A handwritten letter from Ronald Reagan to his once-estranged daughter Patti Davis is expected to fetch $20,000 when it goes up for auction this week.
The emotional letter to Patti Davis, which is dated December 24, 1989, came during a particularly trying time for one of America’s most famous families.
Davis, once dubbed the ‘Reagan family’s number one outcast’, made headlines during the 1980s and 1990s as she protested her father’s policies and wrote novels and autobiographies about her own family.
In the letter, dated just a month before his presidency came to an end, Reagan hints at past strife with his daughter and also reflects on his own mortality.
A handwritten letter from Ronald Reagan to his once-estranged daughter Patti Davis is expected to fetch $20,000 when it goes up for auction this week
The emotional letter to Patti Davis, dated Christmas Eve 1989, came during a particularly trying time for one of America’s most famous families. Pictured is Ronald and Nancy Reagan and Patti Davis after the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981
‘I’ll quit bothering you, but I had more in mind than arguing politics,’ the letter reads.
Reagan then quotes the Willie Nelson song September, writing: ‘The line in the song says it all, “The days dwindle down to a precious few'”.
‘On Feb 6th I’ll be 80 years old. Your mother and I are hard put to understand the separation between us and our firstborn.’
Reagan also ponders when their strife truly began, trying to understand if it was when Davis went to boarding school or if it even started forming earlier than that.
‘It didn’t just happen with your growing up and leaving home,’ he writes. ‘I can recall your mother coming home in tears after driving you to school.’
Reagan ends the letter, which runs a page-and-half long, with the words ‘Love Dad’
In the letters Reagan talks of how his daughter would make Nancy Reagan cry but not speaking or waving goodbye to her on drives to school.
The handwritten letter, which is being auctioned by Boston-based agency RR Auction, is on Reagan’s personal letterhead and comes with the original mailing envelope
‘She couldn’t understand your complete silence even to the point of your not saying “goodbye”. Was it having to share with a newborn brother?’
Reagan also reminisces about easier times, in which he said Davis would never let him leave the house without ‘waving goodbye from the window’.
‘We have some snapshots that reveal a difference in a little girl,’ he said. ‘We ask ourselves, “What did we do wrong?” We were once a loving family.’
‘Well as I said earlier, “I’ll stop bothering you” but I don’t understand the separation of our family.’
Reagan also reminisces about the time that Davis, as a young girl, would sit on his lap and ask him to marry her.
‘Her mother across the room behind her signaled me to say “yes”‘, he recalled. ‘So I did and explained we’d have to wait till she was older.’
The letter is simply signed ‘Love, Dad’.
Reagan ponders when the problems began in the family, wondering if Davis was jealous of having to share attention with her brother Ron
Davis (pictured with Reagan on her wedding day in 1984) happily embraced her role as the black sheep of the First Family and wasn’t shy about her disapproval of her father’s policies
Davis’ first novel followed the life of a rebellious daughter to a California governor – the same position Reagan held before he became president. She is pictured here in 1984
The handwritten letter, which is being auctioned by Boston-based agency RR Auction, is on Reagan’s personal letterhead and comes with the original mailing envelope.
It is among 100 rare letters that are being auctioned from hedge fund manager Victor Niederhoffer.
Niederhoffer’s collection also includes letters from Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, among others.
But for many it will no doubt be Reagan’s letter that captures the most attention, shedding light on a period that many saw play out in the tabloids.
Davis happily embraced her role as the black sheep of the First Family and wasn’t shy about her disapproval of her father’s policies.
Davis made headlines as she publicly protested her father’s policies on nuclear arms. She is pictured here a a benefit concert in 1981
And Davis raised plenty of eyebrows when she posted for Playboy Magazine in 1994
‘It bothers me terribly that we lost eight years under his administration,’ she told the Washington Post in 1989.
Davis’ first novel, Home Front, followed the life of a rebellious daughter to a California governor – the same position Reagan held before he became president.
Released just a year after Reagan’s reelection, the former Hollywood actor used his connections to get his daughter banned from the talk show circuit as she tried to drum up publicity for the book.
And in 1992 Davis released The Way I See It, an autobiography in which she claimed her mother Nancy Reagan would routinely pop tranquilizers – despite her infamous ‘Just Say No’ drug campaign.
Davis also claimed that her mother would slap her daily as a child and even monitored her bathroom schedules and what she could tell her therapist.
‘I felt it was time to tell the truth,’ Davis told the Baltimore Sun at the time. ‘It if was money and exploitation I was after, I could have written it at election time.’
The Reagans issued a statement at the time, saying they were ‘saddened’ by their daughter’s ‘false’ charges, but refused to comment further.
Just two years later Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and Davis began to mend their broken relationship.
After many years of estrangement, Davis began to mend relationships with both her parents after Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They are all pictured here in 1981
Davis spoke at her father’s funeral (pictured) when he passed away in 1994 due to complications from Alzheimer’s
In a recent Washington Post op-ed Davis, now 65, revealed that as younger woman she had felt jealous of the love her father had for America.
‘Selfishly, I used to feel slighted by that love,’ she admitted. ‘I referred sometimes to my “sibling rivalry” with America.’
‘My strident protests against some of my father’s policies definitely got his attention, which was what I intended — but they also wounded him, which was not my intention.’
Davis revealed that in the last year of her father’s life, she was able to tell him her regrets.
‘I miss my father in deeply personal ways,’ she wrote. ‘I also miss the dignity that he brought to the task of leading this country, the deep respect he had for our democracy.’
‘And now, after so much time has passed, I miss how much he loved America.’
Davis would also speak at her mother’s funeral when Nancy Reagan passed away in 2016