Elaine Sawyer, 62; Personal Aide to First Lady Reagan

Elaine Crispen Sawyer, a trusted aide and press secretary to Nancy Reagan who was deeply involved in the response to events that defined the former first lady’s public image, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital in suburban Alexandria, Va. She was 62.

Sawyer, who had worked in the 1970s as a media assistant to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in California, served as Nancy Reagan’s personal secretary from 1981 to 1985, then as press secretary from 1985 to 1989.

A tough employer whose relationship with members of the Reagan Cabinet and staff was often rocky, Nancy Reagan showed a high degree of confidence in Sawyer. In the role of confidant, in 1987, Sawyer kept the secret of Reagan’s breast cancer, and planned funeral arrangements when Reagan’s mother, Edith Davis, died.

Sawyer also used her generally warm relationship with White House reporters to try to recast what she saw as negative press about her boss.

“Come the first snow in Washington and it’ll be Nancy Reagan’s fault,” Sawyer said in a 1986 interview with the Washington Post. “The minute anything goes awry, they’re looking for people to blame and it’s Nancy Reagan. Somehow her name always comes to the top.”

That was said after Reagan was accused in a whispering campaign by disgruntled Cabinet members of taking undue control of the president’s schedule during his recuperation from prostate cancer surgery. Much of the tension was reportedly with then-Chief of Staff Donald Regan. Sawyer was involved in the first lady’s behind-the-scenes response.

Sawyer was cited in Kitty Kelley’s controversial 1991 Nancy Reagan biography as being the aide who took zodiac charts to Reagan in the White House family quarters. When it was reported in 1988 that Reagan had been consulting San Francisco astrologer Joan Quigley for advice on scheduling and even on presidential policy, Sawyer was initially mum.

Facing a blizzard of media inquiry and public parody, she and administration spokesman Marlin Fitzwater later cast the consultations as a reaction to the failed assassination attempt against the president. “There is nothing wrong with it. It’s done for the sake of comfort, like a good-luck charm,” she told the Post.

Sawyer also tried to tamp down another controversy when it was revealed in 1988 that Reagan failed to report the borrowing of lavish outfits and accessories by such designers as James Galanos, despite a previous promise to White House lawyers, made in the face of similar criticism, that she would disclose such arrangements.

“She set her own rule, and she broke her own rule,” Sawyer said initially.

Reagan, however, later denied having accepted any of the clothing or having done anything wrong, and Sawyer toed the line. But the negative image of privilege lingered.

Sawyer was a key player in more successful public outreach, such as the “Just Say No” anti-drug program, and had helped arrange Reagan’s appearances at NBA games and on a “Diff’rent Strokes” television episode.

In a statement Tuesday, Nancy Reagan said: “Elaine Crispen Sawyer was a dear friend and trusted confidant.... It’s hard to believe that she won’t be here tomorrow when I want to pick up the phone and just catch up on the news.”

Sawyer, a native of Southfield, Mich., attended UCLA. In 1975 she joined the media consulting firm Deaver & Hannaford, where she was an executive assistant to Ronald Reagan’s communications advisor Michael Deaver.

Survivors include her husband, George Sawyer, and a daughter from her first marriage, Cheryl Crispen Bitsberger, both of Alexandria; three stepchildren; and six grandchildren.