Nancy Reagan laid to rest in funeral celebrating her love affair with «Ronnie»

Former first lady buried beside her husband in emotional funeral attended by political dignitaries and Hollywood figures.

Nancy Reagan was buried beside her husband on Friday in an emotional funeral that focused on her half-century love affair with the former president.

Around 1,000 invited guests, including Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner and Michelle Obama, wife of the current US president, paid their respects to the former first lady at a service in the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, about 50 miles from Los Angeles.

They heard the former Canadian prime minister, Brian Mulroney, read out a letter from Ronald Reagan, president between 1981 and 1989, to his wife written on Christmas day 1981 that described the close emotional bond between the couple, who were married for 52 years.

Nancy, who died on Sunday aged 94 at her Bel Air home, had asked that the letter be read as a final request. "Theirs was a love story for the ages," Mr Malroney told the gathering after reading it out.

Patti Davis, the couple’s daughter, and their son, Ron Reagan, read eulogies, as did the American broadcaster Tom Brokaw and James Baker, a former White House chief-of-staff during the Reagan administration.

In his eulogy, Mr Baker described Nancy as "a woman without whome Ronald Wilson Reagan would never have become the 40th president of the United States or succeeded as well as he did…they could hardly bear to be apart".

Davis described how her mother was so bereft by her husband’s death in 2004 that she would leave her television permanently switched on with the volume turned up to protect herself from feelings of loneliness.
"Another remedy for her loneliness was to fill the empty space with stories and memories," Davis told the service, after describing how — in the last moments of his life and gravely ill with Alzheimer's — her father had opened his eyes for the first time in days to look at his wife, sitting by his bedside.

Ron Reagan recounted how his mother adopted a tough mantle to protect his father. "Since we are among friends, we can say that she was not always the easiest person," he said. "She could be a royal pain in the a** when she wanted to be, but usually so that my father didn't have to be."

Friday’s funeral was attended by the daughters of three former American presidents, John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, along with former president George W Bush and his wife Laura, and the wife of ex-president Jimmy Carter. 
Several Hollywood figures and television personalities were also present, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Selleck, Larry King, Katie Couric and Mr T.