First Daughter Maureen Reagan Dies

The eldest child (and, according to friends, the closest to the former President) of Ronald Reagan died Wednesday after a lengthy battle with malignant melanoma.

Originally posted Wednesday August 08, 2001 03:39 PM EDT

Maureen Reagan, 60, the eldest child of former President Ronald Reagan (by his first wife, actress Jane Wyman), died Wednesday at her Sacramento, Calif., home, after a lengthy battle with malignant melanoma. She was "surrounded by loved ones after a courageous 5-year-long battle with malignant melanoma," said her husband, Dennis C. Revell, a public relations executive. She lived with Revell and their 16-year-old daughter, Rita, a Ugandan girl they adopted in 1995. Since last November, Reagan has been receiving treatment for the deadly form of skin cancer. Last month, it was reported that the cancer had spread to her brain. Friends had long said that of Reagan's four children, Maureen remained closest to her 90-year-old father, working for Alzheimer's groups and, until her illness, traveling from her home in northern California to visit him two or three times a month. She also showed flashes of the elder Reagan's disarming wit, as she did last October when one of her doctors interrupted a formal dinner to come to her bedside garbed in a tux. "I don't know much about this hospital," she joked, "but I sure like the dress code." Besides her parents (Wyman is 87) and husband and daughter, Reagan is survived by her stepmother, Nancy, 80; a brother, Michael, 56; and two half-siblings, Patti Davis, 48, Ron Reagan Jr., 43.