being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt within months of his 1981 inauguration. Days after Reagan survived the shooting, columnist Jack Anderson wrote "Reagan and the Eerie Zero Factor" and noted that the 40th president had either disproved the superstition, or had nine lives. Reagan, the oldest man to be elected president at that time, also survived treatment for colon cancer while in office. First Lady Nancy Reagan was reported to have hired psychics and astrologers to try to protect her husband from the effects of the curse. However, the Reagans' son Ron revealed in his memoir that President Reagan began showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease as early as three years into his first term as president. Reagan left office on January 20, 1989, and ultimately died of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93.