Four Reagans Used to Going Their Own Ways

By Claudia Wallis

"They built us to be independent, to think on our own," Maureen Reagan once said. And that is exactly what she and Ronald Reagan's other three children have always been and done. Maureen is the daughter of Reagan and former Wife Jane Wyman, the actress; Michael is their adopted son. Patricia and Ronald are Reagan's children by Nancy. Some family snapshots:

Maureen, 40, is by far the most political. An active Republican when her father was merely a Democrat for Nixon, she was a conservative in the '60s, condemning the antiwar movement as Communist-inspired. A fine public speaker and ebullient campaigner for the man she sometimes calls "Dear Old Dad," she was his highly visible cheerleader at the G.O.P. Convention. She is also, to her father's chagrin, a campaigner for ERA, and will be, she vows, "until the day I die." Such unqualified enthusiasm and candor are typical of Reagan's animated and opinionated elder daughter. Like her siblings, Maureen attended boarding schools and dropped out of college (Marymount in Virginia). She married twice in her 20s: to a Washington, D.C., traffic policeman and to a California attorney. She struggled as an actress and singer long enough to give her stage-struck half sister Patti some advice: "I told her how to fill out unemployment forms." Though briefly successful as a TV talk-show host, Maureen left show business in 1978 to become an executive vice president of Sell Overseas America, an organization that promotes U.S. exports. Beginning this month, she will moonlight as host of a Saturday radio talk show in Los Angeles, and, who knows, she muses, in two years maybe run for Senator. A more definite postInaugural plan is to marry Dennis Revell, 29, who is now cramming for the California bar exam. This despite vows to "never marry again," but then the theatrical Maureen, as Reagan staffers know, some times overstates her positions.

Michael, 35, is the settled sibling, the family square, and the low-key member of the quartet. Married for six years (to Colleen Sterns, an interior decorator), the father of the only Reagan grandchild (Cameron, 2), the owner of a house in the suburbs (Sherman Oaks, Calif.), he was a cheerful, popular and politically compatible weekend campaigner for his father. He admits, however: "It was a while before I found a direction." A preschool tot when Reagan and Wyman were divorced, Mike was bounced around three secondary schools. He played quarterback well enough to be offered a scholarship by Arizona State, but turned it down after deciding the college squad took football too seriously: "They were all 275-lb. Mean Joe Greene types." Instead, Mike turned to speedboating. He was married, and divorced, in less than a year, and meandered -- working briefly as a trucker's assistant -- before becoming a salesman of yachts and other pleasure craft in 1971. Last year he started a firm that markets gasohol equipment for farmers. More recently, Mike has become a stockholding senior vice president of the Southern Pacific Title Co., a Santa Ana firm that sells real estate title insurance, and is now negotiating to do a radio commentary show on current affairs. During the campaign, Mike sometimes critiqued the elder Reagan's style: "I'd tell him that he should come across strong more often." In turn, Reagan has given Mike some fatherly advice, warning him not to be exploited by those currying First Family favors.

Patricia, 28, has strayed furthest from the parental nest. Tall (5 ft. 8 in.), slender and quiet in manner, she not only dropped out of Northwestern University but also the lives of her parents in the early '70s. She lived with Rock Musician Bernie Leadon of the Eagles, opposed the Viet Nam War and, for a time, ceased communication with the elder Reagans. "I was very rebellious and very feisty," she once explained. "The one place I wanted to go to was Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco." Patti did not go to the counterculture capital, but to Hollywood. There, using the professional name Patti Davis, she has won small roles in the likes of TV's Love Boat. Though she took no part in her father's campaign ("I'm antipolitical"), she is now reconciled with her parents: she appeared at Reagan's nomination, has bought a Dior gown for the Inauguration, and even returned to the family's Pacific Palisades home for a while before finding her own beachside apartment a few miles away. The election, admits Patti, "has done wonders for my career." TV and film offers are turning up, she has signed with the high-powered William Morris Agency, and last month she negotiated a one-year contract with NBC for an undisclosed six-figure sum. Now, she says, "I'm hoping for more dramatic roles," but not in real-life politics.

Ronald, 22, is a dedicated and disciplined professional at an age when his siblings were still searching for direction. He is also impetuous. Last November Ron surprised his parents with his sudden wedding to live-in Girlfriend Doria Palmieri, 29, a literary researcher. Four years earlier he had stunned them by dropping out of Yale to become a ballet dancer. And last month he created a stir by informing New York magazine that he would not shake hands with Jimmy Carter at the Inauguration because the President "has the morals of a snake." Said Ron: "I will never forgive the he way he called my father a racist and a warmonger," though he later regretted the outburst as an "unfortunate moment of candor."

Of the four children, Ron was the closest as a youth to his father and the best student. He remembers being "seduced by dance movies from the time I was eight," but did not begin to study until age 19, when he entered Los Angeles' Stanley Holden Dance Center, which was recommended by longtime Reagan Friend Gene Kelly. Within two years he was offered a scholarship by the prestigious Joffrey school in New York City. Seven months later he became an alternate member of the Joffrey II troupe, and last fall made his debut as a regular member. "His improvement is phenomenal," says Company Director Sally Bliss. "Ron has no tension in his dancing and incredible concentration. I think he's really going to make it." Concurs Anna Kisselgoff, chief dance critic for the New York Times: "You don't have to be a Republican to tell that Ron Reagan is a very talented dancer." Yet Ron remains modest about his progress and cautious about his newly acquired notoriety. Says he: "You realize very fast that you could become another Margaret Truman."

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett

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