the president. On March 30, 1981, Deaver stood feet away from John Hinckley as he fired at Reagan, wounding him. Deaver later supported Nancy Reagan in the hospital as she arrived. Deaver resigned from the White House staff in May 1985. Perjury conviction On March 18, 1987, Deaver was convicted of perjury for congressional testimony he had submitted. He was convicted on three of five counts of perjury stemming from statements to a congressional subcommittee and federal grand jury investigating his lobbying activities with administration officials. Deaver blamed alcoholism for lapses in memory and judgment. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but the sentence was reduced to three years of probation and a fine of $100,000. Deaver was also ordered to perform 1,500 hours of public service. In the final days of Reagan's presidency the question of a pardon arose, but Reagan noted in his diaries that Deaver indicated he would not accept a pardon. Later life and death Shortly after Deaver resigned from the White House, he formed Michael K. Deaver, Inc. and became a lobbyist. For a time he was in business with another Reagan aide, Peter D. Hannaford in a public relations firm named Deaver and Hannaford. In his later years, he wrote three books: Behind the Scenes (1988; co-written with Mickey Herskowitz), A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan (2001; foreword by Nancy Reagan), and Nancy: A Portrait of My Years with Nancy Reagan (2004). In 2005, he edited and published a collection of essays titled Why I Am a Reagan Conservative. Deaver also worked at the Washington, D.C. office of Edelman, a public relations agency, a role he held from 1992 to 2006, ultimately as chairman of the D.C. office. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2001, Deaver said, "I've always said the only thing I did is light [Reagan] well... My job was filling up the space around the head. I didn't make Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made me." According to former First Lady and longtime friend Nancy Reagan, Deaver's greatest skill "was in arranging what were known as good visuals — televised events or scenes that would leave a powerful symbolic image in people's minds." In 2006, Deaver was awarded an honorary degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Deaver died of pancreatic cancer on August 18, 2007, at age 69 at his home