LYN NOFZIGER, 81, IRREVERENT ADVISER TO REAGAN, IS DEAD

Lyn Nofziger, the cigar-chomping former newspaperman who served as
spokesman and strategist for Ronald Reagan in Sacramento and
Washington, died of cancer on Monday at his home in Falls Church, Va.
He was 81.

His death was announced by a family member, Carol Dahmen.

Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, said: "Lyn was with us from the
gubernatorial campaign in 1965 through the early White House days,
and Ronnie valued his advice -- and good humor -- as much as
anyone's. I spoke with him just days ago and even though he knew the
end was near, Lyn was hopeful and still in good spirits."

Mr. Nofziger was at the hospital with Reagan after he was shot in
March 1981 and relayed to the press the president's memorable, if
perhaps apocryphal, line to Mrs. Reagan at the hospital: "Honey, I
forgot to duck."

Mr. Nofziger was a reporter in the Washington bureau of the Copley
newspaper chain when he was recruited to serve as the spokesman for
Reagan's first campaign for governor of California in 1966.

Stuart Spencer, who managed that campaign and Reagan's later
campaigns for the White House, recalled Mr. Nofziger as profane,
disheveled and always quick with a quip. Mr. Spencer said he still
had the Mickey Mouse tie Mr. Nofziger gave him years ago. The
difference between them, Mr. Spencer said, was that Mr. Nofziger
regularly wore his.

Mr. Nofziger frequently expressed his disdain for Washington and for
politics, but he kept returning. He put up a cynical facade that
endeared him to the reporters he dealt with, but he remained devoted
to Reagan, even though he was never part of the president's innermost circle.

Ms. Dahmen, a great-niece of Mr. Nofziger, told The Associated Press
on Monday: "He transcended parties; he was loved on both sides of the
aisle. You could love him or hate him, but everybody respected him."

Despite his service in the Reagan and Nixon White Houses, Mr.
Nofziger was not a doctrinaire conservative. He could, however, take
the gloves off when he felt it necessary to serve the boss, either as
a communications aide to Richard M. Nixon or as a political director
for Reagan.

He worked under Reagan to replace Democrats in the federal
bureaucracy with loyal Republicans. John Dean, Nixon's White House
counsel, wrote that Mr. Nofziger had helped compile the Nixon White
House's "enemies list."

Kenneth L. Khachigian, who worked with Mr. Nofziger in the Nixon
White House and remained close to him afterward, said Mr. Nofziger
had enlivened meetings, sometimes to the president's displeasure. "He
could be infuriating because he never seemed to take things
seriously," Mr. Khachigian said. "But on the other hand, he was
utterly loyal and devoted to Reagan."

Like several former Reaganites, Mr. Nofziger opened a lobbying
practice in Washington after leaving the White House. In 1988, he was
convicted of illegally lobbying for two defense contractors and a
labor union. Mr. Nofziger dismissed the charges as trivial and told
the judge he felt no remorse because he did not believe he was guilty.

A year later a federal appeals court threw out the conviction, saying
prosecutors had failed to show he had knowingly committed a crime.

Franklyn Nofziger was a native Californian, born in Bakersfield on
June 8, 1924, and a self-described conservative by the time he
entered college. He served in the Army and attended San Jose State
College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism. He worked
in journalism for 16 years as a reporter and editor, and took his
manual typewriter with him to the White House even after electric
typewriters and then computers rendered it obsolete.

In a 2003 interview with the University of Virginia, as part of its
presidential oral history project, Mr. Nofziger conceded that he
never would have imagined going into politics. But in 1966, he took a
position as press secretary for Reagan's campaign for governor. He
served as the governor's director of communications for nearly two years.

Mr. Nofziger's friends said he could be candid to a fault, which
sometimes strained his relations with Mr. and Mrs. Reagan. In 1991,
when the president dismissed three former close aides, including
former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, from the board of the Reagan
Presidential Library, Mr. Nofziger wrote a scathing op-ed article for
The Washington Post. He said Mr. Reagan had broken his heart by
turning his back on friends.

"Yes, I know you were a long way from being a perfect president," Mr.
Nofziger wrote. "I thought that sometimes you listened to and took
bad advice. I thought that toward the end you were paying too much
attention to what history might think of you -- a mistake most
presidents make."

He went on, "But still, while on a scale of 1 to 10 you were more
nearly a 7 than a 10, you remained my hero because it's hard to
visualize anybody else scoring more than a 5 -- at least on my scale.
But today, Mr. President, and I weep because of it, you are no longer my hero."

He said Mr. Reagan had forgotten old loyalties and walked away from
old friends. "You have let Nancy and the rich and beautiful people
with whom she has surrounded herself and you force off the board of
the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library three of the most dedicated
and selfless Reaganites there are."

Mr. Nofziger wrote four western novels and a political autobiography,
"Nofziger."

But those who know him remember not his serious writings but his puns
and quips and bits of doggerel. Among them is a limerick that he
penned after the doomed nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme
Court last year, which appears on his Web site, www.lynnofziger.com:

Conservatives are fearful that Harriet

Will be George Bush's Iscariot.

They have little doubt

That she'd sell them out

For a ride in a liberal's chariot.

Mr. Nofziger is survived by his wife, Bonnie, their daughter Glenda
and two grandchildren. Another daughter died in 1989.