The news that Diana Denman died April 17 at a meeting of the Philadelphia Society was not only sad but somewhat unbelievable for her legions of friends. Although she was 91, those who knew the lady from San Antonio, Texas, through more than two generations of conservative causes and campaigns just could not believe that she was gone.
“Just call me Diana!” she would admonish fellow conservatives of all ages when they addressed her as “Mrs. Denman.” She knew and remembered them all, through causes and campaigns ranging from the early days of the modern Republican Party in the Lone Star State to crusades for freedom fighters everywhere — from the anti-Communist contras in Nicaragua to the embattled Ukrainians under siege from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“I supported President Trump but I get very nervous when he and [Vice President JD] Vance send signals the U.S. will cut and run from Ukraine,” Denman told a group of friends she had “commanded” to join her for dinner earlier this year at her beloved Metropolitan Club in Washington DC. To underscore her point, she invited two young women from Ukraine she had recently befriended to join the group and discuss their situation.
Denman was a major donor to causes and candidates in which she believed, such as the Institute for World Politics (IWP), the Fund for American Studies, the Leadership institute, and a score of others. But she was also nobody’s fool and jetted to faraway cities to see where and how her money was being spent by the beneficiaries of her support. Her passion was political discourse and Denman became a fixture of such bastions of conservative thought as the Philadelphia Society, the Mount Pelerin Society, and the Council For National Policy (CNP).
But her most passionate cause was the presidential odyssey of her old friend Ronald Reagan. The two had met in the late 1950’s, when the young Diana, just fresh out of George Washington University, had a brief career as a film actress in Hollywood that included a speaking role in the hit film “The Buccaneer” with Yul Brynner and Claire Bloom (in which she was billed as “Diana Destine” in the credits). At the time, Reagan was seeking a non-consecutive term as president of the Screen Actors Guild and sought out Diana to ask for her vote.
“And I liked him and supported him,” she loved to say, “How many people do you know who can say they first voted for Ronald Reagan when he ran for president of SAG?”
It was only natural that in 1976, former California Gov. Reagan would turn to Diana to help his long-shot nomination challenge to President Gerald Ford. She and husband San Antonio attorney LeRoy Denman, eagerly became “Reagan Rangers” in the all-important Texas Republican primary. Along with Houston financier Jimmy Lyon and Lone Star State Reagan Co-chairmen Ernie Angelo and Ray Barnhart, the Denmans eagerly raised money and rallied the conservative grass-roots for Reagan in the Lone Star State primary — in which he swept all 96 delegates.
“Diana was a major player in Reagan’s historic primary win,” Gary Hoitsma, a Reagan Administration official and veteran of the 1976 campaign, told Newsmax. “She had a lot of energy and whenever we needed money for something, she’d help come up with it.”
When Reagan did become president, he offered Denman a diplomatic position but she could not bring herself to leave her beloved LeRoy (who died in 2015 after a long bout with dementia) and go overseas. She did accept a spot on the advisory board of the Peace Corps.
Denman was an active conservative Republican and involved in the party and its internecine battles well into her twilight years. She was vice chairman of the Texas GOP from 1983-88 and, with Reagan stepping down from the presidency, in 1988, she led the Texas campaign of Pat Robertson — not necessarily because of his religious convictions, she explained, but more because of his commitment to a strong counterterrorism offensive by the U.S. In 1996, she backed close friend Steve Forbes for president.
In 2012, Denman found a new conservative hero in Ted Cruz and eagerly supported his first winning Senate race. In 2016, she was an early Cruz-for-President booster and assisted his re-election bid in ’24.
Like many Texas conservatives who experienced slights from those they considered “squishes” or too moderate for their party, Denman never forgot who was on the other side from her in party fights. At a dinner at the San Antonio Country Club in 2024, I asked her if former Bexar County GOP Chairman Jim Lunz, who Reaganites considered an enemy, was still living. Diana piped up: “Yes, unfortunately.” At the request of another guest, Pam Rosser, whose mother was in the same assisted care facility as Lunz, I called him. He was then in his ’90s and vividly recalled his long career as a Texas Republican. Asked about Diana, Lunz replied: “I knew Mrs. Denman well but we weren’t always on the same side.”
Born in Abilene and raised in Washington D.C, the young Diana was an accomplished equestrian who, at the age of 3 in 1937, rode a pony into the National Press Club to celebrate the inauguration of Texan John Nance Garner as vice president. Conservative Democrat Garner was a friend of her politically-connected attorney-father Gilbert Sandifer.
Educated at Holton Arms Academy and Mount Vernon Seminary, she made her debut in Washington at a party featuring singers Eddie Fisher and Julius LaRosa. Following her stint in Hollywood, she had a successful career as a model in New York.
But causes always seemed to beckon her. She always reminded people that her beloved LeRoy was a decorated World War II veteran and “I just love a man in uniform.” In her final two decades, she showed her love to many men and women in uniform who were fellow residents of military-heavy San Antonio. Denman especially helped medical students at Fort Sam Houston and would provide financial assistance or whatever was needed for young lieutenants seeking a career in medicine. Her annual Christmas Flag Officer Reception became a “must event” for generals and admirals in the area.
“Diana entered politics attending Democratic conventions as a girl in the 1940s and lived to see her native Texas an economic powerhouse that had been transformed politicallty,” John Fund, columnist for the American Spectator and National Review, told Newsmax. “At every key juncture in American politics, Diana was always in the thick of things–rallying the troops, stiffening the spines of conservatives and raising the needed resources. Ronald Reagan was her lodestar, freedom was the prize and in pursuit of it, Diana became a true Lone Star heroine.”
“Diana was a force of nature who played a major role in turning Texas from blue to red and in national and international causes advocating libertarianism and freedom,” echoed veteran conservative activist Richard Viguerie. “It was poignant her final moments were at a meeting of the [conservative] Philadelphia Society. She died doing what she wanted —with her Texas boots on.”
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