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- PEOPLE, Page 105Nancy Didn't Give a Damm
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- "My life too began with Ronald Reagan," Helene Von Damm once
- said, summing up her 20 years as his secretary. But as Von Damm
- relates in her soon-to-be published memoir At Reagan's Side, the
- First Lady did not like another woman basking in the President's
- glow. When the Austrian-born Von Damm, who was forbidden to travel
- with Reagan on Nancy's orders, was up for the ambassadorship to
- Vienna, the First Lady told her, "I expect you'll turn down the
- President." Von Damm did not and faced icy snubs. "She would look
- right past me even when shaking hands." Despite her fourth marriage
- to an Austrian playboy during her posting, she blames "Mrs. R" for
- forcing her out of Vienna: "She was a schemer married to someone
- who was unable to conceive of a Machiavellian thought." A secretary
- is always the first to know.