Birthday Bash for Reagan’s 85th

As former President Ronald Reagan’s 85th birthday on Tuesday approaches, his presidential library here has been revamping its galleries, planning a huge party and baking a big cake.

But Reagan will not show up today at the galleries’ unveiling.

Nor will he travel to famed Chasen’s Restaurant, which is being reopened Tuesday--one night only--for a presidential birthday fund-raiser hosted by Merv Griffin with a galaxy of GOP dignitaries and crooning by Johnny Mathis.

“He doesn’t make public appearances,” said Reagan’s chief of staff, Joanne Drake.

Instead, Reagan will stop by his Century City office Tuesday, then retire to the L.A. Country Club for his customary birthday round of golf--this time with entertainer Bob Hope.

The 40th president has been in seclusion since his announcement to the American public 15 months ago that he is suffering from terminal, nerve-destroying Alzheimer’s disease.

But the party will go on in his honor, said Lynda Schuler, spokeswoman for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, museum visitors will be invited to eat cake, sign a birthday card to the former president and make $85 donations to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

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And Tuesday night, Republican VIPs including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Gov. Pete Wilson and former President Gerald Ford are to fete Reagan in his absence at the Chasen’s fund-raiser.

Yet the most lasting commemoration of Reagan’s 85 years of life--a presidential milestone achieved only by Truman, Hoover, Madison and Adams--is the multimedia face-lift of his library and museum in Simi Valley.

With 3-D sculpture, CD-ROM technology and life-size replicas of historic rooms, library Director Richard Norton Smith and a cadre of designers have recast the core of the collection into a walk-through, please-touch, gee-whiz show on the Reagan presidency.

The library opens today at 10 a.m., complete with a full-sized model of the granite-and-cedar Geneva boathouse where Reagan and then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev hashed out details of a nuclear treaty in 1985.

Here, too, is a mock-up of the White House Cabinet Room, where visitors can sit around the conference table using touch-sensitive computer monitors to vote on historic issues, then learn from video clips what Reagan actually decided.

“I thought the presidential gallery could do a much better job of conveying the events of Reagan’s presidency,” said Smith, who conceived of the $500,000 make-over just before he arrived in 1993. He will finish it just before leaving next week to run the Gerald R. Ford library and museum in Michigan.

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“The gallery should tell you how he changed the country and the world, but it should allow the visitor to become part of the story and not stay just an observer,” he said.

Visitors can hear Reagan’s jokes and one-liners by pressing touch-sensitive computer screens on three CD-ROM stations. They can view an X-ray showing John Hinckley’s bullet lodged beside Reagan’s heart after the 1981 assassination attempt.

And they can use a big red plastic button to trigger a documentary film on the U.S.-Soviet arms talks, which plays out on screens inside the replica of the Fleur de L’Eau estate in Geneva, where Reagan and Gorbachev huddled for their historic fireside chat.

A sign nearby reads, “For 40 years, American presidents had their finger on the button that could start World War III. Now, thanks to President Reagan, you can push the button to see how he ended the threat of nuclear war.”

Exhibit designer Gary Peck said he wanted to flesh out what once was a somewhat two-dimensional display and make it a more personal account of Reagan as a man and as a president.

“We’re bringing a few more aspects to this story, trying to give it a little more familiarity and dimension,” Peck said. “I think there are a lot of things here people will recognize.”

Yet the show is not all bells and whistles.

Physical artifacts like boxing Reagan-and-Kadafi puppets and a slew of campaign bumper stickers laid out on an antique car bumper compete for attention with words, words and more words.

Glass cases display Reagan’s letters to former Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov and former President Richard M. Nixon.

Printed capsule histories accompany the Geneva Summit exhibit, a display on technological advances during the Reagan years and one of the actual cruise missiles he ordered deployed in Europe in 1983.

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And the X-ray of the assassin’s bullet is bolstered by copies of the notes that Reagan wrote from his hospital bed when a respirator tube taped to his mouth prevented him speaking.

Visitors can see Reagan quipping with doctors, such as the W.C. Fields quote, “All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

But some notes are the more serious replies of a disoriented, worried shooting victim: “I thought it was still afternoon. . . . No I’m not really hungry for some reason . . . What does the future hold--Will I be able to do ranch work, ride, etc?”

Throughout the galleries, historical anecdotes and Reagan quotes are strewn across huge photos and signboards of frosted plexiglass.

Said library director Smith, who wrote the text, “I’m a firm believer in the power of the written word, and I refuse to believe most people will not read words written on a wall.”