I was quite saddened late last evening to learn of the death of my friend Michael Reagan, the oldest son of Ronald Reagan. Mike was adopted by Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman (their first child was daughter Maureen) shortly after his birth in March 1945. He was not Reagan’s biological son; Reagan’s biological son is Ron, born to Ronald and Nancy Reagan in 1958. Nonetheless, as I told Mike a hundred times, he was truly his father’s son. That’s not just because adopted children are, obviously, their parents’ children (I have two adopted boys), but in Mike Reagan’s case, I always said that because Mike was intimately closer to Ronald Reagan in ideas, thinking, politics, and heart, mind, and soul than any of the other Reagan children.
Above all, as Mike would profess, he shared the faith of his father. Mike told me several times about a moment at the White House in 1984 when the first family was having dinner together. The subject of religion came up, which wasn’t a good subject in the presence of Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s two kids. Ron was quickly developing into a notorious public atheist. His sister, Patti Davis, had said something about all religions being essentially the same. As the prattle went on, President Reagan grabbed Mike’s hand and whispered in regard to his other children, “I wish they would accept Christ.”
Mike had certainly done so. When he did, it was the turning point that saved not only his soul but his time here on Earth. Prior to that, his life had been a mess. When he accepted Christ, he had become “adopted” a second time, as he put it so eloquently in his gripping memoir, Twice Adopted.
“Ronald Reagan adopted me into his family 1945,” Mike told a watching world during the eulogy at his father’s funeral in June 2004. “I was a chosen one. I was the lucky one.”
He considered himself so lucky, so greatly blessed, to have been adopted by Ronald Reagan and above all by Christ.
The first time that I talked to Mike was on Sept. 2, 2003. I interviewed him for my book God and Ronald Reagan, having been put in touch with him at the last minute. The book was basically finished and about to go to press with little room for additions. That was a shame, because he unloaded a ton of incredible information and insights that I had never heard before. We talked for probably two hours. I recall the phone hurting my ear as I sat in the kitchen typing. When I said something like, “Wow, you have a lot to say!” He replied, “Well, you’re the first person to interview me about my dad!”
He lamented that the press and biographers and historians who wanted to talk to the “Reagan children” went only to Ron and Patti, hoping those two would give them the more jaded version of Ronald Reagan that they preferred. They avoided the “adopted” Reagan child like the plague. After all, Mike was a conservative Christian. What could he really offer?
Well, he could offer something deeper about his dad than almost anyone else who knew and lived with the man. In fact, given Mike’s full identification with his dad’s conservatism, which Nancy didn’t possess, that was particularly true.
The first time that I met Mike in person was before a packed audience in the largest auditorium on the campus of Grove City College. It was February 2007. It was our first official Ronald Reagan Lecture. There was a blizzard that evening, but folks drove from all around to hear Mike talk and laugh and cry about his dad for nearly two hours. The place was spellbound. It was special.
In fact, it was so special that we quickly got requests to take that show on the road, which we did. Among such occasions, Mike and I did the same thing two years later in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we could’ve talked for hours. When the event was finally over, and I was pretty much worn out and slumbered off to my hotel room, Mike called me from his room, where I proceeded to join him and our good friend John Gizzi as we talked about his dad, his family, Nancy, the 1980s, who his dad could trust and not trust, the loyalists and the backstabbers, and pretty much everything you can imagine, some of which to this day I haven’t shared publicly. The three of us must have talked until about 3 in the morning. It was not the last such moment.
Perhaps related to the sad news last night, I saw Mike a few years later at CPAC. He and I and one other person escaped to spend time alone. He informed me about a highly unexpected heart issue and brush with death that he thankfully survived. He said it was congenital, and that he had already outlived his own life expectations. He would survive at least a decade after that (I can’t recall the exact year). What precisely he died from this January 2026, I’m not sure. But he did make it to age 80, which I think he would’ve happily accepted.
The last time I saw Michael Reagan was at the premiere for our Reagan movie in Hollywood in August 2024, a long odyssey that began with that book God and Ronald Reagan. He was hobbled, slowed, and not in great shape. The last email that I got from him was just a couple weeks ago.
There’s so much more that I could say about the man, about Mike, about my friend, but I think he would want me to end with words that he shared about his dad at his funeral at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley in June 2004. There, he spoke of the “wonderful, wonderful blessings that my father gave to me each and every day of my life,” closing with this:
I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan’s son. What a great honor. He gave me a lot of gifts as a child. Gave me a horse. Gave me a car. Gave me a lot of things. But there’s a gift he gave me that I think is wonderful for every father to give every son. Last Saturday, when my father opened his eyes for the last time, and visualized Nancy and gave her such a wonderful, wonderful gift.
When he closed his eyes, that’s when I realized the gift that he gave to me, the gift that he was going to be with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He had, back in 1988 on a flight from Washington, D.C. to Point Mugu, told me about his love of God, his love of Christ as his Savior. I didn’t know then what it all meant. But I certainly, certainly know now. I can’t think of a better gift for a father to give a son. And I hope to honor my father by giving my son Cameron and my daughter Ashley that very same gift he gave to me.
Knowing where he is this very moment, this very day, that he is in heaven, and I can only promise my father this: Dad, when I go, I will go to heaven, too. And you and I and my sister Maureen that went before us, we will dance with the heavenly host of angels before the presence of God. We will do it melanoma and Alzheimer’s free.
Thank you for letting me share my father, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
And we thank Michael Reagan for what he shared and for his life.
Image licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
