RANCHO DEL CIELO, CALIF.—It was just a modest two-bedroom adobe house tucked behind a black wrought-iron fence at the end of a tortuous dirt road. And it certainly didn't live up to the grand name the proud owner bestowed on it: Rancho del Cielo. But it was here, at his "ranch in the sky" set amid 688 acres of scrub oak and scented pine, that Ronald Reagan spent an astonishing 345 days of his eight-year presidency. It was here, friends and former advisers now say, that the "real" Ronald Reagan could be found.
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In his private moments, the 40th president found his bliss in the simplest parts of life—the company of his wife, Nancy, the pleasures of manual labor, the isolation of the Santa Ynez Mountains, and liberation from the world of glitz and glamour that dominated his public world for so many years in Washington, Sacramento, and Hollywood. As he admitted in his 1990 autobiography, An American Life, he never fully revealed himself to anybody except Nancy—and as a result, his public persona never fully reflected his true self. "I'm sure that the fact our family moved so often left a mark on me," he wrote of his boyhood. "Although I always had lots of playmates, during those first years in Dixon [Ill.], I was a little introverted and probably a little slow in making really close friends. In some ways, I think this reluctance to get close to people never left me completely. I've never had trouble making friends, but I've been inclined to hold back a little of myself, reserving it for myself."
Actually, he held back far more than a little. His four children complained for many years of his aloofness, and he always kept aides at an emotional distance. Longtime friends suggest that the painful breakup of his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman contributed to his refusal to reveal himself to the people around him; he didn't want to be hurt or disappointed again. Whatever the reason, Reagan as president would never let down his guard with anyone except Nancy.
Although Reagan projected a heroic image—which he considered vital to playing the role of president—he always thought of himself as an ordinary man with a few extraordinary skills, just a regular Joe with an ability to communicate on television and an instinct for articulating, even embodying, the dreams and desires of America's middle class. On Election Day in 1980, as early returns made it clear he would win the presidency, he was asked what Americans saw in him. "Would you laugh if I told you that I think, maybe, they see themselves and that I'm one of them?" he answered. "I've never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them."
While his public rhetoric was often harsh and ignorant—he stereotyped poor women on public assistance as "welfare queens" and argued that trees caused pollution—in his personal life he could be gentle and considerate. "He had a great compassion for individuals," says Marlin Fitzwater, his White House press secretary. Even though he failed to keep in close contact with his own children and grandchildren, he would go out of his way to give gifts or send cards to aides on their birthdays, after surgery, or for special occasions, such as their kids' graduations. He felt he was a good, caring man, no matter what the critics said about his policies.
