As secretary of defense, Somesville resident Caspar Weinberger would watch in awe as his former boss, President Ronald Reagan, bucked conventional wisdom to tackle everything from the Cold War to inflation.

But it was through death that the president found peace from something that he could not control or change – Alzheimer’s disease.

“I think from his point of view, it’s a sense of release,” said Weinberger of his longtime friend’s death. “He was unable to have any kind of life at all, and there was no hope for a cure. It’s a great tragedy for the world and the United States.”

Weinberger did not complete two full terms in his post as Reagan did in his, resigning his cabinet-level position in November 1987 during the controversial Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages affair. Yet in nearly seven years working with Reagan, Weinberger said he would “watch him in action” as the president cut taxes and increased military spending “to get the peace we have come to know.”

“[He had a] determination to follow courses that were generally regarded as wrong,” Weinberger said. “He was subjected to tremendous criticism all the time that he was president because he was violating the conventional wisdom. He used to tell me, with quite a twinkle in his eye, that [that] was one of his greatest strengths.”

Weinberger, like other Maine residents who met or worked with Reagan, was not shocked by his death, just saddened. Alzheimer’s claimed what should have been Reagan’s role as an elder statesman.

“It’s particularly sad that we did not have the benefit of his insight and his wisdom during the last several years,” said David Emery, a former Maine representative who now lives in Tenants Harbor.

“I’m thinking more of policy. He was a man who was instrumental in foreign policy accomplishments in the 1980s. Certainly he had a unique understanding and a unique perspective that we were not able to probe. It’s lost history,” Emery said. “Many presidents, when they leave office … provide historians with the background information that comes from the role that they played. Of course we were denied that with President Reagan because of his unfortunate disease.”

In June 1983, Reagan appointed Emery deputy commissioner of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, an office that provided support for the nuclear and chemical weapons disarmament negotiations between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Regular meetings with Reagan were on Emery’s calendar.

“As you can imagine, walking into the Oval Office or the Situation Room is quite an experience for anyone,” Emery said Saturday night. “It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how you can be in that situation with that prestige and that level of awe and not be ill at ease. But Reagan made everyone feel comfortable, made everyone feel important, which was a wonderful gift in those circumstances.

“One of the things that impressed me the first time I talked to him about these issues is that he knew what he wanted to accomplish,” Emery said. “That was of course the easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, in a statement, said Reagan “inspired the world to make the seemingly impossible possible, such as the fall of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Berlin Wall.”

While the Cold War was one of many items on Reagan’s international agenda, women’s issues were on his domestic one. In the early 1980s, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe – then a representative – organized a meeting with Reagan to discuss the gender gap in the Republican Party, a major issue for a political party promoting itself as receptive to women’s issues but with very few females in public office. Also at the time, child-support enforcement was not actively pursued. Snowe said Reagan was “very cordial.”

In 1983, Reagan appointed two women to cabinet posts – Elizabeth Dole as secretary of transportation and Margaret M. Heckler as secretary of health and human services.

Snowe and her husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan, attended Reagan’s last public event, a dinner he hosted for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1994. Snowe and McKernan, as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, were sitting at the head table.

When Reagan gave his speech, those in attendance knew something was wrong with his health, but they didn’t know what. Little was known about Alzheimer’s unknown disease at the time.

“Everyone remembers that he repeated the lines and he didn’t recognize it,” Snowe said. “That’s when people started to wonder. It was shortly thereafter that they released his letter that he had Alzheimer’s. It’s sad to think that this time has passed. I think we all feel the loss, the loss to America.”

It is unknown whether Reagan actually visited Maine. Trivia buffs like to say that Maine is the only state that Reagan never set foot in.

But he sent letters, and he called supporters.

Conservative activist Mary Adams of Garland received a telephone call on the night of the Iowa caucus in 1980, when Reagan was running for president.

“The voice said, ‘Mary Adams?’ and I said, ‘yes,'” Adams recalled Saturday night. “‘This is Ronald Reagan’ and I said, ‘no you’re not.’ And it was. It sounded like him, and it was him.”

Instead of being with the other candidates watching poll results, Reagan was calling grass-roots supporters in other states and had asked Adams for her support. She declined because she didn’t know if she was going to launch a nonpartisan anti-property-tax petition drive.

“The voice,” she said. “His voice was very much a part of movie culture. And to have that voice on the other end of the phone that winter night was pretty memorable.”