Free Ronnie and Nancy by Bob Colacello Page B

fashionable Near North Side church where he would later marry Edith; neither Loyal’s nor Pearl’s parents were present. There was friction from the start. “I was unable to accept her dislike and ineptitude for housekeeping,” Loyal later wrote.46 Pearl, on the other hand, viewed Loyal’s career as her rival.
    “I think my father truly loved my mother,” Richard Davis told me.
    “She was a beautiful young woman. He probably loved her a lot more than she loved him. But she had no vision at all. She was pretty footloose and fancy-free. He was anxious to climb the academic ladder of medicine, and wanted to be a pioneer in neurological surgery. She actually denigrated his ambitions. She was quite sarcastic about it. She made fun of that. I think that’s what broke the marriage up. She was a very difficult woman. The only thing my father said about my mother was ‘I never want you to grow up like her.’”47
    A precocious and serious child who turned out to be an impatient and serious adult, Loyal Davis was born on January 17, 1896, in Galesburg, Illinois—one of the county seats where the Reagan family lived during their wandering years. He was the only son of Albert Clark Davis, a locomotive engineer on the Burlington Railroad, and Laura Hensler Davis, a housewife.
    The Davis family lived on a street called Scab Alley, because its row houses had been built by the railroad for workers who broke the strike of 1888. According to Loyal, his parents’ “entire social life centered around the Masonic and Eastern Star lodges. Mother advanced through the various offices of the Violet Chapter, memorized her speeches, became Worthy Matron, and later held an appointive office in the Grand Lodge. Lodges were important in Galesburg. They afforded the social life for the working class.”48
    “My grandfather was highly intelligent,” Richard Davis told me. “He was about six-two, quiet and self-disciplined. His son was the apple of his eye. On the other hand, my grandmother was short and very explosive. I think a lot of Dr. Loyal’s unattractive characteristics were hers. Grandfather Al married her when she was about nineteen, and that was a love affair to end all love affairs. There’s a cute story about them. He was tough—he made $16 a week, and would take the fast mail trains, or the best passenger trains, from Chicago out to Iowa and back to Galesburg. That’s called dead-heading. He came home from one of his runs, and Grandmother Laura was 4 4
    Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House in the middle of the kitchen floor, crying her heart out. She’d bought a pattern for a dress and material, but instead of cutting the front and the back out of the material, she had cut two fronts out. Now this man has been up more than twenty-four hours doing really tough work, and here she was weeping. So he calmed her down and went to the store and bought more material and cut the dress out himself.”49
    In his memoir Loyal Davis recalls a single but telling anecdote from his childhood:
    I went to Sunday School at the Grace Episcopal Church. I sang in the choir, wearing the black cassock and white surplice. I carried the cross, heading the choir’s procession, and was often pressed into service in pumping the organ. I was proud, scared, and quavery of voice when I sang a Te Deum.
    A prayer book was to be awarded to the boy and girl who had been perfect in attendance at Sunday school for the entire year. I was the only boy to have such a record and I knew that. The prayer book was given to the son of the owner of the largest department store in town. I was angered and crushed in spirit. When I got home, I announced I would never go back to church again. Mother cried and was angry about the unfairness of the action. Dad listened calmly.
    “Did you miss one Sunday?”
    “No, my teacher knows that but she didn’t award the prayer book.”
    “I’ve always thought you could be good and follow the golden rule without having