Reagan adviser Lyn Nofziger, 81
Posted: Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 9:36 am
Lyn Nofziger, the cigar-chomping former newspaperman who served as spokesman and strategist for Ronald Reagan in Sacramento and Washington, died of cancer on Monday at his home in Falls Church, Va. He was 81. …
Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, said: “Lyn was with us from the gubernatorial campaign in 1965 through the early White House days, and Ronnie valued his advice — and good humor — as much as anyone’s. …”
Mr. Nofziger was at the hospital with Reagan after he was shot in March 1981 and relayed to the press the president’s memorable, if perhaps apocryphal, line to Mrs. Reagan at the hospital: “Honey, I forgot to duck.” …
Mr. Nofziger wrote four western novels and a political autobiography, “Nofziger.”
But those who know him remember not his serious writings but his puns and quips and bits of doggerel. Among them is a limerick that he penned after the doomed nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court last year, which appears on his Web site, www.lynnofziger.com:
Conservatives are fearful that Harriet
Will be George Bush’s Iscariot.
They have little doubt
That she’d sell them out
For a ride in a liberal’s chariot.
