Nancy Reagan is best remembered for her time in Washington, D.C., and California, but a big part of her youth was spent in Chicago. And foreshadowing a role later in her life, it was in her senior year of high school here when she played the lead in a school production of a play titled “First Lady.”

Reagan, the widow of former President Ronald Reagan, died Sunday in California at age 94. She spent her early years on the East Coast but moved to Chicago after her mother married a Chicago neurosurgeon, Dr. Loyal Davis, who gave her his last name and adopted her when she was 14.

Nancy Davis attended the Chicago Latin School for Girls at 59 E. Scott St. in the Gold Coast neighborhood, starting during her middle school years and graduating in 1939, according to school officials. She led student government, was part of the field hockey team and glee club and was president of the school’s Athletic Association Council, the school said.

Advertisement

“Latin School was honored to have Mrs. Reagan as part of its alumni community,” school officials said in a statement Sunday. “Over the years, the former first lady was consistently supportive of the school and in every interaction with Latin, she was always a wonderful example of grace and poise.”

According to the statement, the school’s alumni office was most recently in touch with Reagan’s office in 2013, when she sent a note congratulating the school on its 125th anniversary.

“Nancy Reagan was a greatly respected alumna, always admired for her graciousness,” said Randall Dunn, head of school, which went coed in the 1950s and now is located at 59 W. North Blvd. “We are proud to have had Mrs. Reagan as a student and alumna and extend our condolences to her family and loved ones.”

While she was first lady in 1982, Reagan visited the school in response to letters from Latin School’s third-grade students, an event officials said was “one of our fondest memories” of her.

“The students were hopeful for a note from Mrs. Reagan, but never expected that the first lady would come to the school,” according to the school’s statement. “Mrs. Reagan spent the morning with the third-graders, answered questions, attended a student production and even went through the lunch line in the lower school cafeteria.”

That visit was part of an emotional return to Chicago for the first lady, according to a story in the Tribune. Hours after spending time at her alma mater, she accepted a commemorative medallion on behalf of her father from Northwestern University, where he had been the chair of the medical school’s surgery department for more than three decades.

Reagan talked about visiting the halls of the hospital where her father had spent most of his career.

Advertisement*

“I used to come up to the 14th floor and watch my father work,” Reagan said. “I used to go on house calls with him. I watched him operate — that was when I convinced him I wasn’t going to do something terrible, like faint.”

After graduating, Reagan worked for a short time as a sales clerk for the iconic Chicago department store Marshall Field’s, then returned to the East Coast to attend Smith College. She graduated in 1943 and moved back to New York to pursue acting.

In a 1980 Tribune profile weeks before she assumed the title of first lady, she said she never had aspirations to be a “career girl.”

“I majored in drama at Smith and I became an actress because I didn’t want to go back to Chicago and lead the life of a post-debutante,” Reagan said. “I wanted to do something until I found the man I wanted to marry.”

She and her future husband met in 1950 when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. They married in 1952.

President Reagan died in 2004 after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

A quote from a classmate in Latin School’s 1939 yearbook recalled Reagan’s confident personality, even in awkward situations.

“Nancy’s social perfection is a constant source of amazement,” the quote read. “She is invariably, becomingly and suitably dressed. She can talk, and even better, listen intelligently, to anyone from her little kindergarten partner of the Halloween party, to the grandmother of one of her friends. Even in the seventh grade, when we first began to mingle with the male of the species, Nancy was completely poised. While the rest of us huddled self-consciously on one side of the room, casting surreptitious glances at the men, aged 13, opposite us, Nancy actually crossed the yawning emptiness separating the two groups and serenely began a conversation — with a boy.”

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and his wife expressed sympathies.

“As our nation’s first lady, Nancy Reagan will be remembered for her unwavering support of our country and as a pillar of strength to one of our nation’s greatest presidents,” Rauner said in a statement. “As an advocate for anti-drug programs, she helped educate a generation, and she was a champion for Alzheimer’s research to find more treatments and a cure for the disease. Throughout her entire life, Nancy Reagan worked diligently to improve the lives of so many Americans.”

___

(c) 2016 the Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.