Reagan Scheduled for Surgery to Repair Broken Hip

Former President Ronald Reagan, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease seven years ago, fell at his Bel-Air home Friday and broke his right hip. He was scheduled to undergo surgery today at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica.

Reagan’s office in Century City issued a terse statement saying the 40th president, who turns 90 on Feb. 6, was “fully alert, in good humor and in stable condition.” It added that his wife, Nancy, had been with him all day.

Since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, Reagan has largely lived in seclusion, and his world--once bounded only by the reach of Air Force One--has narrowed to his house in Bel-Air and occasional outings to parks. He has not made any scheduled public appearances since his diagnosis with the disease, other than a videotaped appearance before the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996, an occasion that brought tears to the eyes of delegates.

Alzheimer’s is a degenerative disease that first attacks the mind and then the body. The few friends and political acquaintances who have seen Reagan in recent years have reported that he does not always recall having been president, and has been losing mobility, using a cane to walk.

The statement from his office said Reagan had fallen early Friday afternoon. His daughter, Patti Davis, said she was alerted late Friday afternoon. She declined to comment further on her father’s health.

Reagan was taken to the same hospital where his other daughter, Maureen Reagan, is reported to be undergoing treatment for cancer.

A radiologist at the hospital, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said Reagan appeared to be in pain and was constantly accompanied by his wife, who had to be covered with a protective lead apron while he was had X-rays taken because she did not want to leave his side.

Reagan’s spokeswoman, Joanne Drake, said the surgery will probably involve placing a pin in his hip.

Aside from Alzheimer’s disease, Reagan’s previous health problems have included the gunshot wounds he suffered in a near-fatal 1981 assassination attempt, a 1985 colon cancer operation and 1987 prostate and skin cancer surgery. He also underwent surgery in 1989, nine months after leaving office, to drain fluid on his brain, apparently the result of a horse-riding accident.

Reagan was born in Tampico, Ill., but has lived mostly in Los Angeles since the late 1930s, when he began a successful career in Hollywood as an actor. He entered politics in the 1960s after a job as a corporate spokesman and goodwill ambassador for General Electric, which fueled an interest in public policy and turned the onetime fervent Democrat sharply to the right.

He was elected governor of California as a Republican in 1966, defeating two-term incumbent Pat Brown, and served two terms, during which he frequently battled to a draw with the Democratic Legislature in his effort to “squeeze, cut and trim.” He won a national following for his plain-spoken conservatism and good-natured charisma.

Reagan ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president in 1976, then won the nomination and the presidency in 1980, defeating Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter. He was overwhelmingly elected to a second term in 1984 and left office with his popularity higher than when he entered.

Ranked Among Top Presidents

Last year, a Gallup Poll of Americans ranked Reagan as the fourth-greatest president--behind only George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and, by a whisker, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat who was perhaps his greatest influence in terms of political style, if not substance.

His strongest support came from those younger than 30, the oldest of whom were only 10 years old when Reagan was elected.

As president, Reagan brought a sense of optimism and renewed patriotism to Washington, which had not yet washed away the stain of Watergate or the pain of the Vietnam War. He restored a sense of formality and dignity to the presidency.

Beyond that, his accomplishments were largely a matter of perspective: Conservatives hailed him as a great leader for building up the military, crusading for lower taxes and cutting government entitlements; liberals excoriated him for much the same reasons, and accused him of presiding over an allegedly illegal arms-for-hostages deal known as the Iran-Contra affair.

There also was debate over the extent to which Reagan was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, although few who were alive then can forget the image of Reagan standing at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin in 1987 and sending a message to the then-Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev,” he declared, “Tear down this wall!”

Reagan left public life in 1994 with a dramatic farewell to the American people, in which he announced his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s and said he was setting out on “the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.”

Last March, his daughter Maureen appeared before Congress to seek an increase in federal appropriations for Alzheimer’s disease. She said people constantly ask her how her father is doing, partly out of concern for him, but perhaps also out of a “heartfelt hope” that his stature allowed him to be spared the ravages of the disease.

“Well,” she said, “I have to report to you that Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t make special arrangements for presidents or first ladies, or anyone else for that matter.”

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Times staff writer Laura Wides contributed to this report.