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Unfinished draft of a letter handwritten by Ronald Reagan under the guise of his wife, Nancy Reagan, to be sent to California Governor Jerry Brown on his controversial appointment of Edison Miller, a former P.O.W. in Vietnam, to the Orange County board of supervisors. The letter, which finds Reagan incorporating his first name, “Ronnie,” within the text, no date (July 1979), two pages, 8.5 x 13, reads, in part: “I’ve debated for some time whether to write this letter and came to the conclusion I must. I have just watched on TV your appointee to the Orange Co. board of supervisors take his oath of office. It was an oath not too dissimilar to the one he had taken as an officer in the Marine Corps – an oath he violated when as a prisoner of war in Vietnam he collaborated with the enemy and betrayed his comrades. This letter is prompted by my own memories of those tragic war years. Memories of calls to mothers after I had visited their sons in our hospitals. Memories of those sons, their bodies shattered, some were double & even triple amputees, but they had a gallantry that tore your heart in two…Very much in my memory are the Prisoners of War who were finally returned to us after years of torture – torture beyond anything one could imagine. Ronnie & I were privileged to have some 200 of those gallant & heroic men in our home over a period of several weeks. They were the P.O.W.s who claimed Calif. As their home. Some were from Orange County.” In fine condition.
In July 1979, Governor Brown named Edison Miller, a former P.O.W. in Vietnam, to the Orange County board of supervisors. Miller had been formally censured by the Navy Department after an investigation into charges that he had collaborated with the North Vietnamese. The California Democratic establishment was livid over Brown’s choice, with State Assemblyman Richard Robinson describing Miller as ‘Hanoi’s answer to Tokyo Rose.’ Nancy Reagan publicly released 'her' letter on July 24, 1979. A fascinating draft letter from California’s ex-governor to his successor, cleverly using his wife’s name and public image to convey his own dislike for Brown’s political appointments.
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