Ronald Reagan

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - The motion alarms on Newport News Shipbuilding's huge gantry crane began blaring their familiar "BEE-OOOH, BEE-OOOH" warning as it set about another chore. Dangling from the crane's tentacles of thick steel cables was another piece of the shipyard's 29th aircraft carrier, the Ronald Reagan, named for the former president. It was a preassembled rectangular section of the flight deck, with a V-shaped channel called a "cat trough." The German-made gantry, fittingly called Goliath and one of the world's largest, gingerly carried the section to another part where helmeted workers waited to apply finishing touches before it was to be added to the ship.

WASHINGTON - He was the nation's greatest booster of "family values." He was also America's first divorced president. But Ronald Reagan's marriage to second wife Nancy was as close and strong a partnership as the White House has ever seen. "I miss her if she just steps out of the room," he wrote in a 1990 autobiography, Ronald Reagan: An American Life, adding in his dedication, "I cannot imagine life without her." She was at his side from the time of their Hollywood marriage in 1952 through his last years, as he suffered the ravages of Alzheimer's disease.

This is love. Last year, on Baltimore tavern owner Mark McFaul's 28th birthday, his sweetheart pulled out all the stops and gave him the trip of his dreams: Los Angeles, baby. She had a convertible waiting for them at the airport to sweep them off to - the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Heart racing, McFaul was in elephant heaven. He couldn't read enough about his political idol, the man who lifted the spirit of a sagging America, the John Wayne of American politics, a man who even liked the occasional Irish stout.

WASHINGTON - Reaction from around the globe to Ronald Reagan's passing yesterday was emotional and swift. Foreign leaders and Americans, especially those who knew and worked with the former president - whether or not they stood by his policies - saluted him for infusing hope in people, for believing deeply in the strength of country and for helping draw a curtain on the Cold War era. President Bush led the nation in mourning Reagan's death in brief remarks...

WASHINGTON - When Nancy Reagan emerges as a widow in mourning this week, she will do so with the nation's empathy - the kind of public embrace that at times eluded her during her years in the White House. She has become known to the country as a caregiver of the first order, devoted to Ronald Reagan during the long siege with Alzheimer's disease that led to his death over the weekend. Since the former first lady left the White House, the depictions of a woman with an iron will have given way to something far more reverent.

In 1982, NBC first broadcast Family Ties and the nation first met Alex P. Keaton. The show was supposed to be about his parents -- ex-hippies Steve and Elyse who once protested the Vietnam War and volunteered in the Peace Corps. But it was their teenage son who quickly became the star of the show. Deftly played by Michael J. Fox, Alex was, of all things, a young conservative who hung a Richard Nixon poster on his bedroom wall and dreamed of making millions on Wall Street. "When else could a boy with a briefcase become a national hero?"

Across the state yesterday, voters and politicians from both parties mourned the loss of Ronald Reagan, calling the actor-turned-politician inspirational, good-humored, and the force that galvanized the Republican Party. "President Reagan's politics touched a nation," Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration said in a statement issued yesterday. His "words of inspiration brought forth the innate patriot in all Americans and reminded us that freedom has its price." Many Marylanders were fixed to their television sets yesterday watching continuous coverage of Reagan's life, while a steady rain fell outside.

Ronald Reagan always had a flair for the theatrical. The occasion of his death yesterday - on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, and on the very afternoon when Smarty Jones was expected to become the first Triple Crown winner in more than 25 years - sparked some of the pageantry and show-business improvisation that the former actor might have appreciated. Network after network replayed Reagan's 1987 challenge to the last head of the Soviet Union, while standing before the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

WASHINGTON - The horse-drawn caisson moved up Constitution Avenue and silence followed. A street usually marked by rush-hour commotion filled only with the traffic of a national ritual; the city of political battles had only a funeral on its mind. As the casket carrying the remains of Ronald Reagan made its way to the Capitol in the first state funeral in more than three decades, a country in the midst of a presidential campaign, a war in Iraq and a heightened alarm over terrorism stood still for a moment.

MOSCOW - During his eight years as leader of the free world, Ronald Reagan evolved from a fierce Cold Warrior who called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" to "a man you could do business with," as former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would later describe him. He was both hated and feared by Communist hard-liners. But today, as people around the world mourn his death, Russia's overarching assessment of America's 40th president is largely one of respect and admiration. Many credit his peace-through-strength policies for hastening the downfall of the Soviet empire and curtailing the nuclear arms race.