Ex-White House Staffer : Woman Chosen as Curator of Ronald Reagan Library

The 29-year-old niece of a prominent Orange County businessman has been named curator of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, officials of the foundation building the facility said Thursday.

Stefanie Salata was appointed curator within the last six weeks, Charles Jelloian, director of operations for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said during a presentation at Moorpark College.

Salata said during a telephone interview that she graduated from USC in 1982 with a major in fine arts. She said she had held “various positions” for five years in the Reagan Administration, including working in the White House advance office, which makes travel and press arrangements for presidential trips. Salata said that she was from Covina and that she had worked on Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign in Los Angeles.

Salata declined to describe her White House jobs in detail and said initially that she did not want any information to appear in a newspaper article. “I’m not a public official,” she said. “I don’t owe anybody anything.”

Nature of Job Unresolved

When pressed repeatedly, Salata disclosed basic biographical information and said the nature of her responsibilities as library curator and the size of her staff still have to be worked out. She said she did not know if she would keep the position once the library is completed and turned over to the federal government for maintenance and operation.

She acknowledged that she is the niece of Paul Salata, a Newport Beach businessman and former star athlete at USC who played professional football for the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts. He owns Hillcrest Development and El Toro Material Co.

Last year, Salata and the sports foundation he organized--Orange County Sports Celebrities Foundation--came under fire for excluding women from its annual Sportsman of the Year banquet. Cal State Fullerton, UC Irvine, and Orange Coast and Golden West colleges withdrew from participating in the popular fund-raising event because state laws prohibit the use of public funds for programs that discriminate.

In 1984, the foundation was stripped of its tax-exempt status by state and federal officials after failing to file financial disclosure statements for four years.

The proposed library is scheduled to open Feb. 6, 1991, on Reagan’s 80th birthday. The 153,000-square-foot facility would be the largest presidential library to date--and the only one in the western part of the country--and is expected to house the largest collection of Cabinet documents of any such facility.

Presidential speeches, memoranda, videotapes and a host of memorabilia from the Reagan years in the White House are also to be stored and exhibited at the library, which will include a replica of the Oval Office as well as offices designed for daily use by the former President and his wife, Nancy, Jelloian said.

He said the library collection is already large enough that it is being held in two warehouses, one for archival material and one for items to be exhibited.

Jelloian said workers have been grading the 100-acre site--on unincorporated Ventura County land between the cities of Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley--and recently began pouring the foundation for the basement that will serve as the library’s archives.

Funded Privately

The four-story, Spanish colonial-style structure is expected to cost between $40 million and $70 million, Jelloian said. About two-thirds of the construction cost, to be funded by private donations, has been raised so far, he said.

A mile-long, 60-foot-wide road to be named Presidential Drive will lead from Madera Road to the library, which will offer panoramic views of the Santa Susana Mountains and, on clear days, the Pacific Ocean, he said.

An estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people are expected to visit the library each year--possibly more because of Reagan’s popularity, Jelloian said.

The Reagan Foundation plans to appoint a citizens advisory committee to the library, which would meet to discuss issues of concern such as traffic and public events, according to Jelloian. He said Ventura County officials are being consulted on the choice of committee members.

About 40 people attended the 30-minute slide show and presentation on the library in the Applied Arts Building at Moorpark College.