A medical doctor, Ruge had a distinguished career specializing in spinal injuries. When he was 63 years old, President Ronald Reagan asked him to be his personal physician. Ruge accepted the job, but he didn’t like the protocols that were in place to treat the president in case of emergency. So he changed them.
For instance, he ordered that in an emergency the president should be taken to the closest hospital, not necessarily a secure facility that may be further away. Just two months into his presidency, Reagan was shot.
“The framework of procedures [Dr. Ruge] put in place were crucial to the fact [Reagan] survived” the assassination attempt, says Harold Wilde, the president of North Central College in Naperville, Ill., where Ruge went to college. “Dan used to tell the story that out of the five presidents that were shot in office, only one lived” — Reagan. Ruge died August 29 at his home in Denver, Colo. He was 88.