The Presidency A Gathering of Eagles

By Hugh Sidey

When the five former First Ladies and Barbara Bush walked slowly across the courtyard of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last week, someone watching interrupted the hush and whispered, "There are the real heroes."

Even in that special moment they bore the burden. Pat Nixon, who had just got out of the hospital, grew weak from sitting in the sun for an hour and a half and had to drop out from lunch. But before her husband took her to their hotel, she sat with an ice bag on her head and an unflinching smile and told Nancy Reagan not to worry. "I wasn't going to miss this, I wasn't going to miss this," she insisted.

Nor was America. It was the nation's profile, assembled on that singular shelf of California land. Men with rich memories from a quarter-century at the pinnacle of power came together to genially exaggerate their affection for one another and to welcome Reagan to full status in the select library fraternity. Never before had five Presidents been on the same platform. There was a kind of sad joy on that parched hilltop 2,700 miles west of the real Oval Office. It was a perch of aging eagles. History made, history remembered, history fading.

Jerry Ford, 78, walked to his spot with the gimpy stride of a man who had one artificial knee and was about to get another. Suddenly the old Ford Administration political warriors in that audience of more than 4,000 could remember him striding through the snows of Vladivostok in borrowed overshoes, headed for a meeting with Leonid Brezhnev.

Nixon, 78, cradled Pat's arm, but sometimes he quavered as he moved slowly through the library. It was Al Haig, Nixon's chief of staff in 1974, who had lamented in a dim corner of the White House just a few days before Nixon was forced to resign, "He'll be dead in a year." But Nixon was too tough. And more than once in the $56.8 million Reagan Library, the Nixon spark flared. He paused in front of Reagan's letter sweater from Eureka College. "I'm proud of you, Ron," said Nixon. "At least you got a football letter in college. I never did."

Reagan, 80, had a little more trouble hearing than his aides remembered. A couple of shouted questions puzzled him, and he leaned to Nancy for clarification. "Nothing," she said with a mischievous smile. "You can't answer." Mike Deaver, a Reagan friend and counselor for so long, looked on and mused, "Without a Nancy there never would have been a President Reagan."

Jimmy Carter, 67, just off the plane after monitoring elections in Zambia, still had a remarkable spring in his step. He even flashed a bit of humor that had not been much displayed when he was in the White House. "At least all of you have met a Democratic President," he said, turning to the four Republicans. "I've never had that honor yet." As for George Bush, 67, the man with the power, he did his best to hang back, trying somehow to obscure his special importance on that day designed for Reagan.

The five Presidents took the country through eight armed conflicts and four recessions, levied roughly $12 trillion in taxes, spent $15 trillion, saw the population grow by 45 million. Sounds like heavy lifting, but so far historians give none of these Presidents more than a rank of "average."

Strange how presidential libraries resemble their Presidents. Nixon's is kind of an upscale suburban building, its arms enfolding his restored but desperately humble birthplace in Yorba Linda, Calif. The Carter Center, which embraces several units for scholarship, seems almost reclusive, tucked into a neighborhood not far from Atlanta's downtown. Ford has his library at the University of Michigan, in a building that blends with the functional laboratories and classrooms.

Reagan's is a grand stage with spectacular vistas and sunsets. There will be 55 million documents for researchers who probe his eight years. For as long as he can, Reagan will come around to tell students what he tried to do when he gave up acting for politics. When all is over, he and Nancy will be buried in a stone vault that looks west to the ocean.