Former President Reagan dies at 93

LOS ANGELES, June 5 (UPI) -- Ronald Reagan, the former actor who became the 40th U.S. president, died Saturday at his Los Angeles home after battling Alzheimer's disease for 10 years.

He was 93.

Ron Reagan Jr. and Patty Davis, and their mother, Nancy, were at his bedside. Reagan is also survived by his son, Michael Reagan. Maureen Reagan, his first daughter from his marriage to Jane Wyman, died in 2001.

Reagan, who had also served as governor of California, became one of the most popular U.S. presidents of modern times.

A New Deal Democrat, Reagan became a conservative Republican who steered the nation toward the right while injecting America with a wave of morale-boosting patriotism.

His two-term presidency came to be known as the "Reagan Revolution."

"What I'd really like to do is go down in history as the president who made Americans believe in themselves again," Reagan said.

He was a strident anti-Communist and was credited by many for ending the 45-year Cold War and causing the collapse of the Soviet Union which he had branded as the "evil empire." He once urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," referring to the Berlin Wall.