According to the new book that Ronald Reagan’s son Ron Reagan has released, his father apparently had Alzheimer’s while he was president of the United States.
Ron Reagan claimed in “My Father at 100,” that in the event that his father was diagnosed with the disease while President, he would have had to give up his position in office completely. He wrote:
“I’ve seen no evidence that my father (or anyone else) was aware of his medical condition while he was in office.”
Ron paints his father as a rather forgetful man and easily frustrated when they would have arguments. He went on to explain that if the diagnosis had been made in the late 80s he believed that his father would have stepped down altogether.
Reagan was first diagnosed officially with Alzheimer’s in 1994, although to Ron Reagan it was diagnosed all the way back in 1989 after he encountered an accident while horseback riding.
His father ended up dying in 2004 at the age of 93. Ron stated that he began to notice the disease around 1984 when the former president was going through the debates with his Democratic adversaries in order to become president of the United States.
