," Mrs. Bush said on NBC's Today show. As for Mrs. Reagan, she will continue fighting more broadly for a cure for Alzheimer's and focusing on the Reagan library.

The former first lady has been "dumbstruck," one friend said, by the tens of thousands who have filed past her husband's coffin and lined roadways. "She is absolutely amazed at the outpouring," says Bloomingdale, the widow of retail magnate Alfred Bloomingdale. "I spoke to her, and she said, 'I had no idea.' " That echoes what Reagan chief of staff Joanne Drake quoted Mrs. Reagan as saying: "It is unbelievable what I am seeing on TV."

The support has helped steel Nancy Reagan in her moment of grief. But it is her own character from which she has drawn the greatest strength. "She is a very strong person inside," Bloomingdale says. "She knew she would have to go through this . . . . And I think she is doing it with great style and courage."

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