Nancy Reagan maid returned to work at the White House. In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit Washington, D.C. since Nikita Khrushchev made the trip in 1959 at the height of the Cold War. Nancy was in charge of planning and hosting the important and highly anticipated state dinner, with the goal to impress both the Soviet leader and especially his wife Raisa Gorbacheva. After the meal, she recruited pianist Van Cliburn to play a rendition of "Moscow Nights" for the Soviet delegation, to which Mikhail and Raisa broke out into song. Secretary of State George P. Shultz
Rosa Raisa closed. (It can be heard on Youtube, accessed on May 2, 2015.) Raisa suffered from cancer, having undergone a double mastectomy in the 1940s. She died on September 28, 1963, and her granddaughter, Suzanne Homme, told Raisa's biographer Charles Mintzer that her death certificate listed "bone cancer" as the immediate cause of death. She was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City (Los Angeles), California. Raisa's relatively few recordings (from 1917-1933 for four different record companies, Pathe, Vocalion, Brunswick, and Italian HMV) reveal a beautiful timbre and a florid technique rare in singers of her type. Her famous vocal