To James B. Edwards, Ronald Reagan was “Mr. President.” But he was also “Ron” and “The Boss.”

Edwards, the former S.C. governor who headed the Department of Energy under Reagan from 1981 to 1982, is not mourning Reagan this week, although he calls him “the greatest president of my lifetime.” He feels he lost him 10 years ago, when it became clear that Alzheimer’s disease was destroying Reagan’s brain.

Edwards, now 76, first met Reagan in 1964 when they both were working to elect former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater president. Edwards, then a Mount Pleasant oral surgeon, later came to head the 1976 effort to push the Republican presidential nomination away from Gerald Ford and toward Reagan.

Edwards has a personal story for every aspect of the former president that is remembered this week, from Reagan’s realism to his conservatism to his human touch.

Here are three:

IN THE HUNT

It was late December 1980, and Edwards was hunting ducks near McClellanville. He had left the governor’s office the year before and had been enjoying private life and his return to private practice.

The call came from Paul Laxalt, the Nevada senator and friend of president-elect Reagan. Laxalt asked Edwards what position in the cabinet he would like.

Edwards hesitated, but he agreed to sleep on the question.

In the morning, he told Laxalt that he would like to be secretary of Health and Human Services. That job had been filled.

Edwards picked his second choice, secretary of Energy. Laxalt said that would work if Edwards agreed with Reagan that the agency should be abolished. Reagan called Edwards the next day.

“Paul and I have decided that you really should take this job,” Reagan told Edwards.

“Are you serious about shutting it down?” asked Edwards, who wanted to diminish the federal bureaucracy. Reagan said he was.

“You give me two years,” he told Edwards.

His first day as secretary of Energy, Edwards got a call from Reagan, who asked him to deregulate gas prices. Edwards did.

The reception in the press was harsh. A Washington Post cartoonist drew a sharp likeness of Edwards with a gas gauge on his head. It read “empty.”

Edwards had enjoyed a pleasant relationship with the S.C. press. But the Washington press corps had realized one of his fears about joining the cabinet.

Edwards noticed, though, that he was far more upset than Reagan over the media fiasco.

“He just smiled, and it rolled off his back. The bullets were flying all around him but none ever hit him.”

Edwards decided to grow as thick a skin.

“I became used to it,” Edwards said. “It’s just part of the game.”

DOODLER IN CHIEF

Ronald Reagan was a doodler. During cabinet meetings, as he and his top advisors discussed inflation and nuclear diplomacy, he doodled. When the meeting was over, Reagan left first, Edwards recalled. Then the cabinet secretaries would race to his empty chair to see what drawings he had left on the table.

Twice, Edwards was able to snag the doodle first.

Those two doodles, penciled on White House stationery, now hang, framed, in Edwards’ Mount Pleasant den.

One is the head of what looks to be a thug.

“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Edwards said about it.

The other is two American Indians — one a head in profile, and the other sitting with a blanket wrapped around her back.

Reagan also liked to doodle cowboys and horses.

Edwards said he joked to the president about the cowboys.

“I think they’re self portraits,” he told Reagan.

“I guess I’d rather be out there as a cowpoke than around this cabinet table,” Reagan quipped back.

SEEKING COUNSEL

Edwards failed to convince Congress to shutter the Department of Energy. He had spent the two years in Washington that he had promised to Reagan. The Medical University of South Carolina wanted to make him its president. Edwards wanted the job, and he wanted to go home.

Reagan accepted his resignation, gave him a champagne send-off at the White House and presented him with a set of glasses with the presidential seal.

Just before Edwards bid the president farewell, Reagan took him aside.

“Do you any advice for me?”

Edwards told the president that he had good instincts, and should trust them. But he had two suggestions.

“You should fire David Stockman before he embarrasses you,” Edwards said.

Stockman remained Reagan’s budget director until 1985, when he left over policy disagreements with the president. He then wrote a book called “The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.”

Edwards second piece of advice to Reagan: “Send the Congress a balanced budget and let them get the blame for unbalancing it.”

Reagan laughed.

“That would be a difficult thing to do,” said Reagan, whose presidency was marked by rising deficits.

Reach Markoe at (202) 302-7601