One weekend, back then, is vivid in the memory. It had been arranged that the Reagans — father, mother, son — would spend Thanksgiving 1976 as guests of the Buckleys. There would be Thanksgiving lunch at Great Elm, in Sharon, and the balance of the weekend as houseguests of me and my wife, Pat, at our home in Stamford, Connecticut, on the Long Island Sound. But when the Reagans arrived in Sharon, there was tension.

“Tell Bill about it,” said Nancy, drawing her husband and me to one side.

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The story was that Ron Jr., in his first semester at Yale, had decided to quit college — more or less immediately. I expressed doubt that he was having academic problems, which indeed he was not, and his parents brought me to the heart of the matter. What moved him was a voracious desire to dance professionally. He wanted to train, beginning immediately, as a ballet student.

Reagan told me that he had frankly given up, on the two-hour drive from New York, trying to deflect his son from his resolution. In whispers, he and Nancy had conferred on a tactical retreat. Ron Jr. must proceed with his college work until the end of the semester, and only then go off to ballet school, from which he could return to his studies at Yale at any time in the future. Ron Jr. had said no. I was given the assignment of persuading him otherwise.

The rest of the day was dotted with family meetings, the Reagans together, of course, but then various Buckleys with various Reagans, according as it was hoped that my wife might be especially influential, or my aged mother, or some or all of the half dozen of my brothers and sisters who were there for Thanksgiving. These meetings were interrupted first by the repast, and then by the annual football game, at which, this time around, Ronald Reagan, sometime governor of California, aspirant President of the United States, was elected captain of the A Team and distinguished himself for a half hour, outdone in virtuoso passing and catching only by B Team ingénue, Ronald Reagan Jr., about to be ex-Yale 1980.

Individually and in groups — my brother Jim, a Yale graduate, had a round or two — we attempted to make the point that Ron Jr. should give the academic life a better try. He in turn stressed the point that already, at eighteen, he was far behind in studying dance.

“They begin,” he explained to me patiently but doggedly, “at age twelve. There’s no way I can go back and dance full time from age twelve. But I am really sunk at this point if I set my training back another week.”

That was his position and he lived (and died?) by it, returning to New Haven only to pick up his baggage, and reporting immediately to a dance school. He was soon picked up by the Joffrey Ballet, and got performances in its second division.

The balance of the weekend, in Stamford, was warm, but distracted by the wrench of Ron Jr.’s decision to go it alone. 

And Ronald Reagan was as determined to subject his son to poverty as Ron Jr. was to live in it. Ron Jr. was entirely submissive in his sequestration — austerity was a part of his theatrical occupation. 

After a few years he left the ballet and made his way — with his wife, Doria, a psychologist — as a commentator and journalist.

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