Donald Regan 2003 Deaths

Donald Regan

financier who resigned as chairman of Merrill Lynch in 1981 to become President Reagan's treasury secretary. Immensely popular and influential with the president, Regan was instrumental in the passage of 1981's tax cuts and drafted the sweeping Tax Reform Act of 1986. He became Reagan's chief of staff in 1985, but ran afoul of First Lady Nancy Reagan. He was forced to resign in 1987, and he and the first lady subsequently traded barbs in their memoirs.