Nancy Reagan

Born Anne Frances Robbins in New York City on July 6, 1921, she spent six years with an aunt and uncle in Maryland after her parents separated, then moved to Chicago in 1929 when her mother remarried and adopted her stepfather's name. As Nancy Davis she worked as a Hollywood actress in the 1940s and '50s, appearing in films like The Next Voice You Hear... and Donovan's Brain, and married Ronald Reagan in 1952 when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. She was California's first lady from 1967 to 1975, then became First Lady of the United States in January 1981, where early criticism over replacing White House china and accepting designer clothing gave way to her "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign - widely faulted for stigmatizing poor communities hit by the crack epidemic - and a 1988 scandal when it emerged she'd used an astrologer to plan her husband's schedule after his 1981 shooting. She returned to Bel Air in 1989 and cared for Ronald Reagan through Alzheimer's until his death in 2004, then remained active in politics and stem cell research advocacy until she died of congestive heart failure on March 6, 2016, at 94.