"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.