John Waters And His Nixon Connection

February 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Energy, Entertainment, Environmental issues, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

This week the Australian newspapers the Melbourne Age features an interview with director, writer and raconteur John Waters, who will be traveling to Down Under in March to present his one-man show in several of that nation’s cities. In the article, Waters mentions that he was interested to see one of his childhood favorites, Patty McCormack of The Bad Seed fame, playing Patricia Nixon in Ron Howard’s film Frost/Nixon, which leads to the surprising fact that:

Waters has a Nixon connection himself. His uncle, John C. Whitaker, was undersecretary of the interior during the Nixon years. It got a bit awkward, Waters says, “during the ’60s when I was at riots and things outside the White House but now we get along great”. Whitaker, he adds, “was never part of anything like Watergate and his son, when he was 15, worked as a craft services kid on Hairspray and went on to become a big producer with Imagine Films, producing things like Eminem’s film 8 Mile.”

As previously mentioned at TNN, Mr. Whitaker, who appeared at the Nixon Library last month, was a major figure, during the early 1970s, in the shaping of the most far-ranging and farsighted environmental policies of any Presidency since Theodore Roosevelt’s, and in the initiatives in energy policy that have become especially relevant in recent years.

It’s also worth noting that his son Jim Whitaker, who Waters mentions, was a producer of another Ron Howard film, Cinderella Man. And it was Waters’s grandmother Stella Whitaker who gave him, for his sixteenth birthday, the camera which he used to shoot his earliest films. Over forty years later, he’s at work on his next feature, Fruitcake, although, as he points out to the Age’s reporter, it’s now rather difficult for even the creator of Hairspray to get backing for any feature with a budget above $1 million and below $100 million.

A Race – And Candidate – To Watch

January 29, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, History, Nixon family, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Politics, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 3 Comments 

Nearly 65 years after his famous grandfather was first asked to run as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representative from that state’s 12th district, 30-year old Christopher Cox has put his hat in the ring for the seat in New York’s first district on Long Island. Cox, the son of Edward and Tricia Cox, and grandson of the 37th President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, is a fiscal conservative who champions limited government and lower taxes.

He also has politics in his blood.

And like his grandfather, who was swept into office as part of a Republican landslide in the 1946 off-year elections in the aftermath of World War II and too many years of “New” and “Fair” Democratic deals, he hopes to ride the current wave of discontent and frustration all the way to Capitol Hill. In doing so, he could make a little bit of history, as well. Cox graduated from Princeton and New York University Law School, and served as a John McCain delegate and was the New York State Executive Director of McCain’s 2008 Presidential run.

New York’s first district encompasses Suffolk County, the eastern part of Long Island, with its signature north and south forks and places such as Brookhaven, Smithtown, and the Hamptons. The region is picturesque—still pastoral in part. Richard Nixon loved it out there, even writing his 1968 Republican nomination acceptance speech at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk.

Edward Cox, Christopher’s father, is the current chairman of the New York Republican State Committee. His ancestors were well known in state and local politics, business, and jurisprudence—and his own political resume includes experience as an attorney in the Reagan administration.

Of course, those of us old enough to remember recall the images of a beautiful White House wedding back on June 12, 1971, as Ed took Tricia Nixon as his wife.

Should Christopher Cox get the GOP nomination, he’ll face an uphill race against the Democrat incumbent—Tim Bishop, who has held the seat since 2003. Interestingly, in spite of the fact that Bishop trounced his opponent in 2008 by 16 points, Barack Obama only garnered 51% of the district’s vote in 2008—a rare case that year of a local Democrat out polling the “Yes, We Can” national juggernaut. So to many observers, certainly Chris Cox among them, the seat is very much in play.

It’s been said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The year was 1945, and a young Naval officer was transferred that January to a post in Philadelphia after his tour in the South Pacific. He and his wife contemplated their post-war future. Richard and Pat Nixon also awaited the arrival of their first child.

In September of 1945, while still on the east coast, Richard Nixon received a letter from Herman Perry, a Whittier, California banker, inquiring: “Would you like to be a candidate for Congress on the Republican ticket in 1946? Jerry Voorhis expects to run. Registration is about fifty-fifty. The Republicans are gaining. Please air mail me your response if you are interested.”

The rest, as they say, is history—but none of it was a foregone conclusion.

The seat had been held since 1936 by Jerry Voorhis, a sometimes-New Deal—sometimes further left— Democrat, who had had long been covered by Franklin Roosevelt’s electoral coattails. He had made a career attacking insurance companies, oil companies, and banks—even going so far as to advocate the funneling of all profits from the Federal Reserve System into the Federal Government’s general revenues.

Nixon quickly sized up the situation and the offer and replied: “I feel very strongly that Jerry Voorhis can be beaten, and I’d welcome the opportunity to take a crack at him,” promising “an aggressive, vigorous campaign.”

In fact, Nixon made good on his word and took the fight to Voorhis in 1946. Facing a tough and effective speaker and campaigner, Voorhis was put on the defensive right from the start and never really figured out what to do. During debates with Nixon, one observer said that Voorhis, “pauses, breathes heavily, adjusts his glasses nervously with both hands, etc.,”—this was contrasted with Richard Nixon’s bold style and manner.

Of course, down through the years, the story of the 1946 campaign, as told by many Nixon detractors, has been that it was dirty and underhanded. But, as one biographer has written:

Politics is a rough occupation, and Voorhis had led a sheltered life. He should have seen Nixon coming and responded more effectively and promptly to his attacks… It was not an edifying example of clarity of political debate at its best, but it wasn’t the infamous prostitution of the political process that Nixon-haters have sold to a drooling posterity either.

On election night, Nixon basked in the glow of victory after winning 57% of the vote. He would regularly say over the remaining years of his life that every election win was special—but that first one always remained the most vivid and rewarding. He, Pat, and their nine-month old little baby girl, Tricia, were on their way to Washington, where they’d all (joined by little sister, Julie, less than two years later) live for 20 of the next 28 years.

In early 1947, as Richard Nixon began serving in Congress, he made his way to a debate in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. The subject was American labor, particularly the merits of the Taft-Hartley Bill. His opponent was also a former Naval officer, who had as well been elected in November of 1946—one of the few bright spots for the Democrats that otherwise discouraging night. His name was John F. Kennedy.

JFK would later concede that Nixon bested him that night. They left the stage, had dinner, and then shared a compartment on a train back to Washington talking into the morning hours about life, politics, the past, and the future. In fact, those two young men on a train, Nixon at 34 years of age, Kennedy not yet 30, would figure significantly in the future of the nation. They were young men in a hurry—part of a new generation of leaders.

These days we watch another class of young politicians testing the waters. John F. Kennedy, Jr. died tragically, long before we could ever see him run for office. His big sister, Caroline, made an awkward attempt to get Hillary Clinton’s vacated Senate seat, but never seemed to catch on—or up. Now the torch has been past to an even newer generation as Tricia’s son, Christopher, runs this year.

It will be very interesting to watch—and remember.

1.27.73

January 27, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

Thirty-seven years ago today, the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam  —popularly known as the Paris Peace Accords— was signed.

After four hard years, RN had achieved the peace with honor he had promised and was determined to achieve.

The tortuous negotiations that had begun under LBJ in 1968 finally ended on a Thursday afternoon in Paris when RN’s Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Ambassador to South Vietnam and head of the US delegation, signed  the Paris Peace Accords.

The Vietnamese signatories were South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam, North VIetnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh, and Vietcong Foreign Minister Nguyen Thi Binh.

Secretary of State William P. Rogers signs the Paris Peace Accords.  The text of the Peace Accords can be read here.

When the news arrived, RN informed PN:

And, as he said he would, at 10 PM that night, he spoke to the nation from the Oval Office.  He began by describing the terms of the settlement, and reminding all parties that they must be observed and honored:

This will mean that the terms of the agreement must be scrupulously adhered to. We shall do everything the agreement requires of us, and we shall expect the other parties to do everything it requires of them. We shall also expect other interested nations to help insure that the agreement is carried out and peace is maintained.

RN thanked the American people for their support:

And finally, to all of you who are listening, the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible. I know that you would not have wanted that peace jeopardized…..

The important thing was not to talk about peace, but to get peace–and to get the right kind of peace. This we have done.

Now that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies, that would have abandoned our prisoners of war, or that would have ended the war for us but would have continued the war for the 50 million people of Indochina. Let us be proud of the 2 1/2 million young Americans who served in Vietnam, who served with honor and distinction in one of the most selfless enterprises in the history of nations. And let us be proud of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives so that the people of South Vietnam might live in freedom and so that the world might live in peace.

At what must have been an intense moment of personal satisfaction, RN’s final words and thoughts were for his predecessor —Lyndon Johnson— who had died only days before.  Although he did not mention it in his speech, RN had made sure that LBJ was fully briefed about the progress of the talks, and that he died knowing peace was, truly, at hand.

Just yesterday, a great American, who once occupied this office, died. In his life, President Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the world.

I remember the last time I talked with him. It was just the day after New Year’s. He spoke then of his concern with bringing peace, with making it the right kind of peace, and I was grateful that he once again expressed his support for my efforts to gain such a peace. No one would have welcomed this peace more than he.

Pursuant to the terms of the Paris Peace Accords, in February 1973, the POWs returned home.

Address to the Nation Announcing Conclusion of an Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam

You can listen to the President’s speech here.

Good evening:

I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.

The following statement is being issued at this moment in Washington and Hanoi:

At 12:30 Paris time today, January 23, 1973, the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was initialed by Dr. Henry Kissinger on behalf of the United States, and Special Adviser Le Duc Tho on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The agreement will be formally signed by the parties participating in the Paris Conference on Vietnam on January 27, 1973, at the International Conference Center in Paris.

The cease-fire will take effect at 2400 Greenwich Mean Time, January 27, 1973. The United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam express the hope that this agreement will insure stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to the preservation of lasting peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia.

That concludes the formal statement. Throughout the years of negotiations, we have insisted on peace with honor. In my addresses to the Nation from this room of January 25 and May 8 [1972], I set forth the goals that we considered essential for peace with honor.

In the settlement that has now been agreed to, all the conditions that I laid down then have been met:

A cease-fire, internationally supervised, will begin at 7 p.m., this Saturday, January 27, Washington time.

Within 60 days from this Saturday, all Americans held prisoners of war throughout Indochina will be released. There will be the fullest possible accounting for all of those who are missing in action.

During the same 60-day period, all American forces will be withdrawn from South Vietnam.

The people of South Vietnam have been guaranteed the right to determine their own future, without outside interference.

By joint agreement, the full text of the agreement and the protocol to carry it out will be issued tomorrow.

Throughout these negotiations we have been in the closest consultation with President Thieu and other representatives of the Republic of Vietnam. This settlement meets the goals and has the full support of President Thieu and the Government of the Republic of Vietnam, as well as that of our other allies who are affected.

The United States will continue to recognize the Government of the Republic of Vietnam as the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam.

We shall continue to aid South Vietnam within the terms of the agreement, and we shall support efforts by the people of South Vietnam to settle their problems peacefully among themselves.

We must recognize that ending the war is only the first step toward building the peace. All parties must now see to it that this is a peace that lasts, and also a peace that heals–and a peace that not only ends the war in Southeast Asia but contributes to the prospects of peace in the whole world.

This will mean that the terms of the agreement must be scrupulously adhered to. We shall do everything the agreement requires of us, and we shall expect the other parties to do everything it requires of them. We shall also expect other interested nations to help insure that the agreement is carried out and peace is maintained.

As this long and very difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to each of those who have been parties in the conflict.

First, to the people and Government of South Vietnam: By your courage, by your sacrifice, you have won the precious right to determine your own future, and you have developed the strength to defend that right. We look forward to working with you in the future–friends in peace as we have been allies in war.

To the leaders of North Vietnam: As we have ended the war through negotiations, let us now build a peace of reconciliation. For our part, we are prepared to make a major effort to help achieve that goal. But just as reciprocity was needed to end the war, so too will it be needed to build and strengthen the peace.

To the other major powers that have been involved even indirectly: Now is the time for mutual restraint so that the peace we have achieved can last.

And finally, to all of you who are listening, the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible. I know that you would not have wanted that peace jeopardized. With our secret negotiations at the sensitive stage they were in during this recent period, for me to have discussed publicly our efforts to secure peace would not only have violated our understanding with North Vietnam, it would have seriously harmed and possibly destroyed the chances for peace. Therefore, I know that you now can understand why, during these past several weeks, I have not made any public statements about those efforts.

The important thing was not to talk about peace, but to get peace–and to get the right kind of peace. This we have done.

Now that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies, that would have abandoned our prisoners of war, or that would have ended the war for us but would have continued the war for the 50 million people of Indochina. Let us be proud of the 2 1/2 million young Americans who served in Vietnam, who served with honor and distinction in one of the most selfless enterprises in the history of nations. And let us be proud of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives so that the people of South Vietnam might live in freedom and so that the world might live in peace.

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met–the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace. Nothing means more to me at this moment than the fact that your long vigil is coming to an end.

Just yesterday, a great American, who once occupied this office, died. In his life, President Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the world.

I remember the last time I talked with him. It was just the day after New Year’s. He spoke then of his concern with bringing peace, with making it the right kind of peace, and I was grateful that he once again expressed his support for my efforts to gain such a peace. No one would have welcomed this peace more than he.

And I know he would join me in asking —for those who died and for those who live— let us consecrate this moment by resolving together to make the peace we have achieved a peace that will last. Thank you and good evening.

Remembering Rose Woods

January 22, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, In Memoriam, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Rose Mary Woods died five years ago today, on 22 January 2005.

“Those who didn’t know her might think her life was all about a gap on a tape.  How wrong they would be.”  Rose Mary Woods at her desk in her office in the West Wing in 1974.  She was born in Sebring, Ohio, on the day before Christmas in 1917 and died five years ago today in 2005.

Back in the days before everyone was an assistant, when being a secretary was a serious and important vocation, Rose Woods was the epitome —the ne plus ultra— of the executive secretary.  Her resume may have highlighted  her phenomenal typing and dictation speeds, but that was only the technical basis for the pivotal role she came to play in RN’s life and career.  The keenness of her intelligence was matched by the acuity of her insight — into people and events and issues.  And the fierceness of her loyalty was matched by an innate integrity that was anchored by the depth of her Catholic faith.

Rose was an intensely private person — and the life of every party.  She had a lively sense of personal style and a sly sense of humor.  And there is no question that she would have knocked out all the competition if she had appeared on So You Think You Can Dance.

Rose Mary Woods with Senator Nixon in 1952 and in the late 1960s.

Rose first met RN in 1947 when she was working for the Herter Committee of congressmen that went to Europe to examine post-war conditions; their recommendations played a large part in shaping the Marshall Plan.  Tasked with preparing all the members’ expenses, she was impressed by the young newcomer from California’s 12th District because he was the only one who submitted meticulously kept records with all the relevant receipts and documents already attached.  The impression she made on him was equally strong, and when he was elected to the Senate in 1950, he asked her to join his staff as his private secretary.  Thus began an association and a friendship that lasted for the next five decades.

RN’s early staffs — in the House and Senate and then in the Vice President’s office — were blessed with talented and dedicated secretaries.  Dottie Cox Donnelley started with him in the House in ‘47.  On the Senate staff, Rose was joined, in May ‘51, by Marje Acker, who became her secretary, and, in July, by Loie Gaunt.  Others followed, including P J Everts, Gladys Hook, Betty McVey McCarthy, Rita and Jane Dannenhauer, and Doris Jones Forward.  Today Loie Gaunt is the Assistant Secretary Treasurer of the Nixon Foundation’s Board.  She and Marje Acker are long-time members of the Foundation’s President’s Council.  Loie and Marje, along with the Dannenhauer sisters and Doris Forward have plans to attend the Library’s 20th Anniversary celebrations in July.

At Rose’s Memorial Service, held at the Nixon Library, one of the eulogists was her friend and secretary, Marje Acker.  (Imagine how good you have to be to be the secretary to one of the world’s great secretaries.)

REMEMBERING ROSE

by Marje Acker

Marje Acker and Rose Mary Woods in Rose’s West Wing office.

The most important day of my life turned out to be May 1, 1951.

Two and a half months earlier, I had left my home in Portland, Oregon to take a GS-3 clerk-typist job at the State Department.  When I heard about a secretarial opening on the staff of the junior Senator from California, I summoned all my courage, applied for the job, and was hired.

My first morning on the job, I was shown to my desk right across the aisle from Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods.

I will never forget her welcoming smile and her high-heeled, ankle-strap shoes.  Almost immediately we developed a strong, enduring friendship.  Soon I was lucky enough to become her secretary, a post I held during all my years on Richard Nixon’s staff.

Rose was a bright, politically savvy, red-headed Irish Catholic from Ohio, with a wonderful sense of humor, great empathy for people, and impeccable integrity.  In reading articles about her recent death, those who didn’t know her might think her life was all about a gap on a tape.  How wrong they would be.

To colleagues, friends and family, she was the very best friend you could ever have.  She always had time to listen and offer advice if you had a problem.  She made you feel you were the most important person in the world to her.

She was a role model and mentor for all of us.

We had such a close working relationship — we both were fast typists, could work under pressure, thrive on little sleep, read each other’s shorthand, confide in and trust each other, laugh and cry together.

The hours were long as we raced against the clock to get speeches finished on time, respond to tons of correspondence, make innumerable lists for events, gifts, and thank-you letters, field and place phone calls, and manage schedules.  And yet as I look back on my association with Rose, I’m amazed we were able to fit in just as many good times and laughs.

In 1957, shortly before Phil Acker and I married, he had to go to Washington on San Diego city business.  I asked him to be sure to meet Rose and take her to dinner, which he did.  Phil knew that I valued Rose’s opinion so much that he later speculated —not entirely without foundation— that if Rose had not approved of him, I might not have married him.

So Rose was much more than a secretary to Richard Nixon.  She also was a dear friend of the family and was cited in articles as “the fifth Nixon.”  After the 1968 election, she was the first person the President named to his White House staff.

Rose was also close to her own family.  I don’t think a week passed that she didn’t find time to call her parents…..

The epitome of thoughtfulness, Rose also made sure the Boss had his bases covered.

When the Nixons and the staff were in Key Biscayne one year, the President and the First Lady invited us for dinner just prior to returning to Washington.  Afterward, Rose took the President aside and told him it was my birthday.

Soon after Air Force One was aloft, I was told the President wanted to see me in his cabin.  Waiting with him was Pat and the whole staff, complete with a birthday cake.  I never did figure out how they had found a cake late on a Sunday evening at a moment’s notice!

Inspired by Rose, we had such fun planning a 25^th wedding anniversary party for Bette and Don Hughes, as well as surprise parties for the promotions of General Hughes, one of RN’s military aides, and the President’s doctor, General Walter Tkach.

I can remember just one time we were able to surprise her — a party to mark her 20^th anniversary as the President’s secretary.  During the weeks of planning we had to talk in code lest she find out.  That day we all wore big campaign buttons saying “Rose Woods for President” — a job she might well have been able to handle.

Of course there were sad times as well.

On election night in 1962, when RN ran for California governor, all of us, including Rose, were up all night.  I will never forget the Boss coming into the staff room the next morning and individually thanking each of us for our help and saying how sorry he was he had let us down.

During the dark, ugly days of Watergate, Rose and I tried to find little things to relieve the pressure.  We had signs on our desk reading Illegetimi non carborundum — “don’t let the bastards get you down!”

So many memories..…in California on a beautiful summer day, driving in her convertible with the top down to Malibu for a couple of hours walking on the beach…..our walks to the Tidal Basin on a spring day in Washington to see the pansy garden…..walking around Camp David between speech drafts…..being together for campaigns, elections, and inaugurations, was well as the dedication of the Nixon Library and the funerals of Mrs. Nixon and the President.

Rose Mary Woods will always be cherished and loved and remembered by her family and the innumerable friends and colleagues who had the privilege of knowing her.

Rose Mary Woods with Vice President Nixon in the Senate Lobby in 1953, and with PN aboard the campaign plane during the 1968 presidential campaign.   (1953 photo by Arthur Schatz, 1968 photo by Hank Walker, both for LIFE magazine.)

1.9.72

January 9, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Thirty-eight years ago today, PN arrived back from a trip to Africa in time to help RN celebrate his fifty-ninth birthday.  She was the first First Lady to visit Africa; her eight-day 10,000 mile trip to Liberia, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast (where half a million people shouted Vive Madame Nixon) had begun on New Year’s Day.

PN in Accra: TIME magazine reported that “In West Africa in 1972 she was cheered by huge throngs, exotic tribal kings and bare-breasted dancers.”

Traveling with the unique title “Personal Representative of the President,” PN attended the inauguration of William Tolbert as President of Liberia.  She carried out a full schedule of the kinds of meetings and visits she had pioneered nineteen years before when the newly-elected President Eisenhower sent the Nixons as his representatives on a ten week trip to Asia.

The central purpose of the 1972 Africa trip was to represent the President at the Tolbert inauguration.  As Julie Nixon Eisenhower notes in her biography of her mother —Pat Nixon: The Untold Story— the temperature at the ceremonies had already reached one hundred degrees (PN noticed that the white dress uniform of her military aide —the ubiquitous Jack Brennan— was soaked through) even before the new chief executive began his forty minute inaugural address.

In addition to representing RN at the Tolbert inauguration, PN addressed the National Assembly in Accra, and exchanged toasts with her hosts —Prime Minister Busia  and President Houphouet-Boigny— at state dinners held in her honor there and in Abidjan.

She arrived back in Washington on 9 January in time to celebrate RN’s fifty-ninth birthday.  He led a welcoming delegation of administration officials and congressional leaders to Andrews Air Force base to welcome her home.

RN said:

Mr. Vice President, Congressman Ford, members of the Cabinet, and all of you who have been so very kind to come to the airport here today on this rainy night:

First, I want to thank you for wishing me a happy birthday, and I know that it was hard for you to come. But I think perhaps the best birthday present, and the greatest sacrifice, was made by Mrs. Nixon: She flew 4,000 miles for my birthday party tonight.

Now I am in a bit of an awkward position, because I have to welcome her back officially, and I also have to welcome her back personally. I asked our Chief of Protocol, Ambassador Mosbacher, how I should address her, and so he wrote me a memorandum. He said, “You could call her Mrs. Nixon, or you could call her Madam Ambassador.” But I guess I will just call her “Pat.” Welcome home, Pat. We are glad you are here.

He described the backstory of the trip:

Now, if I could just spend a moment to tell you how this trip came about, and why I think the choice that was made was a good one. My very dear and old friend, President Tolbert of Liberia, wrote me a personal note inviting me to his inauguration. We have very much in common. We both served as Vice Presidents during the same period of time, and he became President of his country, as I have had the honor of becoming President of the United States. And he is the President of the oldest republic in Africa and, of course, the United States is the oldest republic in the American Continent.

So I wanted to go, but I could not because of some of the demands of the schedule here at that time. So I wrote him back a personal note and said that while I could not come, I would try to send a very good substitute. Now, since the trip began, I have been reading the newspapers and, Mr. Vice President, also watching television, and as I watched the television and read the newspapers, of the welcomes that Mrs. Nixon received in Liberia and Ghana and Ivory Coast, I realized that the substitute was doing a much better job than the principal would have done.

And PN replied:

Before my husband grabs the microphone, I do want to thank all of you for coming out to the airport and welcoming me home.

I really had a wonderful journey. The people in the three countries I visited —Liberia, Ghana, and Ivory Coast— could not have been more friendly or more gracious or more hospitable. In fact, their hospitality was boundless and they all sent greetings, the leaders and the people in all walks of life, to you here in the United States.

They are proud of the partnership with the United States, and this partnership is built on equality, mutual respect, and friendship. I hope that it will always remain that way.

That night, in the Lincoln Sitting Room, RN recorded in his diary:

…too many times our trips abroad deal with hard problems and not enough of the far more important personal warmth and symbolism which means so much.  This is true in all of the underdeveloped countries and particularly true in Latin America, Asia, and also, I believe, in parts of Asia…

The amazing thing is that Pat came back looking just as fresh as a daisy despite an enormously difficult, taxing schedule.  She had press conferences in each country, had had conversations with the presidents and then carried it all off with unbelievable skill.  As Julie put it, what came through was love of the people of the countries she visited for her and, on her part, love for them.

On 1 January 1972, the night PN returned from Africa, RN recorded in his diary: “…what came through was love of the people of the countries she visited for her and, on her part, love for them.”

This was not PN’s first time in Africa, or in Liberia and Ghana.  In March 1957, RN became the first vice-president to visit Africa, and PN accompanied him —carrying out her usual grueling independent schedule— on the twenty-one day eight-nation tour.

The trip was centered around the events celebrating Ghana’s independence from Britain — the first nation in black Africa to shed colonial rule.

Julie Eisenhower writes about the independence celebrations:

The high point of the trip, the Ghanian independence celebration, was a mixture of British formality and joyous exultation.  The new prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, wept as he proclaimed alt the stroke of midnight on March 6: “The battle is ended.  Ghana, our belived country, is free forever.”  Coretta and Martin Luther King, Jr., attended the independence celebration at the invitation of Nkrumah.  By inviting King, the rime minister was giving world-wide recognition to the man who had protested segregation by leading the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.  Thus, five thousand miles away from their own country, America’s Vice President and the civil rights pioneer met for the first time and made arrangements for another visit together once they returned home.

Peter Lisagor, the tough-minded and widely-respected reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily News, wrote admiringly about PN’s charm —and no less about her stamina— in a piece about the trip:

She says she loves to meet people and she gives every evidence of it.  She has the rare knack of making people feel she has known them for a long time when she first meets them, usually by putting her arms around them casually in a friendly gesture.

The average woman on this routine would yield up to weariness by this time.  But not Pat Nixon.  She’s as dedicated as her husband on the goodwill circuit.  And from all the signs she is as indestructible.

In Ghana in 1957, PN carried out a busy independent schedule (above) in addition to attending official functions with RN (below).

Auld Acquaintance — Memories of 1969

December 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Nixon Administration, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

As 2009 comes to an end, here is a brief (and highly selective) look back forty years ago — to 1969.  Many other important and memorable events occurred — but their photos haven’t yet reached the internet.

On 20 January 1969, RN was inaugurated as the thirty-seventh President of the United States.

36 and 37: The Nixon and Johnson families followed the tradition of meeting at the White House and traveling together to the Capitol.  As RN, PN, and Julie and David Eisenhower, and Tricia Nixon with LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson.

For the Inaugural Balls, PN wore a “mimosa silk satin gown with matching embroidered collar and cummerbund. Over the gown she wore a gold and silver embroidered jacket, encrusted with Austrian crystals”  The gown, which was designed by Karen Stark for Harvey Berin, can now be seen at the Nixon Library.

Julie and David Eisenhower with RN and PN at one of the Inaugural Balls.

The Official Presidential photo chosen for use throughout the Federal government.

RN settled in with his Cabinet — pictured here in the West Wing’s Cabinet Room…….

….and in the White House — where David and Julie join RN, PN, and Tricia for a meal in the Family Quarters’ Private Dining Room.

26 January : RN and PN invited Rev. Billy Graham to conduct an ecumenical worship service on their first Sunday in the White House.   RN, PN, and Tricia (who lived in the White House during 1969) posed on the North Portico with Ruth and Billy Graham.

February :  RN was pictured on the 21 February cover of LIFE at the Winter White House in Key Biscayne, relaxing while he prepared for his trip to Europe.  The trip also made the 28 February cover of TIME:

23 February : RN and PN depart for Europe.  As PN talks with Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, RN shakes hands with Senator Edward Kennedy.

One of the highlights of RN’s first trip to Europe was his meetings with President DeGaulle.  After the official greetings, he introduced members of his official party (left to right, Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, Domestic adviser John Ehrlichman, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Secretary of State William Rogers.

2 March : RN met with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican.

Only a few weeks later, on 31 March, RN had the unexpected and sad opportunity to meet Charles DeGaulle again when the French President flew to Washington to attend President Eisenhower’s funeral.

31 March : President Eisenhower’s funeral in the Naitonal Cathedral.

7 April : As manager Ted Williams watches, RN throws out the first ball at the Senators-Yankess opener.   The smiling Marine aide at RN’s shoulder is Jack Brennan.

29 April : RN hosted a 70th birthday party at the White House for Duke Ellington.

26 April  :  Wally MacNamee captured RN crowning Tricia Queen of the Azalea Festival in Norfolk, Virginia.

21 May : RN announced the appointment of Warren Burger as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

8 June : RN met in Guam with President Thieu of South Vietnam.  On this trip, RN announced the Nixon Doctrine.

13 June : In the Rose Garden, Tricia and Julie present RN with a miniature surfboard in advance of his trip to the new Western White House in San Clemente, CA.

29 June : Along with DC Mayor Walter Washington, PN greeted Stevie Wonder for the kick off the the Capital’s “Summer in the Park” program.

2 July : Although the Eisenhowers weren’t living in the White House, Julie volunteered as a White House Tour Guide during the summer of ‘69.

8 July : RN welcomed the Lion of Judah — Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to the White House.

24 July : President Richard Nixon flew to the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to welcome Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin back home from the Moon.

30 July : Dirck Halstead photographed RN’s visit to combat troops at the First Division base at Di An, northest of Saigon.

PN visited with patients at the 24th Evacuation Hospital.  Here she shakes hands with  PFC. Thomas Casimere Jr., 21, of New Orleans, LA.

15 August : RN (complete with surfboard and “Surf’s Up” shirt) was at the Western White House in San Clemente when TIME’s cover pictured some of the issues and personalities that characterized his first half year in the White House.

25 September : RN welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to the White House.

31 October : On Halloween, Tricia Nixon hosted a mask party at the White House for underprivileged children from the Washington DC area.

14 November RN, PN, and Tricia Nixon returned to Florida to witness Apollo XII launch.

19 November : RN bid farewell to Japanese Prime Minister Sato in the Rose Garden. In the Rose Garden: On Prime Minister Sato’s last day in Washington —21 November 1969— RN announced plans for the return of the Ryukyu Islands —including Okinawa— to Japan.  The reversion took place on 15 May 1972.

December : PN welcomes children to a White House Christmas party.

December : RN, PN, and Tricia in front of the White House Tree on their first Christmas in the White House.   PN chose a “National Flower Tree,” and arranged for disabled workers in Florida to make the ornaments of velvet and satin balls, each featuring a different state’s flower.

29 December : Tricia Nixon and her escort Edward Cox arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

All in the Family: Tricia’s 2 year old Yorkshire terrier Pasha, Julie’s 7 year old miniature poodle Vicki, and RN’s year old Irish setter King Timahoe had their own decorations, stockings, and Christmas tree in the Family Quarters in December 1969.

The First Family in 1969: The Nixon family posed for a portrait on 15 June  in the Yellow Oval Room of the Family Quarters.

12.25.52

December 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Holidays, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

‘Twas the night before Christmas: this photograph of PN (holding Checkers), six-year-old Tricia, four-year-old Julie, and the thirty-eight year old Vice President- Elect was actually taken on 20 December at their home in Washington.

Merry Christmas

December 23, 2009 by Anne Walker | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERY ONE!

If you are watching your mail box or front door for our cards and gifts this year, we respectfully request that you enjoy the realization that a donation has been made, in lieu of our annual cards, to the Docent Guild at the Richard Nixon Presidential Foundation. They are an amazing, dedicated and knowledgeable group of volunteers that make the RN Library and Birthplace a very special place.

MAY YOUR HOLIDAY BE FULL OF LOVE, LAUGHTER

and all the

SPECIAL BLESSINGS OF THE SEASON

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, all around Coyote Base. We’ve decorated our tree, it’s red white and blue. Full of flags, some that I quilted, and patriotic ornaments all about the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace. The “Birthplace Ornament” holds a special place of honor.

Tricia Nixon Cox, her husband Ed and son Christoper sent us, Christmas at the White House by Jennifer B. Pickens. It’s a beautiful coffee table book with reflections from the Kennedy to the Bush 43 White House Christmases. Mrs. Nixon adored Christmas and was known for the beautiful decorations during the Christmases she was in the White House.

Writing in 1969, a Time magazine reporter observed: “Few presidential couples . . . have gone at the Christmastime merrymaking with quite the gusto of Richard and Pat Nixon. For the holidays they have peopled the place with choirs, Bob Hope, the Apollo 12 astronauts and more than 6,000 other Americans, renowned and unknown.”

The Walker family proudly numbered 5 unknowns among the 6,000 invited guests. In anticipation of this memorable party, I made our three little girls, then 8,7,and 6, blue velvet dresses with white, lace trimmed collars. Their outfits were complemented by white tights and brand new, shiny maryjane patent leather shoes. When we were about ready to drive to the White House, they looked so adorable, that Ron insisted they have their pictures taken outside with the pine trees as a festive backdrop. During the process of posing, Marja took time out to climb an inviting tree limb, cut herself, and then proceeded to bleed all over her white collar. So much for a motherly vision of precious, angelic little girls going to a White House Christmas party.

Mrs. Nixon is credited with introducing more holiday customs than any of the first ladies preceding her. In 1969 she started the holiday tradition of candlelight evening tours. She said she wanted sightseers to see the mansions beautiful public rooms, “so filled with history, and now aglow with the magic and spirit of Christmas.” White House candlelight tours are still very popular. Another anticipated event is the unveiling of the gingerbread house in the State Dining Room. The White House chef creates a new, completely edible one each year.

Another of Mrs. Nixon’s holiday innovations was to showcase Christmas cards and artifacts from past presidencies. A 1866 edition of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” that President Franklin Roosevelt always read aloud to his family on Christmas eve. Another was a small fire engine that President Hoover gave to his secretary’s son, as a memento of a fire in the West Wing the year before. Another artifact on display was a large dollhouse, made for ten year old Fanny Hays, daughter of President Rutherford Hays, by the White House carpenter in 1877. Mrs. Nixon liked it so much that it was on display all year and today it can be seen at the Hays Presidential Center.

In 1971 it was Mrs. Nixon’s request that disabled workers be given the opportunity to make the Christmas ornaments. “State balls” were made for each of the 50 states. First ladies have continued the tradition of the state balls, and Laura Bush took the tradition a wonderful step further, by highlighting each of our National Parks as part of the state balls collection. Even in years when the state balls were left packed away, the First Lady will often commission new ornaments to represent all fifty states, continuing the tradition inspired by Mrs. Nixon. In 1971 she told an interviewer, “I suppose of all the places we’ve spent Christmas, the White House must be our favorite.”

Thank you Tricia, Ed and Christoper for a thoughtful and beautiful gift.

When President Nixon appointed Ron to be the Eighth Director of the National Park Service, I made a special request. It had bothered me to see that the National Christmas Tree on the mall was one that was cut down and trucked to Washington each year. I thought it would be a grand idea to plant one on the mall. A permanent National Christmas tree. Secretary of the Interior, Rogers C. B. Morton thought it was such a good idea that he took full credit for the innovation. I’m OK with that, because our permanent National Christmas Tree came to be. I’m proud of “my beautiful Christmas tree” on the National mall and delight in watching the “Pageant of Peace” tree lighting ceremony each year on live television. The Walker family attended the event one year when Ron was Director. It was a freezing, but festive ceremony. Another year I was on hand when First Lady Barbara Bush rode a cherry picker basket to put the finishing decorations on the top of the tree. One great and gutsy girl, that “Bar.”

In 1972, Mrs. Nixon chose the theme “Nature’s Bounty” and the White House decorations were done in Della Robbia style. She told reporters that she had always liked Della Robbia wreaths, in which real fruits are mixed with greenery and pine cones, and for years had given them to friends as Christmas gifts. My mother did the very same thing. We always had Della Robbia wreaths in our home at Christmas, and we gave them as gifts, perhaps it was originally a California thing.

As 2009 comes to an end, we pray for our country. We pray for the current President and his family as they prepare for their first White House Christmas. Carved in the mantel of the State Dining Room fireplace, surely decked in festive holiday tradition as I write this, is the inscription written by John Adams: “I pray Heaven to Bestow the Best of Blessings on THIS HOUSE and on All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but honest and Wise Men rule under this roof.”

Let us all add an AMEN to the prayer of President John Adams.

12.22.1968

December 22, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon family, Pat Nixon | 2 Comments 

On December 22, 1968, the President’s youngest daughter Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower.

RN in his own words:

My daughter Julie first met David Eisenhower at his grandfather’s second inauguration in 1957, when they were both eight years old. They did not see each other at all during the early 1960’s; it was a geographical coincidence that brought them together again. In 1966 David began his freshman year at Amherst College and Julie began her Freshman year at Smith College, only a few miles away. One day he called her on an impulse and asked if he could come over to see her. They met, they fell in love, and just before the start of their sophomore year they told Pat and me that they planned to marry.

Julie pictured with husband David Eisenhower.

On the night their engagement was announced I wrote a note for Julie and left it on her bed table.

RN then discussed the big day:

The Church was beautifully decorated for Christmas with fresh pine boughs and red bow draped over the balconies and a large wreath behind the altar. Red and white poinsettias banked the entire front of the church and surrounded the small white prie-dieu on which David and Julie knelt during the ceremony.

The most memorable moment for me was when I gave Julie away at the altar. She suddenly turned and kissed me. This impulsive, spontaneous gesture brought tears to the eyes of many in the church — including mine.

Preserving La Casa Pacifica

December 22, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

According to the OC Register, the San Clemente City Council voted 5-0 last week to enter into an agreement with La Casa Pacifica owner Gavin Herbert to refurbish the home that formerly served as the Western White House for RN and PN. The preservation effort might also include a study of a mature Magnolia tree on the property, which PN originally planted as a seedling from a tree that President Andrew Jackson brought to the White House:

One of the curiosities that could be explored in the survey, officials said, is a mature magnolia tree at Casa Pacifica that first lady Pat Nixon planted there, using a seedling she had brought from the White House in Washington.

Herbert knew of that tree. As owner of Roger’s Gardens, a home and garden center in Corona del Mar, he took charge of the landscaping at Casa Pacifica shortly after the Nixons arrived in 1969.

“The history of the tree was more than Pat Nixon bringing a seedling,” Herbert said. “Andrew Jackson brought that tree to the White House. And if you look on a $20 bill (which bears President Jackson’s likeness) there’s a picture of it.”

Herbert said it would be fun to do a historic survey. Having lived through the Nixon years and having purchased the home from the Nixons when they moved to the East Coast in 1980, he suggested he probably knows as much as whoever might be hired to do a historic survey.

“We had 17 heads of state there during the Nixon era,” Herbert said. “We’ve had five different presidents on the property over a period of 40 years.”

The Little Church In The East Room

December 18, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Faith, First Ladies, History, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Religion, Richard Nixon, Supreme Court, U.S. History, Vietnam, White House | 5 Comments 

As the first streaks of dawn quietly announced the arrival of morning on Sunday, November 16, 1969, a 35-year old preacher from Ohio named Harold Rawlings had already been awake for a while after a fitful night of what-could-barely-be-called sleep in a room at Washington, D.C.’s storied Mayflower Hotel. He would in a few hours face a crowd punctuated by the most powerful men and women in America, assembled in the most unusual of venues for any clergyman – the East Room of the White House.

These days, most Americans have moved on from wondering about Barack Obama’s church attendance habits now nearly a year into his presidency. Some of this inattention is due, no doubt, to the swirl of events, but a measure of it is likely because Mr. Obama is demonstrating a kind of ambivalence to church attendance that has become par for the presidential course over the years (though with some exception, e.g., Jimmy Carter).

Most presidents have likely never read Theodore Roosevelt’s “Nine Reasons A Man Should Go To Church.” Among the things TR said was this gem: “Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in a man’s own house as well as in church. But I also know, as a matter of cold fact, that the average man does not thus worship.”

Richard Nixon decided in the first days of his presidency to reconcile the ethic of church attendance with the realities of security and logistics during his time in the White House, by having regular Sunday services in the East Room. Of course, he was criticized for it. Some saw it as political grandstanding and others (many in the clergy) feared Nixon might be setting a trend for “stay at home” worship. Billy Graham noted, though, that in the early days of Christianity churches met almost exclusively in houses. So, on Nixon’s first Sunday in the White House, Graham shared a sermon, beginning a long run of non-sectarian religious services at 11 o’clock most Sunday mornings.

Rev. Rawlings had received an invitation, via the recommendation of his congressman, Donald “Buzz” Lukens, to bring the message during one of those services. But the preacher had to pay his own expenses to the nation’s capital, something gladly accomplished by his church, Landmark Baptist in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the lanky clergyman shared pastoral duties with his father, the senior minister of the church.

The preacher also had no idea when he accepted the White House invitation that he would be performing his prelatic duties against the backdrop of a city in turmoil.

Pastor Rawlings and his wife Sylvia made their way to Washington, D.C., on Saturday, November 15, while 250,000 protestors were in virtual control of the city’s streets and parks. The Washington Post headline the next day said, “Largest Rally in Washington History Demands End to Vietnam War.” There was a lingering hint of tear gas in the air and the remnants of torn and burned flags littering the ground. Other flags were prominent and not burned, but they bore only one star and just two stripes – the banner of the Viet Cong (National Liberation Front or “NLF”). The night before, 76 nearby buildings had been damaged, and nearly that many more would experience the same fate that day.

The swarm on Washington had been organized by an outfit called the New Mobilization Committee. This group was the successor to the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which had been part of the infamous Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention in 1968. Basically, it was a leftist mosaic made up of people from Students For A Democratic Society (“SDS”), the Youth International Party (“Yippies”), and assorted fellow travelers.

And though the “festivities” had ended late Saturday night, thousands remained in the streets overnight continuing to shout things like, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is Going to Win!” This made sleep that much more difficult for Rev. and Mrs. Rawlings.

The couple enjoyed breakfast in the Mayflower’s restaurant, their waitress discreetly pointing out the famous “psychic”, Jeanne Dixon, who was sitting across the room near the booth where J. Edgar Hoover regularly ate lunch. This brush with celebrity would be nothing compared to the experience awaiting Harold and Sylvia when they arrived at the White House.

They climbed a stairway to the second floor and were immediately met by the First Lady, Mrs. Pat Nixon, who invited them into the beautiful Yellow Oval Room, where they sat in Louis XVI style chairs. Tricia Nixon soon joined them, followed a few minutes later by President Nixon, who took Pastor Rawlings on a personal tour of the adjacent rooms, sharing details about their history. Nixon was in a great mood, no doubt bolstered some by the latest Gallup Poll showing that around 70% of Americans gave him high marks, this in the wake of his already famous “Silent Majority” speech a few days earlier.

They then made their way to the East Room, with Sylvia taking her seat next to Mrs. Nixon and Tricia. President Nixon, as was the custom, opened the service, “After a very awesome display yesterday,” pausing briefly for effect, knowing that some would think he was referring to the demonstrations, he continued, “of football, we thought it would be proper to have someone here from Ohio.” Ever the football fan, he was referring to the Buckeyes’ 42-14 win over Purdue.

Pastor Rawlings had been asked to suggest two hymns for the service and did so several weeks in advance, only to be called back by the White House and told, “President Nixon doesn’t know those – could you choose two others?” He did, and the service that day included the majestic strains of “All Hail The Power Of Jesus’ Name,” a song Nixon knew well. A choir from New York Avenue Presbyterian Church sang.

The President then introduced Rawlings, who chose as his theme that day, “The World’s Most Amazing Book.” Many notables were in the crowd of about 350, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Treasury Secretary David M. Kennedy, Labor Secretary George P. Schultz, and United States Senators Claiborne Pell, Mark Hatfield, John Sherman Cooper, Gale McGee, John Williams, and Charles Percy. And the service was broadcast live across the country via the Mutual Broadcasting System.

“If men and women would spend more time in the serious study of the word of God,” said Rev. Rawlings, “earth’s questions would seem far less significant and heaven’s questions far more real.” He then quoted former President Eisenhower, among others. The great man had died eight months earlier and his life and career had intersected with Nixon’s so significantly.

Rawlings affirmed that, “The Bible is not only good for the soul, but also for the body.” He illustrated this point with a moving story about a soldier in Vietnam, Army Private Roger Boe, who after being ambushed found an enemy bullet “lodged in his Bible, just short of the ammunition clip.” The preacher, describing America as “a haven for freedom and peace,” urged prayer, “to make us morally worthy of protection against outward aggression.” He also issued a reminder about praying for the men of Apollo12, at that moment racing through space, “our three astronauts that they might be blessed with safety and good health on their voyage to the moon.”

During a recent conversation with Harold Rawlings, who is a long-time friend, he told me that following the service Chief Justice Burger told him that his sermon was “the kind of message America needed to hear.”

A reception followed, with President and Mrs. Nixon personally introducing Rev. and Mrs. Rawlings to those filing by. Nixon, though, was at least a little bit in a hurry. He was going out to Robert F. Kennedy stadium that afternoon to see the Redskins play the Cowboys. In fact, this would itself be historic – the first time a sitting President of the United States attended a National Football League game. He was pulling for the home team, but conceded to a reporter that the Cowboys would come out on top, “I think they’ll win because of their running attack.”

But it turned out that the Redskins lost because Sonny Jurgenson threw 4 interceptions – three of them in the fourth quarter. The one bright spot of the game for Nixon was the play of Ricky Harris, who returned a punt 83-yards for a touchdown – only to have it called back because of a penalty. Harris then intercepted a pass at a crucial moment – only to have Jurgensen then quickly proceed to throw his own interception (Harris these days sits every Sunday on the front row of the church I pastor.)

Possibly, the fate of the Redskins that day was a harbinger of things to come that week for Mr. Nixon. The very next day, American newspapers first mentioned something about a massacre in Vietnam at a place called My Lai. And later that week, the President’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Clement Furman Haynsworth, was rejected by the Senate, 55-45.

This just reinforces something else Teddy Roosevelt said about why people should go to church: “In this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down grade.”

From Bat To Amos To….Richard?

December 10, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

Word came from Los Angeles this evening of the death yesterday of actor Gene Barry at the age of 90. Barry’s career was a very long one – he made his Broadway debut in 1942 – and highly varied. In 1944, he performed opposite Mae West in her show Catherine Was Great. A decade later, he was starring in what probably still is, despite the best efforts of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, the most loved film adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War Of The Worlds. By the end of the 1950s he was starring as the dapper Bat Masterson on television, and a few years after that was a hit as the wealthy policeman Amos Burke on Burke’s Law. Another popular series, The Name Of The Game, followed.

The next decade proved rather more low-key, as Barry shuttled between TV guest spots and that vanished institution which is an even more cherished memory of the 1970s than pet rocks or Pong, the dinner-theater circuit. Then, in 1983, he came back to Broadway for the first time in 21 years as Georges, the gay nightclub owner in the blockbuster musical La Cage Aux Folles, a role which earned him a Tony nomination and ultimately helped win him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But it came as quite a surprise, reading Barry’s obituaries this evening, to find out that the previous year, he had starred in a show that seemed destined for Broadway but (according to this interview with the actor) opened and closed in Atlanta in July 1982, proving so expensive to produce in its three-week run that plans to bring it to New York were set aside.

The show was co-written by Tommy Oliver and Edward J. Lakso, and its title was simple yet quite descriptive – Watergate: The Musical – with Gene Barry starring as Richard Nixon. His wife, Betty Clair Barry, played Pat Nixon. Ed Herlihy, the instantly recognizable narrator of countless ’40s and ’50s newsreels, played Sen. Sam Ervin.

I imagine many readers of TNN are trying to visualize TV’s Bat Masterson trading in his embroidered vest for a dark blue suit and wingtips, so here’s a photo of Barry as RN – before the offer to play Georges came and he went back to his finery.

12.9.69

December 9, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Sports, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Forty years ago today, on 9 December 1969, President Nixon flew to New York to receive the National Football Foundation’s Gold Medal and to deliver a speech that was truly a labor of love.

He was the guest of honor at the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.  The toastmaster was ABC sportscaster Chris Schenkel, with whom RN had bantered on national TV during the halftime at the Texas-Arkansas game three days before.

9 December 1969: RN at the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Dinner:

This speech —on a congenial topic and to be delivered to a friendly and receptive audience in the wake of his phenomenally successful 3 November speech— was mostly written by RN himself.  It contains many spontaneous observations and recollections, and it provides a real insight into the man and the President.

Before RN rose to speak, Archibald MacLeish, the Harvard professor, poet, playwright, Librarian of Congress, and erstwhile Yale football terror, was awarded the Foundation’s Distinguished American Award.  He said, “Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man’s life if he has the weight and cares about the words.”

RN opened with a graceful reference to McLeish’s remarks, in which he had quoted former Secretary of State Dean Acheson.  This managed to defang one critic (who was sitting on the stage) while saluting another. Acheson, who had been the focus of some of RN’s strongest campaign rhetoric during late ’40s and early ’50s, had been among RN’s strongest supporters after the “silent majority” speech delivered just five weeks before.   RN also worked in a reference to the Apollo XI moon landing in July.

I was trying to think of something that would appropriately describe how I feel in accepting this award. I would have to be less than candid if I were not to say that because of the offices I have held I have received many awards.

But I think Archibald MacLeish, in that perfectly eloquent tribute to football, quoting Secretary of State Dean Acheson, put it very well. He said, “The honors you don’t deserve are the ones you are most grateful to receive.”

I simply want to set the record straight with regard to my football qualifications. This is a candid, open administration. We believe in telling the truth about football and everything.

I can only say that as far as this award is concerned, that it is certainly a small step for the National Football Foundation and a small step for football, but it is a giant leap for a man who never even made the team at Whittier.

RN opened with a tip of the hat to his former nemesis, but post-3-November Vietnam supporter, Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

Having raised the subject of his college gridiron career, he embarked on some charming self-deprecation:

I have looked around that wall, Whittier is not up there, I can assure you. I didn’t hear the Whittier song, either, a moment ago. In fact, only the coach from Loyola knows where Whittier is. We used to play Loyola.

I got into a game once when we were so far behind it didn’t matter. I even got into one against Southern Cal once when we were so far behind it didn’t matter.

Now just to tell you a little about Whittier because I want the record to be straight: It is a school with very high academic standing. We had a very remarkable coach.

I pointed out in my acceptance address in Miami that one of the men who influenced me most in my life was my coach and I think that could be true of many public men.

My coach was an American Indian, Chief Newman. He was a perfectly remarkable man and a great leader. I learned more from him about life really than I did about football, but a little about football.

One of the reasons, I guess, he didn’t put me in was because I didn’t know the plays. Now there was a good reason for that. It wasn’t because I wasn’t smart enough. I knew the enemy’s plays.. I played them all week long. Believe me, nobody in the Southern California Conference knew Occidental’s or Pomona’s or Redlands’ or Cal Tech’s or Loyola’s plays better than I did, because I was on that side.

I learned a lot sitting by the coach on the bench–learned about football and learned about life.

In his speech, RN saluted the legendary Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson —who had been named to the Football Hall of Fame—  whom he had invited onto the White House staff as a Special Assistant to the President.

RN wasn’t kidding when he said —as he did many times— that he would have enjoyed being a sports writer.  He put it right out front again in the first of several remarkably detailed (and mostly completely accurate) reminiscences in this speech:

Among all of the people who have been honored tonight, let me just say a good word about sports writers. After all, I must say that this is not an unselfish statement, most sports writers become political writers in the end–”Scotty” Reston, Bob Considine, Bill Henry. So I am just planning for the future.

But, in any event, thinking of sports writers for the moment, they have made football live before the days of television and even now for many who never got to the games.

My first recollection of big-time college football was Ernie Nevers against Notre Dame in 1925–I see Ernie Nevers here. And I sat in the stands with Father Hesburgh [President of Notre Dame] when Southern Cal played and lost to Notre Dame, and I know the great spirit between those two schools. But I remember that game. I remember the score. I think it was 25 to 10, or four touchdowns to a touchdown and a field goal, and I remember that the sports writers, Bill Henry of the Los Angeles Times, and others were writing about the game, wrote about one play where Nevers went through the line close to the goal and there was a dispute as to, whether he went over and was pushed back.

Stanford All-American Ernie Nevers played in the 1925 Rose Bowl against Notre Dame.  He rushed for 114 yards — more than all the Four Horsemen combined — and was named Player of the Game.

Characteristically, RN remembered the great players as well as the winners:

Then my memory goes on, just to share them with you, and interestingly enough I remember performances by men who lost as well as those who won. That is rather natural, I am sure you can understand.

The first Rose Bowl game I saw was between one of the great Howard Jones’ teams of the early thirties and Jock Sutherland’s Pitt team. Pitt was overmanned. They had a fine quarterback in Warren Heller, a good passer. And Howard Jones had a team that beat them 35 to 0.

But my memories of that team were not of the awesome power of Howard Jones’ team moving down with the unbalanced single wing going down, down, down the field and scoring again and again with that tremendous blocking, but of two very gallant Pittsburgh ends, Skaladany and Dailey.

For the first half, I remember they plowed into that awesome USC interference and knocked it down time and time again and held the score down. The game was lost, but I remember right to the last they were in there fighting and that spirit stayed with me as a memory; and the years go on.

RN’s first Rose Bowl: 2 January 1933.  Although the game was a 35-0 USC victory, thirty-six years later RN remembered the spectacular playing of Pitt ends Ted Dailey and Joe Skaladany (above).

RN remembered another Rose Bowl — 1939’s — in which, as a Duke alum, he had a stake.  His stroll down memory lane ended with a slight detour — clearly taken for dramatic purposes; although his date for the game was Thelma Ryan, he had already met her at the Whittier Community Players.

I think of another game, Southern Cal and Duke, 1938 [sic]. I had attended Duke University for law school, and I remember that Duke came there undefeated, untied, unscored upon. The score was 3 to 0 going into the last few minutes of the game. So out came a fourth-string quarterback, not a third-string, Doyle Nave, and he threw passes as they throw them today, one after another, to Al Kreuger, an end from Antelope Valley, California. And finally Southern California scored. It was 7 to 3.

I must say that I was terribly disappointed, of course, but the woman who was to be my future wife went to Southern Cal and that is how it all worked out. We met at that game.

Shutting down the hitherto undefeated Blue Devils: “Antelope” Al Krueger catches the the historic pass well remembered by RN.

Although RN was such a vociferous fan that he shouted himself hoarse at Duke games, that isn’t him standing — but he and the future PN (a former Trojan) were in this crowd of Duke supporters at the Rose Bowl on 1 January 1939.

After some more reminiscences —of Woody Hayes’ Buckeyes— RN reached his peroration:

But now, one serious moment. Archibald MacLeish did say what I wish I could have written about what football means to this country, what it means to me as an individual, what it means to me as one who is serving as President of the United States. I can only tell you that in the Cabinet Room there are the pictures of three men whom I consider to be great Presidents: President Eisenhower, president Woodrow Wilson, President Theodore Roosevelt. There were other great ones, but these three in this century, I consider to be among the great presidents.

All of them had one thing in common. They were very different men: Eisenhower, the great general; Theodore Roosevelt, the tremendous extrovert, explorer, writer, one of the most talented men of our time in so many fields; Woodrow Wilson, probably the greatest scholar who has ever occupied the Presidency, a man with the biggest vocabulary of any President in our history, in case you want to put it down in your memory book•

But each of them had a passion for football. Woodrow Wilson, when he taught at Wesleyan [Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.] used to talk about the spirit of football, and later on when he was president of Princeton, he insisted on scholarship, but he recognized and tried to encourage football.

T. R. was dictating a speech one day, a very important one. He got a call telling of two of his sons participating in a prep school game which they had won. He dropped the speech and ran shouting for joy to his wife and said, “They won, they won!”

I remember President Eisenhower talking to me after his heart attack. He said one of the things he hated to give up was that the doctor said he should not listen to those football games because he got too excited and became too involved.

What does this mean, this common interest in football of Presidents, of leaders, of people generally? It means a competitive spirit. It means, also, to me, the ability and the determination to be able to lose and then come back and try again, to sit on the bench and then come back• It means basically the character, the drive, the pride, the teamwork, the feeling of being in a cause bigger than yourself.

All of these great factors are essential if a nation is to maintain character and greatness for that nation. So, in the 100th year of football, as we approach the 200th year of the United States, remember that our great assets are not our military strength or our economic wealth, but the character of our young people, and I am glad that America’s young people produce the kind of men that we have in American football today.

He concluded with a wrap-up of the ‘69 season-to-date, illuminated by an unexpected example from a very different sport:

I close on a note that will tell you why I think Texas deserved to be Number 1. It was not because they scored the second touchdown, but it was because after the first touchdown when they were ahead [sic] 14 to 0, the coach sent in a play. They executed the play and they went for two. When they went for two and the score was 18 [8] to 14, they moved the momentum in their direction. They were not sure to win because Arkansas still had a lot of fight left and I remember that great Arkansas drive in those last few minutes. But Texas, by that very act, demonstrated the qualities of a champion, the qualities to come back when they were behind and then when they could have played it safe just to tie, they played to win.

This allows me to tell a favorite anecdote of mine in the world of sports. In another field, one of the great tennis players of all time, of course–the first really big tennis player in terms of the big serve and the rest, in our time–was Bill Tilden.

Bill Tilden

When he was coaching, after he completed his playing years, a young player had won a match in a minor tournament and won it rather well. He came off the court and expected Tilden to say something to him in words of congratulation, and Tilden didn’t.

The player said to him, “What is the matter, I won, didn’t I?” Tilden said, “Yes, you won, but playing that way you will never be a champion, because you played not to lose. You didn’t play to win.”

That is what America needs today. What we need in the spirit of this country and the spirit of our young people is not playing it safe always, not being afraid of defeat—being ready to get into the battle and playing to win, not with the idea of destroying or defeating or hurting anybody else, but with the idea of achieving excellence.

Because Texas demonstrated that day that they were playing to win, they set an example worthy of being Number 1 in the 100th year of college football.

RN warmed the bench at Whittier High School (above) as well as at Whittier College (below).

The Mission Inn At Christmas

November 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

From the Los Angeles Times comes this article about the historic Mission Inn in Riverside, California which has just set up its much-cherished “Festival of Lights” for another holiday season. Nixon scholars know it as the place where the future President married Pat Ryan, but it has hosted many, many other weddings – including Bette Davis’s union with her third husband, William Grant Sherry, in 1945. The inn has also counted among its visitors the likes of Albert Einstein, Booker T. Washington, Harry Houdini, Amelia Earhart, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – and not just two-legged ones:

One of the more unusual guests was a circus elephant named Schneider, who escaped from a train and invaded the premises in 1909.

Apparently mistaking his reflection in the window of the hotel barber shop for another bull elephant, Schneider charged, bursting through the glass.

[Mission Inn founder Frank] Miller took the incident in stride. “He said that was the only guest that was ever allowed to carry his own trunk,” Gutierrez said.

The Turkey Has Landed

November 26, 2009 by Anne Walker | Filed Under Nixon Foundation, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

On his first Thanksgiving in the White House, November 27, 1969, President Nixon told a group of senior citizens, “In our family we always had Thanksgiving as a family day. We have in the past, and we do now. Our parents cannot be here now, but we wanted people who have been with this Nation for so many years, who have lived good lives, to be here as our guests today. We feel that you are part of our family and we invite you here as part of our family, The White House family, the American family.”

“You have seen the menu. It is the usual, of course. Turkey and all the things that go with it, and pumpkin pie for dessert. Seeing turkey on the menu reminds me that when this country began, Benjamin Franklin argued that the National Bird should be a turkey rather than an eagle. Now, I think he was a very wise man, but the final decision to have the eagle was a better one. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, it would have sounded rather funny to say, ‘The turkey has landed.’ And today I think you will all agree you would not want to eat eagle.”

Would you like to have an authentic Nixon Family Thanksgiving Dinner? The Republican Cookbook, with Recipes for Political Success,” The Brownstone Press, Inc., 1969 lists the following:

Here are some of Mrs. Nixon’s recipes for you to try:

Today, we are just like those senior citizens in 1969, invited to share Thanksgiving traditions with the Nixon Legacy, represented here at the Richard Nixon Presidential Foundation. All of us here, and especially the Walker family, wish each of you a Happy Thanksgiving.

We plan to spend the holiday counting our many blessings and enjoying a delicious turkey dinner. Our blessings include the many friendships and opportunities we enjoy because of the Nixon family, and the many doors they opened for us. May God continue to Bless America and give our leaders wisdom. . . . and may God Bless all of you.

November 1969 — Giving Thanks

November 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Holidays, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

A Nixon Family portrait from 1969 — their first year in the White House.

On Thanksgiving Day 1969 —their first year in the White House— the Nixons invited more than two hundred residents without any families from nineteen DC area old age homes to join them at the White House for a traditional meal including fruit salad, turkey and all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie.  The guests, ranging in age from 58 to 93, arrived in busses and were greeted in a presidential receiving line.

The Nixon family —RN, PN and Tricia, Julie and David, and Mamie Eisenhower and David’s sister, her 17-year old granddaughter Susan— welcomed the guests, who were divided between the East Room and the State Dining Room.  Everyone was seated at round tables of ten decorated with centerpieces of  fall flowers and fruit.  Music was supplied by the Army’s Old Guard Fife and Drum Band and the Marine Corps Band Orchestra; entertainment was provided by the Beers Family folk singers and a balladeer from Colonial Williamsburg.

Several guests responded when RN asked for anyone over 90 to raise their hands.   One of them was 93-year-old John W. Graves of Neosho, MO who lived in the National Lutheren Home for the Aged in DC.  The irrepressible nonagenarian rose three times — first to tell RN that he was born in Missouri (RN replied: “I know President Truman will be glad we had a Missourian here today.”); then to inform POTUS that “I’ve never had a sick day in my life.” (RN: “I’m going to have the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare come and talk to you and get your formula so we can pass it around the country.”); and, finally, to observe that “My father lived to 93; my sister lived to 94; and there were 10 children, five of us still alive.” (RN: “I want to get your formula too.”)

The New York Times‘ headline for the story of the event:  ”Nixon Is Outtalked by Holiday Dinner Guest, 93.”

Julie Nixon Eisenhower told the guests that the grace she would say was one that had been used in the Nixon family since she and Tricia were little: “Thank you for the earth so sweet; thank you for the food we eat….”

Everybody Knows The Bird Is The Word

November 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Holidays, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, TV, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

A couple of months ago the First Lady made a guest appearance on the opening episode of the 40th anniversary season of Sesame Street.   (And last month I saluted the charming PSA that resulted.)

Sesame Street premiered in November 1969, and a year later — on 12 December 1970 — PN invited the cast to a children’s Christmas party at the White House.

PN was Big Bird’s friend through fair times and fowl, and on 28 January 1981, she introduced her fine feathered friend to another generation of Nixon family fans.  As The New York Times reported:

The great-granddaughter of one President and her cousin, the grandson of another President, had their chance Wednesday to look in awe upon Big Bird and his friends in person.

A visit to the ”Sesame Street” TV studio, at Broadway and 81st Street, was arranged ”just like any other grandmother would,” said a studio spokesman, by Pat Nixon, wife of the former President, for Jennie Eisenhower and Christopher Cox.

Jennie, who is almost 2 1/2 years old, is the daughter of the former Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Christopher’s parents are the former Tricia Nixon and Edward M. Cox, a New York lawyer.

The children were accompanied to the TV studio by their grandmother and Mrs. Cox. When Big Bird stepped forward to greet them, Jennie Eisenhower gurgled gleefully and said to Mrs. Nixon, ”Look, grandma, he’s just like Big Bird in the picture over my bed.”

Welcome To The Club

November 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Library, Pat Nixon, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Groundbreaking for the George W. Bush Presidential Center —the latest addition to  the National Archives’ system of Presidential Libraries— will begin a year from now.  The designs of architect Robert A. M. Stern were unveiled in Dallas on Wednesday.  Several drawings were released, and the general impression was described in today’s Washington Post by architectural writer and critic Philip Kennicott:

Architect Robert A.M. Stern’s plans for the George W. Bush Presidential Center call for a low-slung building of brick and limestone, following traditional lines and hugging the Texas landscape with a calm reserve. It’s almost as if Bush has chosen to retreat into the patrician reticence of his blue-blooded, Connecticut forebears.

The library, with groundbreaking scheduled for November 2010 and an estimated cost of $250 million, will be built on the campus of Southern Methodist University and will house public exhibition space, a mock-up of the Oval Office, a conference center with 364-seat auditorium, and separate entry and offices for scholars. Visitors will enter through Freedom Hall, emblazoned with an American flag on its ceiling and capped by a square glass box that allows natural light to flow in.

The George W. Bush Presidential Center entrance. WaPo critic Kennicott, combining admiration and snark, writes that “It is all self-consciously attuned to and consonant with the SMU campus, a hyper-dignified collection of buildings with porticos and white columns that look as if they were designed by Thomas Jefferson unconstrained by a budget.”

Freedom Hall: The Bush Presidential Center’s entrance lobby.

Kennicott is harsh on the Clinton Library in Little Rock:

Compare this with the  William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, the shape of which recalls the 42nd president’s tediously repeated “bridge to the 21st century” metaphor. Created by Polshek Partnership, the Clinton library is a flashy, contemporary confection of aluminum and glass, with dramatic cantilevers and a high-tech gloss. Although Polshek’s work in Washington has tended to the empty and meretricious (e.g., the Newseum and desperately flawed plans for a visitor center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial), the library for Clinton achieved the brass ring of all too many architectural endeavors: instant iconic status.

Purely as a consumer in the competitive market of Presidential Libraries, I find that judgment  misleading.  One man’s tired metaphor may provide another man’s moment of quiet inspiration, and the Clinton Library  —strikingly situated on the bridge-crossed Little Rock River, and unconstrained by the style of any surrounding campus — provides the visitor an intriguingly site-specific experience, particularly when approached by foot on President Clinton Avenue.  The interiors and exhibition spaces are open and friendly and sleekly modern.  And walking through the replicas of the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room remind visitors of the tangible reality of the Office and the office.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.

I have recently had two occasions to visit and tour the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia — the first time out of curiosity and the second out of interest based on the first.   Wilson was one of RN’s favorite predecessors; he chose portraits of Wilson and Eisenhower for the Cabinet Room.  The Wilson Library complex is bounded on one side by the mansion acquired to house the presidential papers and on the other by The Manse — the house in which Wilson was born in December 1856.  Although he only spent his first year in Staunton, he always considered it as home and chose it as the site for his Library.

The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia.

Each of the twelve —and soon to be thirteen— presidential libraries reflects the character and the times of its namesake.  So comparing them is a business of apples and oranges.  That said, and acknowledging that I’m myopic, I find the Nixon Library —designed by Langdon Wilson— especially architecturally suitable and institutionally successful —as both an accurate rendition of its namesake’s story and as an experience for the average visitor.  Its setting, its design, and its general ambiance convey a real sense of the President and Mrs. Nixon.  The remarkable arc of the Nixon story is all there — from the house where he was born to the simple polished granite headstones of  his and Mrs. Nixon’s  final resting places.  And in the spacious and graciously proportioned building is the history of the deep valleys and high mountains they experienced between.

The original architect’s drawing of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library campus in Yorba Linda.

The Reflecting Pool and Colonnade at the Nixon Library.

Twenty years ago next July: The 38, 40, 37, 41, and their First Ladies at the opening of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda on 19 July 1990.

“I was born in a house my father built.”  RN’s Birthplace at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda.

Worth 2000 Words

November 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Barack Obama, China, History, News media, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

37: February 1972

44: November 2009.
The White House ID for downloading this photo is “hero_greatwall_LJ-01-60″

50 years On

November 5, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, Sports | 2 Comments 

In November 1959, while on vacation in Southern California, RN played a round of gold with (from left to right) Hillcrest Country Club president Bernard Weinberg, actor Danny Kay, entertainer Danny Thomas, and golf professional Eric Monti.

In the historical section of the Los Angeles Times, Larry Harnisch marks the fiftieth anniversary of the unveiling for plans to build Dodger Stadium at Chavez Ravine.

The Dodgers had been playing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where they had moved after being tenants of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York two years before.

Harnisch has also discovered an interesting article which describes Vice President Nixon’s five day holiday in Los Angeles.

According to the article, dated November 5, 1959, RN shopped for ties with Mrs. Nixon in Beverly Hills, and struck up a conversation with a store clerk from Yugoslavia on the politics of the Eastern European nation.

“The call it a social democracy, the store clerk said, ‘but it’s really communism.”

“I know it is, it’s a drab, drab,” responded RN.

RN then visited 20th Century Fox Studios where he met with executive producer Buddy Hadler, and later dined at Hillcrest Country Club with club president Bernard Weinberg, Fox Executive Harry Brand, actor Danny Kaye, singer Dean Martin, Judges Edward Brand and Ben Landis, and others. Mrs. Nixon dined with Brand’s wife, Ruth.

Mrs. Nixon dined at the 20th Century studio with Ruth Brand, the wife of studio executive Harry Brand. Israeli actress Elana Aden is pictured in the center.

After lunch, RN played a round of golf with Weinberg, Kaye, entertainer Danny Thomas, and golf professional Eric Monti, scoring 51 on the first nine and 43 on the second half of the course (RN was no stranger to the game, he is among three American presidents — including Eisenhower and Ford — to ever score a hole-in-one).

During the round, RN joked with his companions, and conversed about Russian Premier Nikita Krushschev (who he debated just four months earlier at the American Exhibition in Moscow), and discussed the future of India.

Harnisch also found another news clip from the trip, a story that describes how RN made two young journalists’ day:

Pat Nixon And America’s White House

October 17, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Pat Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Under the leadership of First Lady Pat Nixon, a record number of guests visited the White House.

According to the Associated Press, tens of thousands are expected to visit the White House this weekend to tour the estate’s gardens and experience a rare glimpse of the “fragrant roses, blue salvias and towering, decades-old trees that beautify the president’s back yard.” The tour includes the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, the Rose Garden, the South Lawn, and the Children’s Garden — where visitors can see the handprints and footprints of Presidential grandchildren from Lyndon Baines Johnson to George H.W. Bush.

This semi-annual tradition was started by Pat Nixon in 1973:

Then-first lady Patricia Nixon started the tours in 1973. They are held twice a year, in spring (April) and fall (October).

The first few years saw between 10,000 and 12,000 guests. The White House expects double that number this weekend.

“They’ve been a success ever since,” Dale Haney, superintendent of the White House grounds, said of the tours. He has helped care for the grounds for more than 30 years and was present for the first garden and grounds tour.

It’s comes to no surprise that Mrs. Nixon was behind the White House Garden tours.

In his memoirs, RN said that Pat “stepped into the role of First Lady without breaking a stride,”  was generous with visitors and “thought of imaginative ways to bring young people to the White House:”

Each of us loved the White House and looked for ways to share its history and beauty with others, but it was Pat who made it happen.

She had loudspeakers set up near the fence on the South Grounds so that while they were waiting people standing in line for the tour could hear about the history of the rooms they were about to see. She arranged special tours for the blind that allowed them for the first time to touch the historic objects in the different rooms. Pat also recorded an introduction for the first “talking history of the White House so that those who could not see it would nevertheless have a sense of sharing and belonging when they were there.

As Jimmy Bryon noted last week, under the leadership of the First Lady, the White House was restored to its “golden age.”

“She left us all breathless,” RN Said, “By our second year in the White House we had set a record of 50,000 guests.”

The White House Rose Garden is open to visitors in the Spring and Fall each year, a tradition started by First Lady Pat Nixon.

Pat Nixon And The Golden Age Of The White House

October 5, 2009 by Jimmy Byron | Filed Under Culture, Pat Nixon | 5 Comments 

White House renovator: First Lady Pat Nixon pictured with curator Clement Conger, daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower, designer David Richmond Byers III (left, from left to right), and architect Edward Vason Jones (right) in the Green Room in 1971.

Much has been written about First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s refurbishment and redecoration of the White House, home and principal workplace of the President of the United States. While Mrs. Kennedy’s efforts were successful in restoring many artifacts to the Executive Mansion, Mrs. Nixon’s efforts were enormously successful in furthering White House improvements. Mrs. Nixon incorporated other ideas into Mrs. Kennedy’s plans, producing marvelous and lasting results.

Mrs. Nixon did not receive immense press coverage for her work but she did not seek immediate publicity. Still, though, her story needs to be told and her efforts need to be highlighted.

French bergères: Pat Nixon returned President James Monroe’s special-order armchairs to the Blue Room.

Pat Nixon added more than 600 paintings and furnishings to the White House, the single largest acquisition by any presidential administration. Among many notable improvements, she returned President James Monroe’s original special-order French bergères (or armchairs), to the Blue Room and replaced replicas of Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of John Quincy and Louisa Adams with the originals. With the help of a new White House Curator, Clement Conger, whom Mrs. Nixon hired, and Sarah Jackson Doyle, a design consultant who had worked with Mrs. Nixon since 1965, the First Lady redecorated both private family rooms in the upper quarters and public rooms on the State Floor. She refurbished nine rooms, and renovated the Map Room and the China Room, which displays samplings of all the White House china.

The White House China Room circa 1975: With the help of White House curator Clement Conger, Pat Nixon renovated the China Room.

But Mrs. Nixon’s efforts went beyond simply restoration. She made the White House accessible for the disabled by adding wheelchair ramps. For the convenience of foreign tourists, Mrs. Nixon had White House guide pamphlets translated into foreign languages. She opened the White House for tours in the evenings which were enjoyed by over half a million visitors; the tours at Christmas were lighted by candles.

The exterior of the mansion glows a soft-white every night due to the efforts of Pat Nixon. Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s reflection in Pat Nixon: The Untold Story is the best description of this:

The White House illuminated: The soft glow of the White House at nightfall is the work of Pat Nixon.

“[Mrs. Nixon] began work on the lighting of the White House… National Park Service engineers spent months studying diagrams of the house and grounds and submitted various plans for illumination which Mother studied. Great care was taken that the lighting be subtle but still reveal the architectural beauty of the President’s house.

“In August 1970, when my parents returned to Washington from a trip, as their helicopter neared the mansion, suddenly hundreds of carefully concealed lights on the White House grounds were switched on. The softly glowing mansion was a breathtaking sight from the air. Mother had not told my father that the project was completed, wanting him to be surprised. He was elated. Excited, he ordered the pilot to circle once, twice, a third time. Mother beamed with pleasure.

“On November 25, at a small ceremony, Patricia Nixon pressed a button to light the White House officially as the Marine Band played “America the Beautiful.” Ever since that evening, the White House has been illuminated after dusk and a lighted flag has flown by presidential proclamation, day and night. It was an exhilarating moment for my mother midpoint in the first Nixon Administration.”

As Mrs. Eisenhower alluded to, the American flag flies atop the White House twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even when the president is not within the confines of the White House, as a result of the successful efforts of Pat Nixon.

Upon her death in 1993, the Washington Post wrote that Mrs. Nixon, with the help of Conger, “restore[d] the White House to its golden age” and left “as one of her legacies a more historically accurate, and perhaps a more American, White House.” Though she did not seek publicity in regards to any of these numerous accomplishments, the credit she deserves should be dutifully given to this determined, hardworking woman.

Stars and Stripes Forever: Because of Pat Nixon, the American Flag flies atop the White House twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week.

9.25.69

September 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, International Affairs, Middle East, Nixon Administration, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, White House | Leave a Comment 

Forty years ago today, on 25 September 1969, RN welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to the White House.

It was the beginning of what became a warm and close relationship.  A relationship that would be tested, refined, and perfected during the Yom Kippur War in 1973; and that would culminate in RN’s heartfelt toast to the now-former-PM at a dinner in the Knesset in 1974.

RN’s Welcoming Remarks on the South Lawn of the White House

Madam Prime Minister and our guests here at the White House today:

It is a very great privilege for me, speaking in behalf of the American people, to welcome you, Madam Prime Minister, in a very personal sense, because you were raised in this country. You have been to this country many times, but we are particularly proud that for the first time we welcome you as the Prime Minister of Israel.

Speaking to you in that capacity, as the head of government of a very courageous people, a people who are determined to maintain their independence, who also are determined to achieve a lasting peace in the area in which they live, I look forward to the talks we shall have individually, and also with other members of your party.

It would be less than candid for me not to say that the problems of the Mideast are terribly complex and not susceptible to solution in one meeting, or two or three, or even more, at the level at which we will be talking.

But it is also proper to say that the Mideast and peace in the Mideast is of interest not only to your nation and your neighbors but to the whole world, because of what could happen in the event that war were to break out there, the repercussions that that could have all over the world.

We know that you and your people want peace. We know that your neighbors want peace. Certainly the majority of the people in the whole area want peace. The question is how to achieve it. On this we shall have discussions that I hope will be helpful; the real peace, the peace that is not simply one of words but one in which both parties will have a vested interest in maintaining.

I would say finally, Madam Prime Minister, that a very famous British Prime Minister once said: “One should always talk as much as possible to women, because this is the best school.”

I can assure you that I recognize the tremendous complexity of the problem we will be discussing. I recognize that it is necessary to get the very best answers that we can to find a solution to these problems, and I realize that in talking to you, not just because you are Prime Minister but because you are one of the outstanding women in political leadership in the world, that in talking to you, I will be truly going to the best school today and tomorrow.

A timely visit: the week before she arrived at the White House, Mrs. Meir was on the cover of Time magazine.

RN described the visit in RN:

On September 25, 1969, Golda Meir came to Washington for a state visit.  In Israeli terms she was a “hawk,” and a hard-liner opposed to surrendering even an inch of the occupied territory Israel had won in the 1967 war.  Mrs. Meir conveyed simultaneously the qualities of extreme toughness and extreme warmth; when the survival of her country was involved, the toughness was predominant.  She requested twenty-five Phantom jets and eighty Skyhawk fighters and complained about the delays in delivery of planes that had already been approved.  She also asked for low-interest loans of $200 million a year for periods up to five years.  I reassured her that our commitments would be met.

At a state dinner in her honor she expressed concern regarding our moves toward détente with the Soviets.  I told her that we had no illusions about their motives.  I said, ‘Our Golden Rule as far as international diplomacy is concerned is: “Do unto others as they do unto you.’”

“Plus ten percent,” Kissinger quickly added.

Mrs. Meir smiled.  “As long as you approach things that way, we have no fears,” she said.

During my interviews with him in 1983, I asked RN if he remembered that first meeting with Mrs. Meir:

Oh, I recall it very vividly. She came to the Oval Office–I believe it was in 1969.   And what impressed me about Golda Meir was the contrast between her and Indira Gandhi. The contrast was really quite vivid.

Indira Gandhi was a very intelligent woman and a very strong leader, but she was one who acted like a man, with the ruthlessness of a man, but wanted always to be treated like a woman.

That wasn’t the way Golda Meir was. Golda Meir acted like a man and wanted to be treated like a man. I remember so well when we sat down in the chairs in the Oval Office, and the photographers came in, and they were running their tape and so forth, and we were shaking hands, and she was smiling, and making the right friendly comments–”How are you? How’s the family?” and the rest.

Photographers left the room.  She crossed her leg, lit a cigarette, and said,  ”Now, Mr. President, what are you going to do about those planes that we want and we need very much?”

And from that time on, we had a very good relationship. It wasn’t that she was not one who was very feminine, because she could be. She used to wear her hair in a bun. She told my daughter Julie the reason she did it was that her husband liked it that way, even though that wasn’t the fashion, at least in–in certain places.

She was very feminine in another way. She never forgave. She never forgave those that had opposed her, she she thought it was unjustified.

She never forgave Ben-Gurion because he had opposed her when she was on her way up. She never forgave Pompidou, because Pompidou had said some disrespectful things about Israel and her–she thought so–a couple of years previously. But there is no question that she was a very strong, intelligent l–leader in her own right.

Cartoonist Noah Bee noted Mrs. Meir’s first White House visit and referred to her interest in direct negotiations between parties in the Middle East.

That night, the President and Mrs. Nixon were the hosts at a State Dinner.

The Prime Minister’s Toast to the President was particularly warm:

When I say this was a great day for me, Mr. President, I shall remember it always, because you made it possible for me to speak to you, to bring before you all our problems, all our worries, all our hopes and aspirations; and if you will forgive me, I did not have a feeling for one single moment that I, representing little, tiny Israel, was speaking to the President of the great United States.

I felt I was speaking to a friend who not only listens —in Hebrew we have two words, a word that means only listening, and a word that means that it really is absorbed–and I have a feeling that you were not merely kind to listen to me, but you shared what I was saying, what our worries are.

We discussed the problems of Israel as though they were our common problems. This means a lot. Israel has known in its short number of years too many hours when we felt we were all alone. And we made it.

Mr. President, thank you, not only for wonderful hospitality, not only for this great day and every moment that I had this day, but thank you for enabling me to go home and tell my people that we have a friend, a great friend and a dear friend. It will help. It will help us overcome many difficulties.

When the great day comes when this dream comes true, you will have had a great share in it.

The next afternoon, in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, RN bid farewell to his new friend.  With a characteristic flourish, he wished her well for the rest of her visit to America — particularly to Milwaukee, where her family had settled after they left her birthplace of Kiev, Russia.

THE PRESIDENT.  I can only wish you well on the balance of your trip. I know you will receive a wonderful welcome every place you go, and particularly in Milwaukee. Milwaukee lost the Braves, but they got you back.

THE PRIME MINISTER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT. As a matter of fact, the Braves could use you as a pinch-hitter right now in order to win.

THE PRIME MINISTER. They lost that opportunity.

THE PRESIDENT. They are in Atlanta. You know that.

In the Nixon Library’s World Leaders Gallery, Ivan Schwartz’s life size statutes of Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat stand side by side.’

In Leaders (1982), RN devoted several pages to Golda Meir.

We both took office in 1969.  We both resigned in 1974.  She became Prime Minister just two months after my own inauguration, and she served until two months before my resignation.  In effect, she was “my” Israeli Prime Minister; I was “her American President.

Georges Pompidou once described Golda Meir to me as “une femme formidable.”  She was that and more.  She was one of the most powerful personalities, man or woman, that I have ever met in thirty-five years of public and private travel at home and abroad.  If David Ben-Gurion was an elemental force of history, Golda Meir was an elemental force of nature.

Some leaders are masters of intrigue, spinning webs of deception, planting suggestions that the unwary will take as promises, wheeling and dealing, constantly, even compulsively, plotting and maneuvering.  For Lyndon Johnson this was second nature.  FDR was a master of it.  For many, scheming is the essence of statecraft, the most effective and sometimes the only way of navigating the threatening shoals of competing interests and getting things done.  Not for Golda Meir.  She was absolutely straightforward.  There was nothing devious about her.  The corollary is that she was implacably determined.  There was never any question about where Golda Meir stood, or what she wanted, or why.  She could be either the irresistible fore or the immovable object, as the situation required.  But as an object she was immovable; as a force she was irresistible.

9.23.52

September 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, History, Media, News media, Pat Nixon, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Taking matters into his own hands:  On 23 September 1952, RN went on radio and TV to answer charges of financial impropriety.   The phenomenal success of his speech assured Ike’s victory and put RN’s bench mark on the emerging medium of television.

Today is the fifty-seventh anniversary of the speech that changed the course of RN’s life and of politics as practiced in America.

It was also the first of the remarkable comebacks from defeat or adversity that marked his long career.

Garry Wills described the spectacular risk RN took, and the stunning success he achieved:

Nixon first demonstrated the political uses and impact of television. In one half hour Nixon converted himself from a liability, breathing his last, to one of the few people who could add to Eisenhower’s preternatural appeal — who could gild the lilly. For the first time, people saw a living political drama on their TV sets — a man fighting for his whole career and future — and they judged him under that strain. It was an even greater achievement than it seemed. He had only a short time to prepare for it. The show, forced on him [by Eisenhower's advisers], was meant as a form of political euthanasia. He came into the studio still reeling from distractions and new demoralizing blows….[A]t the time he went onto the TV screen in 1952, he was hunted and alone.

It had all started several days earlier.  On 14 September 1952,  just as RN was launching his campaign as Ike’s VP  with a whistlestop train trip aboard the Nixon Special, up the coast from Pomona to Seattle.  Three thousand miles across the continent the New York Post ran a headline: Secret Nixon Fund!  Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.

Under Dorothy Schiff’s ownership and Jimmy Wechsler’s ownership, the Post in those days was a proudly-identified left-wing tabloid.   The story was completely bogus, and the rap was totally bum.  Far from being secret, the fund had been solicited by letters to hundreds of supporters throughout California, individual contributions had been limited to $500, and the account was administered by a trustee and was regularly audited.

But the reporters smelled blood in the water, and the story soon overwhelmed all campaign coverage.

Not the least of the many ironies of the Fund Crisis was that the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson, did have an unreported secret slush fund of campaign contributions that he had used for purely personal expenses.

It was finally decided that RN should take his case directly to the American people with a speech to be broadcast both on the radio and the new medium of television.  Depending on the popular reaction to the speech, he would either remain on the ticket or voluntarily withdraw.

The approach he took to this situation was as inspired as it was unprecedented.  Instead of the self-serving boilerplate blather usually produced in such situations, he decided to take his national audience on a guided tour of his net worth.  In addition to proving that he clearly met Ike’s ethical standard of being “clean as a hen’s tooth,”  the speech showed that he was just a regular guy, like most of his viewers.

While Adlai Stevenson’s ‘52 campaign slogan was “Let’s talk sense to the American people,” his rhetoric was often elegant bordering on highfalutin.  But RN’s plain speech put everything right out front right up front:

I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and — and integrity has been questioned.

Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details. I believe we’ve had enough of that in the United States, particularly with the present Administration in Washington, D.C.  To me the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States is a great office, and I feel that the people have got to have confidence in the integrity of the men who run for that office and who might obtain it.

I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth. And that’s why I’m here tonight. I want to tell you my side of the case. I’m sure that you have read the charge, and you’ve heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took 18,000 dollars from a group of my supporters.

Nothing like this had ever been seen or heard before.  The effect was immediate and electric.

From the moment RN’s image faded off the screen, the Checkers Speech —as it immediately became known— was controversial in direct proportion to its success;  in other words, off the charts.

Nixon supporters reveled in the tsunami of national warmth and support for this honest and plainspoken young man who had, by risking all, turned the tables on his foes.  And his foes, not surprisingly, carped that it had been mawkish and unseemly and embarrassing.

RN preferred to talk about the “Fund Crisis” — because the speech, important as it was, was only part of a greater and no less significant story of a badly wronged man fighting back and coming out on top.  But although the Fund Speech was RN’s preferred term of art, that tale continues to wag the dog, and it has gone down in history as the Checkers Speech.

The drama of those September days has been described by many authors — including RN himself, who made it the second of his Six Crises.   More than four decades later, Six Crises presents incomparably the most vivid and dramatic account, and it still makes exciting reading.   In the first volume of his Nixon trilogy, Stephen Ambrose surveys a lot of the press coverage.  And Conrad Black’s recent magisterial biography supplies both drama and analysis:

Abandoned by everyone except his wife, his mother, [political adviser Murray] Chotiner, [RNC Chairman Arthur] Summerfield, [RNC public relations director Robert] Humphreys, and a few others, put right to the wall and verging on nervous and physical exhaustion, Nixon had staged a political version of MacArthur’s Inchon landing.  He had destroyed his enemies, given the vice presidency a political significance it had never had in 164 years of the history of the office, sacked his judge and the kangaroo court around him and replaced them with his friends in the National Committee, while impeccably restating the greatness of Eisenhower.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was, by most measurements, a great man, but his greatness was not in evidence on this occasion, and that was not the description of him uppermost in Nixon’s thoughts at this time.

The role played by PN throughout the Fund Crisis was pivotal and inspirational.   And it wasn’t easy for her, as Julie Nixon Eisenhower revealed in her biography of her mother; and as RN described in the interviews I conducted with him in 1983:

The homely and memorable example of the cocker spaniel has come to dominate —and characterize— thinking about the speech.  In fact, aside from RN’s heartfelt peroration and the central core of reporting his net worth, the speech was an example of extremely sophisticated and hard hitting political rhetoric.  As RN wrote in RN, even  the pooch had a political pedigree:

On the plane [a night flight from Portland to LA where the speech would be delivered], I took some postcards from the pocket of the seat in front of me and began to put down some thoughts about what I might say.

I remembered the Truman scandal concerning a $9,000 ink coat given to a White House secretary, and I made a note that Pat had no mink — just a cloth coat.  I thought of DNC CHairman Mitchell’s snide comment that people who cannot afford to hold an office should not run for it, and I made a note to check out a quotation from Lincoln to the effect that God must have loved the common people because he made so many of them.  I also thought about the stunning success FDR had in his speech during the 1944 campaign, when he had ridiculed his critics by saying they were even attacking his little dog Fala, and I knew it would infuriate critics if I could turn this particular table on them.

“It isn’t easy to bare your life”:  When RN arrived in LA, he refined his thoughts for the speech on a yellow pad.

But enough exposition — here is the speech itself.  After all this time, and despite the outdated and stilted production values of the hastily mounted production  (the opening and closing titles were RN’s Senate calling card)  its human honesty and emotional intensity can still pack a punch.  Imagine what it must have been like when there had never been anything like it.

The complete text of the speech and an mp3 audio will be found here.

Every Dog Has Her Day — And Checkers’ Was 23 September 1952

In my 1983 interviews, I asked RN if he had ever played a practical joke on anyone.  He thought for a moment and replied:

Yes. Oh, I remember, for example, the — the Gridiron speech that I made in 1953.

This was, in effect, similar to a practical joke. That was after I had made what was called the Checkers speech in the fund controversy.  And so, the Gridiron had a very rough skit on me about Checkers, and I knew that it was going to be rough. And I had learned it in advance, thanks to them.

[Political columnist and later best selling novelist] Fletcher Knebel came on set.  He was dressed as a dog, and he cried, and so forth and so on.

And so what I did was to get the real Checkers, our Checkers, and I arranged to have that dog brought to the — backstage in the Statler where the Gridiron was held, and when I made my speech, I started out in a way that really scared my supporters to death.

I remember [newspaper publisher John S. Knight] Jack Knight, who was a great supporter of mine at that point, was just sitting there saying, “He mustn’t do it. He mustn’t do it.” — because I started out and I said, in a very serious way, “I know that everybody is supposed to take whatever barbs are thrown at the Gridiron dinner in good form”, and so forth and so on, “and not respond. But this is one time you’ve gone too far.  Fun is fun, particularly when that is directed against a lady.  And now I want you to see the real Checkers.”

And then Knebel came out holding Checkers.  Checkers, of course, was a female. Well, it brought the house down, and my supporters thought,  ”Well, he’s not as serious as we thought.”

Pat Nixon’s Influence: An Historical Reflection

August 27, 2009 by Jimmy Byron | Filed Under Pat Nixon | 4 Comments 

PN – pictured at the Miami Beach Convention Center in August 1972 – was the first Republican First lady to have a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention. (Photo Credit: Life Magazine)

In 1984, First Lady Nancy Reagan addressed the Republican National Convention, arguing that her husband was still the right man to occupy the Oval Office. Barbara Bush did the same in 1992, Laura Bush in 2000 and 2004. Now regularly at the front of the public eye, the role of a candidate’s spouse has altered from that of quiet bystander to one of national prominence. It was Pat Nixon who popularized the now-common tradition in which presidential spouses speak on behalf of their husbands at their party’s national convention. Mrs. Nixon spoke at the Miami Beach Convention Center in August 1972, becoming the first Republican First Lady to address a national convention.

In addition to starting that tradition, her efforts on behalf of her husband in the 1972 campaign (depicted left on the cover of Time Magazine with Eleanor McGovern in October 1972) were replicated by her successors (and those who desired to be her successors, Republican and Democrat). Her lengthy, solo campaign trips are now common for a candidate’s spouse. Take — for example — this rare footage as a small sample of Mrs. Nixon’s 1972 campaigning.

There is no doubt that Mrs. Nixon exercised an influence upon those First Ladies who followed in her footsteps, and contributed to their ever-evolving role in the White House.

Needless to say, President Nixon’s campaign was triumphant, achieving a resounding victory in November over Senator George McGovern. At the inauguration in 1973, Mrs. Nixon broke with a 108 year tradition when she chose not to wear a hat during the swearing-in ceremony.

In his candid 1983 interviews with Frank Gannon, RN reflected upon a 1952 campaign trip in which Senator Harry Darby introduced Mrs. Nixon to large crowd gathered at a rally. In the words of RN, Darby said: “Our candidate for Vice President, Senator Nixon, he’s controversial – but everybody loves Pat.” As one of the most admired women in the world from 1958-1962 and 1968-1979, her achievements, influence, and remarkable ability to connect with the American people speak for themselves.

PN, pictured with Chief Justice Warren Burger, as RN accepted the Oath of office on his second inauguration in January 1973.

Her Life, Her Story

August 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

Sarah Leicht — a TNN reader and high school student from Germany — produced the following video of Pat Nixon as part of a class project, rife with quotes and photos about the First Lady:

Ms. Leicht explained that she became fascinated with PN after watching video and reading the biographies of the first couple. “I noticed that Pat Nixon never got the appreciation she should have gotten for the things she did in her life,” Leicht said. “I think that she was a really great and wonderful woman and I wanted to show that with the video.”

“Her life and her story would really deserve that.”

Getting Away From The —Oval— Office

August 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Today’s Daily Beast offers a “Media Gallery” of Presidential vacations.

The slideshow includes TR’s 1909 post-presidential African safari.

HST vacationed aboard the presidential yacht USS Williamsburg, or at the Little White House in Key Biscayne — where he relaxed with First Lady Bess and daughter Margaret.

DDE decommissioned the Williamsburg and found relaxation in fishing —the Beast notes that “he’s reported to have gone on a veritable fishing tour across the U.S., hitting up streams and lakes in Florida, Rhode Island, Maine, South Dakota, Georgia, Maryland, and Colorado” — and hunting.

RN is represented by a 1956 family vacation to Disneyland.

The gratuitously snarky caption —

Ah, Richard Nixon’s innocent days. During a 1955 vacation in California, then-Vice President Nixon and his wife, Pat, took their two young daughters, Julie and Patricia, to Disneyland. Here, the family is shown leaving the Fantasyland castle; they reportedly spent the day sightseeing and enjoying the rides. During his presidency, when he wasn’t indulging his inner child, Nixon was known to escape to a compound he owned on Key Biscayne, off Miami—often referred to as his Florida White House.

— ignores the comparatively greater amount of time RN, PN, and the family spent at La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente.

If You’re Tired Of “Frost/Nixon”….

August 20, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

….then the Orlando Sentinel has an article that may tickle your fancy – about Bill and Sue Wills, a Maryland team of husband-and-wife actors who, for years, have been presenting two-person shows in which they portray a President and First Lady. So far they’ve portrayed no less than 32 Presidential couples – from the famous ones, like FDR and Eleanor and Harry and Bess, to the lesser-known ones like the Fillmores and Pierces. This month, they’re touring as Richard and Pat Nixon. There’s a photo of them in makeup and costume. Be advised that Bill Wills looks something like Lyndon Johnson doing a Nixon impression (or maybe LBJ impersonating David Frye impersonating RN), and that Ms. Wills does not look much like Pat, though she seems to have a very slight resemblance to Betty Ford.

8.18.71

August 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Environmental issues, Nixon Administration, Nixon Foundation, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

President Obama and his family enjoyed and praised the beauty of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon during their recent whirlwind western tour.  And Douglas Brinkley has written a doorstopper celebrating TR’s role in creating our National Parks.

But it was RN’s Legacy of Parks program —officially announced thirty-eight years ago tomorrow, that gave the Park Service its late 20th Century legs and pioneered the Nixonian concept of bringing parks to places —especially urban places— where all people could enjoy them.

As a result of RN’s program, between 1971 and 1976, more than 80,000 acres of government property were converted to recreational use in 642 new parks.

PN launched the Legacy of Parks thirty-eight years ago today —on 18 August 1971— at the end of a four-day swing through several western states that ended on the US-Mexican border south of San Diego.

PN launches the Legacy of Parks at Imperial Beach, California, on 18 August 1971.  She officiated at the turning over of a 370-acre former naval base as Border Field State Park.

Building on the foundation laid in the 37-point program that I submitted to Congress last year, I will propose a strong new set of initiatives to clean up our air and water, to combat noise, and to preserve and restore our surroundings.

I will propose programs to make better use of our land, to encourage a balanced national growth–growth that will revitalize our rural heartland and enhance the quality of life in America.

And not only to meet today’s needs but to anticipate those of tomorrow, I will put forward the most extensive program ever proposed by a President of the United States to expand the Nation’s parks, recreation areas, open spaces, in a way that truly brings parks to the people where the people are. For only if we leave a legacy of parks will the next generation have parks to enjoy.

On 8 February, in his Special Message to Congress Proposing the 1971 Environmental Program, RN put some appropriations flesh on those legislative words:

Merely acquiring land for open space and recreation is not enough. We must bring parks to where the people are so that everyone has access to nearby recreational areas. In my budget for 1972, I have proposed a new “Legacy of Parks” program which will help States and local government provide parks and recreation areas, not just for today’s Americans but for tomorrow’s as well. Only if we set aside and develop such recreation areas now can we ensure that they will be available for future generations.

As part of this legacy, I have requested a $200 million appropriation to begin a new program for the acquisition and development of additional park lands in urban areas. To be administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, this would include provision for facilities such as swimming pools to add to the use and enjoyment of these parks.

Also, I have recommended in my 1972 budget that the appropriation for the Land and Water Conservation Fund be increased to $380 million, permitting the continued acquisition of Federal parks and recreation areas as well as an expanded State grant program. However, because of the way in which these State grant funds were allocated over the past five years, a relatively small percentage has been used for the purchase and development of recreational facilities in and near urban areas. The allocation formula should be changed to ensure that more parks will be developed in and near our urban areas.

And on 19 August, at Grand Teton National Park, he issued a statement announcing the first fruits of his January proposal:

It has been estimated that some 75 percent of all outdoor recreation enjoyed by Americans takes place within a short distance of their homes. That is why I believe so strongly that we should be doing far more to bring our parks to the people. The Congress has thus far appropriated only $100 million for the HUD program.

Finally, I would point to my establishment of the Federal Property Review Board, which evaluates federally owned properties in order to determine whether they can be converted to park use. Close to 100 such properties have already been identified, and 24 of these, containing more than 5,000 acres, are now in the process of being conveyed by the Department of the Interior to local and State agencies. Mrs. Nixon has sought to encourage this important effort during her trip across the country this week.

Many of the properties which have been released under this program are within easy reach of our larger urban areas. To augment these efforts, we are also preparing a number of amendments to the Federal Income Tax Code which would facilitate charitable donations of property for conservation purposes. I hope to present these proposals to the Congress in the near future.

The combined effect of all these activities will be to provide that full range of outdoor experiences which our dynamic population requires. For some, this program will provide neighborhood parks in the city. For others, it will offer a pleasant setting for a weekend retreat, for an afternoon bike ride, or for a family vacation. For still others, it will provide the chance truly to escape into the wilderness.

I believe our Nation can afford to make these opportunities available. In fact, it is my view that we cannot afford not to provide them. For such a program can significantly enhance the quality of our Nation’s life and spirit–both now and for future generations.

It’s significant that the new President of the Nixon Foundation —Ron Walker— is the man RN chose to head the National Park Service in 1973.  The appointment of this valued staff member and long-time friend was an indication of the importance RN continued to place on his parks initiative.  (And it’s ironic that RN’s extensive biography on the National Park Service website doesn’t even mention the Legacy of Parks.)

50 Years On

August 13, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Though the precise anniversary has since passed, the Retroist blog has pointed to footage of the launch of the Disneyland monorail system on June 14, 1959, enjoyed first by park visitors 50 years ago this summer.

Then Vice President Richard Nixon — accompanied by Walt Disney — gave the introductory remarks for the dedication. By his side was wife Pat, his daughters Tricia and Julie conducted the honorary ribbon cutting.

The voice over was done by the indispensable Art Linkletter, whose family was also on hand to be among the first to board:

The Diplomate

July 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In the Soviet Union in 1959, as on all of RN’s Vice Presidential diplomatic trips abroad beginning in 1953, PN continued to break ground by pursuing her own independent and substantive schedule.   Her work was recognized by Life magazine with its 10 August cover.

The late Herb Klein was the Veep’s Press Secretary on this trip, and he later recalled an otherwise unheralded event:

Shortly after arriving at the Spaso House [the American Ambassador's residence where the Nixons were staying], the Vice President asked Pat if she would like to take a walk with him through the town.  I walked with them, and there was only one American Secret Service man, and one Embassy representative who acted as interpreter.  This was one of the few times the Nixons have been able to go through a public area unnoticed.  the Soviets seemed to notice only that Mrs. Nixon wore shoes with pointed toes.  In a small store she gave two little children some candy.  their parents were amazed when the interpreter told them that the candy was given by the wife of the Vice President of the United States.

In addition to Moscow, the Nixons visited Leningrad, Sverdlosk, and Novosibirsk — where PN broke through the language barrier (and the distancing ploys of her official hosts) to mix with the crowds.

Been There Done That

July 6, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Barack Obama, Cold War, International Affairs, Nixon Administration, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

From Confrontation to Negotiation: RN with Nikita Khrushchev in the famous Kitchen Debate in Moscow in 1959, and with Leonid Brezhnev (who had been part of Khrushchev’s official entourage in the Kitchen) on the Truman Balcony at the White House in 1973.

In a few hours, President Obama will be arriving in a cool and rainy Moscow.  After less than six months in office, Mr. Obama is already well-traveled; even his presidential campaign had a European leg.

The first time the Stars and Stripes flew over the Kremlin was thirty-seven years ago —in May 1972— when RN stayed there during his first —of three— Soviet Summits.

The externals have changed radically —President Obama will be visiting a fledgling democracy on the economic ropes rather than the competing superpower with which RN had to deal.

But the more things change the more they stay the same, and it’s not too late for 44 to learn from some of 37’s experiences.

26 May 1972: President Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signing the SALT 1 Interim treaty freezing US and Soviet weapons at their current limits.  Although spouses weren’t invited, PN wanted to witness the historic late-night post-banquet Kremlin event.  She followed RN’s advice and watched surreptitiously from behind a pillar.

When Air Force One lifted off from Andrews Air Force Base on 20 May 1972 (en route to Moscow via Salzburg) the thin backstory of Soviet summitry wasn’t auspicious to say the least.

Eisenhower’s meeting with Khrushchev at Geneva in 1955 and Khrushchev’s 1959 visit to the US were at least uneventful.  But the plans for Ike’s 1960 visit to Russia had to be scrapped when Khrushchev withdrew the invitation in the wake of the U2 spy plane debacle.  And JFK’s 1961 Vienna meeting with Khrushchev turned out to be disastrous.

The 1972 Soviet Summit had been long and carefully planned.  From the first weeks of his administration, RN had initiated a pragmatic policy of hardheaded détente, and insisted on the linkage of Soviet conduct (particularly in North Vietnam, North Korea, and the Middle East) to America’s willingness to negotiate on issues of interest to the USSR.

Indeed, many had direly predicted that RN’s refusal to be intimidated by North Vietnam’s invasion of the South the month before —which he countered with the bombing of Hanoi and  the mining of Haiphong Harbor— would lead the Soviets to cancel the Summit at the last minute.  RN noted that, after Air Force One was airborne, Henry Kissinger “came into my cabin and exuberantly said, ‘This has to be one of the great diplomatic coups of all times!  Three weeks ago everyone predicted it would be called off, and today we’re on our way.”

When RN and PN arrived in Moscow on Monday, 22 May 1972, the greeting was polite — but no more.  Brezhnev, whose power was supreme but whose official title was a few pegs down the totem pole, wasn’t among the official greeting party.  But as soon as the President and First Lady were installed in rooms in the Kremlin, Henry Kissinger arrived with word that Brezhnev was waiting in his office.

Although this would be their first official meeting, RN and Brezhnev had crossed paths before.  In the uncropped photographs of the 1959 Kitchen Debate —when Vice President Nixon confronted the belligerent Premier Khrushchev with some home truths about American capitalism— the  young communist party official Leonid Brezhnev had positioned himself directly behind the young American Veep.

In RN, RN recalled:

Brezhnev’s office was the same room in which I had first met Khrushchev, thirteen years before.  Like Khrushchev, Brezhnev looked exactly like his photographs: the bushy eyebrows dominated his face, and his mouth was set in a fixed, rather wary smile.  I was sure that neither of us, standing shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen at the American Exhibition thirteen years before, had imagined that we would one day be meeting at the summit as the leaders of our country.

For the next few days, the communist leaders —Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgordny— alternately applied the complete Soviet arsenal of surprise, belligerence, crudity, charm, schmaltz, erratic and late hours, and, of course, gallons of vodka.  President Obama can expect these techniques to be indigenous —as familiar to Count Nesselrode as to Sergei Lavrov— and should be prepared accordingly.

Throughout, RN remained calm, unruffled, resolute, and unfailingly diplomatic diplomatic.  And, no less important, he didn’t lose his sense of humor.

In the first plenary session at 11 A.M. with Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny, Gromkyo, and Dobrynin, I decided to establish the straightforward tone I planned to adopt during the entire summit.

“I would like to say something that y Soviet friends may be too polite to say,” I began.  “I know that my reputation is one of being a very hard-line, cold-war-oriented, anticommunist.”

Kosygin said dryly, “I had heard this sometime back.”

“It is true that I have a strong belief in our system,” I continued, “but at the same time I respect those who believe just as strongly in their own systems.  There must be room in this world for two grea nations with different systems to live together and work together.  We cannot do this, however, by mushy sentimentality or by glossing over differences which exist.”

All the heads nodded on the other side of the table, but I guessed that in fact they would have much preferred a continuation of the mushy sentimentality that had characterized so much of our approach to the Soviets in the past.

This first Soviet Summit produced the first SALT (strategic arms limitations talks) Treaty establishing a temporary freeze on the numbers of ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles that either side could have or build until a permanent agreement could be reached.  RN also signed the ABM treaty, stopping would would have become a headlong arms race to defend American and Soviet cities from missile attacks.

As RN later wrote, “Together with the ABM treaty, the Interim Agreement on strategic missiles marked the first step toward arms  control in the thermonuclear age.”

FLOTUS 37′S COIFFURE AND AMERICA’S HISTORY

July 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Lifestyle, Pat Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Christina Cristoforou’s interesting illustration on the op-ed page of today’s New York Times places our forty-four first ladies’ hair styles in historically cross-hatched perspective.  PN is in the middle of the second row from the bottom.  This reduction doesn’t do justice to the original which can be found here.

37’s 4ths

July 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Holidays, Nixon Administration, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The Philippine Republic and the USA share July Fourth as their Independence Day.  On 4 July 1956, Vice President and Mrs. Nixon joined President Ramon Magsaysay  and First Lady Luz Magsaysay in Manila to celebrate the Philippines’ 10th and America’s 180th birthdays.   (Photo for LIFE magazine by John Dominis.)

July Fourth was always a meaningful day for RN throughout his presidency:

1969- RN spends the holiday weekend in Key Biscayne, Fla., where he attends a
parade and exchanges messages with anthropologist Thor Heyerdawl, who is on the boat ”Expedition Ra” on his way across the Atlantic.

1970- RN is at the Western White House in San Clemente, California, meeting with Vietnam peace talks envoy David K.E. Bruce.

1971- The official Fourth celebration occurs on the 5th this year and RN witnesses the certification of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution —which added eleven million new voters to the rolls by lowering the voting age to 18— in the East Room of the White House. RN’s extended remarks were particularly significant.

1972- RN gives a Fouth of July radio address from San Clemente, Calif., and reveals his plans for the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976.

1973- RN issues his Independence Day Statement from the Western White House in San Clemente: “Independence Day is a day to secure our moorings, to consider how far we have come as a nation, and to understand where we must yet go. It is a day of solemnity, for the birth of our nation was a momentous event for all mankind. But it is also a day of great joy as we celebrate the wondrous blessings of liberty and freedom.”

1974- President Nixon is at Key Biscayne, Florida after having returned from the Soviet Summit in Moscow on the previous evening.  In his Independence Day Statement, he says: “The Fourth of July is a uniquely American holiday. But it is also a holiday that echoes the hopes and aspirations of people throughout the world. In each of my-trips abroad, I have seen tangible evidence of people’s basic belief in the value of the principles that underlie our Republic, and outpouring of affection and respect for the Nation that Abraham Lincoln called “the last, best hope of earth.”

On 4 July 1970, RN recorded a message to be played for the crowd on the Mall waiting for the Honor America Day ceremony followed by the annual fireworks at the Washington Monument:

WE AMERICANS are known throughout the world as a forward-looking people. The United States of America is in fact a symbol of progress, of hope, and of just and orderly growth.

Yet, on one day each year we turn and look back at our past. We look back today over almost 200 years to a group of men meeting in Philadelphia and we look back in pride and in wonder, for what they did on this day is the single greatest political achievement in the history of man.

And we are the beneficiaries of that achievement.

To those of you who have gathered on this day to honor America, I send my best wishes for an enjoyable, memorable Fourth of July celebration. I know that the sponsors of this event, from every walk of life and from both major parties, have done everything they can to make this day a very special one for all of you.

Yet, there is something remaining to be done in order to make Honor America Day the kind of special occasion we all want it to be. It is my hope that each of us will take away not only our proud memories of this day, but also the living spirit of the Fourth of July as well, a spirit that created a free and strong and prosperous nation.

That is the spirit that can truly honor America, not only today but always. Let us all look back today so that we will be reminded of what great sacrifices have been made to make this day possible, and then let us turn once more to the future, inspired by what this day means to us and to all those who love freedom throughout the world.

A tip o’the Liberty Cap to James Heintze.

Raising The Curtain For Nixon’s Granddaughter

June 13, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Jennie Eisenhower, the actress who is the great-granddaughter of the 34th President and granddaughter of the 37th (and the daughter of David and Julie Eisehower), is the subject of an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer by that paper’s theater critic Howard Shapiro. Ms. Eisenhower is currently featured in the show Forbidden Broadway’s Greatest Hits at the Walnut Theatre in Philadelphia, a production in which she portrays such legends as Carol Channing, Ethel Merman, and Liza Minnelli. This versatility has been a hallmark of Ms. Eisehower’s career; she plays several other characters in the show, recently performed in the title role in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and also just directed productions of Our Town and Kiss Me Kate at her alma mater, Conestoga High School.

The article describes how Ms. Eisenhower, after graduating from Northwestern with a dual major in theater and communications, settled in New York, where she went through the customary round of endless auditions and getting roles that, as often as not, took her far outside the city. After a period of working at Bloomingdale’s as a personal shopper, she moved back to Philadelphia and has made it her base for performances in that area and further afield. (Several years ago she appeared at the Olney Theater near Washington, in the title role of Shaw’s St. Joan, and also had a small role in the Julia Roberts film Mona Lisa Smile.)

The actress also mentions the support she received from her parents and grandparents as she chose and worked on her career, and points out that RN’s very last public appearance (unless one counts the wedding of a family friend, the weekend before his death) was in the audience at her high school production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods. (So the next time you find yourself at a Sondheim trivia contest – and whenever two fans of the man who gave us Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music are in the same room, there always is one – that’s your chance to deliver the stumper: “Which Sondheim musical did Richard Nixon see just before he passed away?” My bet is that the first guess would be either West Side Story or Gypsy.)

Pardon Me, Did He Really Ask For Grey Poupon?

May 7, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Cool Commercials, First Ladies, History, Humor, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

It wasn’t as big of a deal as, say, an Air Force One fly over, but it was the talk of the town – and the rest of the universe, apparently – the other day when Barack Obama and Joe Biden ventured beyond the walls of the White House on a quest for ground red meat. And, in just about the biggest scoop since the whole Bill Clinton “boxers or briefs” inquiry, information was skillfully gleaned by the media in abundant attendance indicating that POTUS and VPOTUS fundamentally disagree on a matter of concern to all Americans.

Joe likes ketchup on his burger. Barack likes mustard. And not just plain old yellow mustard. No sir, he likes the good stuff – brown and spicy. In fact, as he ordered his “regular” bacon cheeseburger at Ray’s Hell-Burger in an Arlington, Virginia strip-mall, he asked for it “medium well” and with mustard. In fact, he asked for Grey Poupon.

Part of the Dijon family of mustards (that’s French, for any conspiracy theorists out there), and made with a brown Canadian-born seed, with just a splash of white wine, Grey Poupon became a household name in the 1980s via the success of its television commercial. The spot featured one Rolls Royce pulling up alongside another, and then the famous question: “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon.”

The question quickly went viral across America as something of a cute, pompous, somewhat pretentious, and very snooty tag line. Now, if George W. or his Daddy had asked for it – that would have been the big story at Ray’s Hell-Burger. But alas, the idea of the two big guys hanging out with regular folks at a burger joint was too cool to complicate with anything that didn’t fit the desired picture.

And that burger “joint” – well, it’s not exactly a glorified White Castle or Steak and Shake – or even a Five Guys, it’s a spot where you can drop up to $17.50 on a burger. You can get yours with foie gras, bordalaise sauce, and even white truffle oil.

Just like Mickey D’s, right?

It turns out that maybe the cool “let’s-show-them-we-are-just-like-them” adventure was at least a little flawed, but you’d never know it by the news coverage. The New York Times featured it, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC, and other usual suspects, as well. The story even got a lot of play internationally.

Richard Nixon once walked on the beach in his street shoes and he was brutally lampooned by the nattering nabobs of negativism in the press, ever after. George H. W. Bush’s fascination with the cool product code reader at a super market checkout counter in 1992 was evidence that he was out of touch.

But when Mr. Obama asks for Grey Poupon while trying to act like an everyday schnook ordering an artery clogging burger, it apparently happens with media impunity.

Of course, the migratory eating patterns of presidents in and around town have always been of mild interest. Certainly our presidents are entitled to scramble out of the pocket on occasion to mingle with the masses, even in this security-hyped age. Dwight Eisenhower enjoyed Chinese take-out from Sun Chop Suey Restaurant on Columbia Road in the district long before he became our 34th president. And he hated that every employee had to undergo a rigorous FBI check before he could have his first order sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1953. But he and Mamie wanted Chinese food on their T.V. trays and that was that.

A lot of presidents have eaten at Billy Martin’s Tavern Restaurant in Georgetown over the years, most of them first enjoying the place as congressmen or senators. Reportedly, Jack romanced Jackie in their favorite booth, while Lyndon Johnson talked shop with Sam Rayburn over cuts of prime rib. Harry Truman liked the place, always having a glass or two or three of his favorite I. W. Harper Bourbon (he even kept a stash in his personal White House bathroom and Bess never knew) with his steak.

Speaking of drinks, Richard Nixon was known in later years to prefer Tanqueray martinis, not the scotch his character drinks in Oliver Stone’s clumsy and just-plain-hideous cinematic caricature. But he also loved the mai tai’s at his favorite Washington, D.C. eatery – Trader Vic’s. The drink was actually invented by “Trader” Vic Bergeron, though he is seldom credited with creating the concoction. Mr. Nixon took Pat there for Valentine’s Day in 1973, and he enjoyed a few of Vic’s specialties, while she stuck with Jack Daniels.

Bill Clinton had more than one favorite Washington, D. C. area restaurant. Go figure. He liked Mark Miller’s Red Sage and the Italian restaurant Galileo, on 21st St. NW. His predecessor, the first President Bush, favored a Chinese spot in Falls Church called Peking Gourmet. And I can verify that they serve the best Peking duck you’ll ever savor.

Of course, all of these guys had to eat everything put before them while on the campaign trail seeking the office. Seeing them smile in photographs over the years, munching on this colloquial delicacy or that, you can every once in awhile almost see a glimmer of the kind of face Lucy Ricardo made while taking the first few spoonfuls of vitameatavegamen.

When politicians ultimately get to the White House, their days of having to partake of things they’d rather not become more rare – at least, until time for reelection comes around. Then it’s out with the French mustard and in with the French’s.

We will all know when the moment comes – if indeed it ever does – that the media either gets bored with Barack, or in some sense turns on him. How? Well, there will be this photo-op thing, where the president drops by some really-regular-people-friendly breakfast place. And the commander-in-chief will order some eggs, bacon, and grits, with white toast.

He will then turn to the table next to him and say, loud enough for the cameras to pick up, “Would ya please pass the jelly?”

Making History On A Full Stomach

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

RN greeted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on his arrival at Washington’s National Airport in June 1954.  The PM might have been thinking “This is a very impressive young man.”  Or, as we now know, he might have been thinking: “Grapefruit doesn’t mix that well with whisky soda.”  The photograph was taken by George Skadding for LIFE magazine.

Today’s Telegraph reports that, when the 80 year old British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for an official visit in June 1954, he was well and fully breakfasted.  Richard Westwood-Brookes, a steward aboard the BOAC flight, kept the printed breakfast menu on which the PM had written his choices and (where his choice wasn’t offered) his requirements.  The menu, along with other memorabilia from and about the trip, will be auctioned next month by Mullock’s of Shropshire.

The breakfast menu from the BOAC flight to Washington, with Winston Churchill’s handwritten annotations.  It will be auctioned in England on 23 April and is expected to realize  £1500 — about $2,138. Churchill famously told George VI that “When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.”

A man who knew his mind and his tastes and was used to getting what he wanted, he commanded that the repast arrive on two trays.

1st Tray. Poached egg, Toast, Jam, Butter, Coffee and milk, Jug of cold milk, Cold Chicken or Meat.

2nd Tray. Grapefruit, Sugar Bowl, Glass orange squash (ice), Whisky soda.

At the bottom he added: “Wash hands, cigar.

The auctioneers describe the menu as one of the most remarkable pieces of Churchill memorabilia they have seen.  And Mr. Westwood-Brookes said: ”It shows what a hearty breakfast he ate and it was all washed down with a whisky, after which he smoked a cigar.  It is the type of indulgence we’ve come to associate with Churchill and it’s reassuring to know he ate so well in his 80th year.  There are some smudges and ink stains but it is a wonderful piece of history.”

RN led the welcoming party that greeted the great man.  He kept a diary of this visit —and of his meetings with one of his real heroes— that is reprinted in full in RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (pp.155-159).  Here are some excerpts:

I met Churchill and [Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony] Eden at the airport this morning. As he came down the steps of the airplane, he took each step alone by himself although he was very hesitant in his steps when he arrived at the bottom…..

I was supposed to make a speech of introduction which I had spent an hour or so last night preparing even though it was only to be a minute and a half long. However, when Churchill saw the microphones he walked immediately over to them and took out a sheet of paper from which he read his own speech to the people who were at the airport.

We then got into the open car and rode into town.

Nixonphiles will savor the irony of RN using the Churchillian style of extensive preparation for an “extemporaneous” speech — and then being upstaged by its creator.  Could this incident perhaps explain the dream RN reported eighteen years later in a another diary (and which has become the basis of a virtual cottage industry among his psychobiographers)?  In the fall of 1972, RN noted:  “I had a rather curious dream of speaking in some sort of a rally and going on a bit too long and Rockefeller standing up in the middle and taking over the microphone on an applause line…..It is a subconscious reaction.  It is interesting.”

That night, the Eisenhowers gave a formal dinner for about thirty people.

Pat sat at Churchill’s right during the dinner and she said it was a very enjoyable evening from all standpoints. Mrs. Eisenhower watched over him as his food was being served and when he tried to cut a piece of the meat in half before putting it on his plate she told him the knives weren’t sharp and that they had all been received as part of the White House set — this was part of the gold set that had been bought in Paris. Pat remarked how Mamie took things over just as if she were handling any youngster who happened to be visiting or any close friend.

Foster Dulles had his usual highball rather than the wines during dinner. Pat asked Churchill whether or not he would prefer that. He said no, that he usually had his first drink of whiskey at 8.30 in the morning and that in the evening he enjoyed a glass of champagne. I noted that Churchill was much sharper in the morning and he seemed to thrive on the fact that he was participating in these conferences. As a matter of fact, at the dinner he was just as quick as any person and he had —I learned later— not taken a nap in the afternoon but had played cards after the conference had been completed.

After dinner the President invited a small group to stay.

After we had finished dinner, we went in for cigars and after the President sat with Churchill for a little while he asked me to come over and sit by him and said, “This is one of the young men I have been telling you about and I want you to get acquainted with him.” I asked Churchill about his writing his memoirs. He pointed out that he had started them in 1946 and that he did it all by dictation. I asked him if he used a machine and he said no; that the Americans had given him one of the best machines but he preferred a pretty girl to talk to rather than a machine…..

On the last evening of the visit, the PM gave a stag dinner at the British Embassy.  RN sat next to him and recorded their conversation in some detail.  Here is another excerpt in which the deft  diarist captures two memorable quotes:

I asked him how the three-day conference had affected him.  He said that except for a few blackouts –and I assume he meant by that periods when he took a nap— that he had felt better during this conference than he had for some time.  He said, “I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.”

During the course of the evening the conversation turned to General Lee and I asked his appraisal of Lee.  He said that he thought he was one of the greatest men in American history and one of the greatest generals at any time.  He said that somebody ought to “catch up in a tapestry or a painting the memorable scene of Lee riding back across the Potomac after he had turned down the command of the Union Armies in order to stay with the Southern side.”  He also said that one of the other great moments in the Civil War was at Appomattox when Lee pointed out to Grant that the officers owned their horses as personal property and asked that they be allowed to retain them.  Grand said to have them take all of their horses — the enlisted men and the officers as well.  ”They will need them to plow their fields.”  Churchill said, “In the squalor of life and war, what a magnificent act.”

Winston Churchill was also the subject of a chapter in RN’s 1982 book Leaders.

Sir Winston Churchill is among Ivan Schwartz’s life-size statues in the World Leaders Gallery at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda.  He is grouped with General De Gaulle, another leader RN particularly admired (and who he also profiled in Leaders).  In the background is Golda Meir who is grouped with an out-of-sight Anwar Sadat.

One Night They All Look Happy

February 14, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Go here for a nice selection of Presidents and First Ladies at their inaugurals, including President and Mrs. Nixon in 1973.

Thanks To Mrs. Nixon, “‘We’ Includes ‘Me’”

January 17, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Pat Nixon, White House | 1 Comment 

In a wonderful inaugural package, the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance includes a poem about First Lady Pat Nixon by Nikki Grimes, a bestselling and award-winning children’s author who begins with an author’s note:

The White House did not always belong to us all. For many years, African Americans certainly felt left out. But there was also a time when the deaf and the blind were strangers to the White House corridors. First Lady Patricia Nixon changed all that in 1969, throwing the doors open to finally welcome this segment of the American population. I tried to imagine what that first visit might have been like for one of the blind students who set foot inside those hallowed halls. Known for her personal touch, (As first lady, she personally shook the hands of more than a quarter of a million visitors in her first term, alone!) I’m certain Mrs. Nixon made this visit a memorable one.

Staking Claim

I told myself
it was no big deal.
So, no blind person had ever been
to the White House before.
So what
I wasn’t getting my hopes up
for anything special,
never mind what Teacher said.
But then, Mrs. P got to me,
Kind as any aunt,
though no kin of mine
(her skin, they say, was birch
to my ebony)
it’s her gentleness I remember.
She guided me through the halls
of that grand house,
coaxed my nimble fingers along
the scaled serpent legs
of the wooden Empire sofa
in the Red Room,
and tempted me to touch
the Green Room’s silk draperies,
soft as a hush.
When my fingers tangled
in its tassels,
Mrs. P’s laughter
tinkled like glass.
Then she surprised my warm palms
with the cool silver
of an ancient urn
that once served hot coffee
to John and Abigail Adams.
China Room, Green Room,
Red Room, Vermeil Room—
these were just words to me.
But thanks to Mrs. P
I did “See” the White House that day,
and the memory lodges deep
in the beds of my fingertips.
Now, when others speak
proudly and personally
of Our White House,
their “our” and “we”
includes me.

– Nikki Grimes

Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009

January 17, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Art, In Memoriam, Nixon Administration, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Wyeth died yesterday in his sleep at his family home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; he was 91.

On 19 February 1970, President and Mrs. Nixon hosted the Wyeths at a dinner they gave in his honor, on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition of his paintings in the White House — the first artist ever to accorded that honor in that place. (Mrs. Nixon’s official White House portrait was later painted by Andrew Wyeth’s sister, Henriette Wyeth Hurd, who was present at the dinner.) Here is the President’s toast:

Mr. Wyeth, Mrs. Wyeth, and all of our distinguished guests tonight:

This is a very special occasion in this historic room. Many events have happened here for the first time. I think all of us will remember that this is the first time in the history of this house in which the honored guest, the only honored guest, was one of the great painters of the world, and that honored guest is Andrew Wyeth tonight.

This occasion also marks something new in terms of White House history. For the first time a painter has in the White House, on display, some of his works of art. And we are very proud that the Andrew Wyeth collection, a collection that was made possible by not only him, but by many of our guests this evening, is here so that it can be enjoyed by those here and by many others who will be visiting the White House in the weeks ahead.

Now, having mentioned these two historical firsts, I have been trying to think of something appropriate and very personal to say to this audience which includes those who know Andrew Wyeth through his paintings, some who have had the good fortune to have them in their homes, and others, of course, who are members of his family.

I was reminded before I came here that the Wyeth family has a special connection with the White House, a special connection because at least one of the members of the family has painted a President of the United States.

I have no plans to have my portrait painted. However, as one of the very gracious ladies came through the receiving line tonight, she met me for the first time, and she looked and said, “You know, Mr. President, you don’t look like your pictures at all.”

Then I recalled, as she said that, what one of my researchers pointed out: that a very old man who had been painted by Andrew Wyeth, when he saw the painting, remarked, “Andy found something in that painting that I don’t see in the mirror.” And believe me, that is the kind of a man I want to paint me.

As all of you know, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of this country. In 1776 it began, and in 1976 the birthday will be celebrated. And there has been a great deal of talk about what America will want to look back on that day, how we will want this country to be remembered.

I think all of us in this room would agree that we would prefer, that as historians talk about the first 200 years of this Nation, that they would write not so much about how rich we were, or how strong we were, but perhaps more about how wise we were, how good we were, and how creative we were.

That is why we felt that to honor this great American painter was very appropriate on this occasion; because he has contributed something special to American life, something that cannot be contributed by our great military strength and our economic wealth, a quality of spirit, a quality of beauty, which only the greater civilizations can leave to posterity.

The last time I was in this room proposing a toast, then to the Prime Minister of England, I quoted President Eisenhower’s Guildhall speech in London, right after World War II, when he, President Eisenhower, said that he came from the heart of America, which he did, because he came from Kansas. He came from the geographical heart of America and I felt also, as I think most of us did, from the spiritual heart of America.

Andrew Wyeth has said that what he was trying to do through his paintings was to let Americans see America for what it was.

As I ask you to drink to his health tonight, I think we can truly say that Andrew Wyeth, in his paintings, has caught the heart of America, and certainly tonight, the heart of America belongs to him.

Winter (1946) by Andrew Wyeth

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”

The Day RN Got Behind The Wheel

January 5, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Silver Spring, Maryland, where I live, has a number of ties to the 37th President. A half-mile north of my house, two teenagers lived on Harvey Road in the 1950s and early 1960s, the best of friends. One was future Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein; the other, future Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein (who once won a Howdy Doody lookalike contest in those days, or, anyway, there are supposed to be old newspaper clippings to prove it). Champion accordionist Merv Conn, who lives a few hundred yards away from me, once gave Tricia and Julie Nixon lessons on the instrument. Goldie Hawn, another native, gyrated in a bikini and body paint on the same Laugh-In episode in which Richard Nixon intoned, “Sock it….to me?”

Now, it turns out that another onetime resident had a memorable encounter with RN. Let Jerry McCoy’s column in this month’s Silver Spring Voice (not online, alas) pose a hypothetical:

Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., phones her husband’s Secret Service detail five days after the inauguration and asks for a driver to come to Number One Observatory Circle to pick up her husband. A lone driver arrives. Vice President Biden tells the driver that he’ll not need his services because he wants to take the car out on his own, but that he’ll be happy to first drive the agent back to his home.

Sounds a little improbable, no? But McCoy informs us that something like it did happen, long ago, in a Washington far, far away:

[A] January 27, 1953 Washington Post article [...] documented the event. Two days earlier Mrs. Nixon had placed a call on Sunday morning to Paul F. Gardiner, a chauffeur with the Airport Transport Limousine Service[....] The Packard Motor Car Company had contracted with Airport Transport for the services of a driver to take Nixon around Washington during the inaugural events in a new Packard. Nixon was to have use of the car for a month, but it was returned to the company shortly after the inauguration.

Mrs. Nixon, calling from their D.C. home at 4801 Tilden Street NW, asked Gardiner, living in the Glenview section of Silver Spring, to “bring the Nixon car into town” [....]

Once Gardiner arrived at the Vice President’s home, Nixon insisted on driving him the eight and a half miles back to his house. “So I got in the back seat,” Gardiner explained, “and he took me all the way out to Silver Spring.”

The vision of a sitting Vice President of the United States, and especially of Richard M. Nixon, driving alone through downtown Silver Spring, is quite amazing….

At the end of the column, Jerry McCoy requests additional information about Paul F. Gardiner, who was born in 1907 and died in 1988; his email is sshistory @yahoo.com, if any of my readers have more to tell him about this memorable winter’s day.

Christmas 1971 With The Nixon Family

December 25, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Holidays, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Here are some excerpts —about two minutes— from Christmas At The White House, a CBS News Christmas Eve Special from 1971.

RN and the Nixon family are seen around the tree in the Family Quarters.  The reporters are Charles Kuralt and Marya McLaughlin (one of the female pioneers of TV news, who died last spring).

The rest of the clip includes a particularly blathery commentary by Eric Sevareid (who is determined to shoehorn a long quote that includes some of E. M. Forster’s famous essay “What I Believe” into his Christmas homily) and some behind the scenes footage at CBS News headquarters in New York.  This was state of the art communications in the third year of RN’s first term; a far away (and long gone) time when even the cameramen wore suits and ties.

The clip covers the highlights mentioned in TIME’s review of the program:

Americans rarely get a close-up look inside the Executive Mansion. Harry Truman showed television viewers around the newly renovated White House in 1952; since then, Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson and Tricia Nixon have taken the nation on similarly memorable televised tours. This Christmas season, CBS cameramen and reporters were allowed into the secluded second-floor family living quarters to record White House preparations for the holidays. Viewers will see the Nixons’ private tree; they will watch as Son-in-Law Eddie Cox is welcomed for his first Christmas at the White House, and get an unusual peek into the First Family’s album of Christmases past. Most remarkable, however, is the spectacle of a nattily dressed Richard Nixon romping on the sitting-room floor with his dogs, King Timahoe, an Irish setter, Vicky, a gray miniature poodle and Pasha, a Yorkshire terrier. The President, doubtless mindful of the outcry when his predecessor tugged on canine ears, scrupulously confined his gestures of affection toward King Timahoe to playful pats.

The President and Mrs. Nixon’s official Christmas card in 1971 carried out the White House theme. Prepared for the White House by Hallmark, It was a reproduction of a 1930 N. C. Wyeth painting of George Washington and architect James Hoban watching the building of the first Executive Mansion in 1798.  (Coincidentally carrying out RN’s interest in trains, the painting had been commissioned by the Pennsylvania Railroad for use in a poster.)  The cover of the card featured the painting inside a red border.

You will find an interesting and comprehensive history of RN’s White House Christmas cards (both the official cards and the series of large scale Presidential portraits that he gave each year to the staff)  here.

The Democrats Find God

December 16, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Religion, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Mike McCurry —who, along with Marlin Fitzwater, is generally considered the gold standard of modern White House Press Secretaries— has written an interesting piece  (“How My Party Found God”) for the Daily Beast about the role faith could play in the Obama Administration   Mr. McCurry is currently a high-powered political consultant in Washington and a graduate student at Wesley Theological Seminary.

When I worked at the White House in the mid-1990s, I would not have dreamed of sharing my beliefs on faith with my colleagues. Our prayer and spiritual life was furtive even though we were all drawing on it to make it through rough and trying days. I sat next to George Stephanopoulos for a whole year on the campaign trail in 1996 and never discussed the moral turmoil he writes about in his book, All Too Human. More than once, I inadvertently interrupted Rahm Emanuel’s weekly session with his rabbi as they studied the Torah (yes, that Rahm Emanuel), but it never occurred to me to pull up a seat and join in the conversation.

All that is changing now. In Barack Obama, Democrats have put forth a man of strong religious faith who is comfortable connecting his spiritual life to his public role as a policymaker. Obama’s campaign benefited from a determined effort – which started during the 2004 campaign and accelerated since – to reach out to communities of faith and let them know that Democrats are their brothers and sisters.

Many Democrats are rediscovering the connections that exist between the moral teachings of religion and the things we must do to create a community of the common good here in America. Our nation is entering hard, troubled, and painful times. It’s not a bad thing that the Democrats who are about to inherit positions of power have had a Great Awakening about how their own personal faith speaks to the needs of a dispirited nation in need of a big lift.

Harry Truman had attended the First Baptist Church near Ford’s Theater, and President Eisenhower went to the National Presbyterian Church on Nebraska Avenue.  President Kennedy went to mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral.  And LBJ church-hopped (partly because it suited his temperament and partly because, after the Kennedy assassination, the Secret Service discouraged regularly scheduled events outside the White House precincts.

(Above: RN with Msgr. John J. Kuhn of Washington’s St. Matthew’s Cathedral, who conducted the White House Worship Service on 11 March 1973.)

RN decided to solve security problems and avoid denominational debates by holding frequent ecumenical services in the East Room followed by a reception in the State Dining Room.  Within weeks of his inauguration in 1969, RN hosted the first of twenty-six Sunday White House Worship Services. 

Audiences/congregations of almost three hundred invited guests were able to hear sermons delivered by the likes of Billy Graham (who worked with RN on setting up the program), Dr. Norman Vincent Peale of the Marble Collegiate Church (where he had married Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower in December 1968), Terence Cardinal Cooke of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; Rabbi Louis Finkelstein of the New York Jewish Theological Seminary, and had bRoman Catholic Archbishop of New York, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale of Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church, and R. H. Edwin Espy, of the National Council of Churches.

Last night I learned from listening to one of C-SPAN’s White House Week programs (does anyone ever not learn something from listening to C-SPAN?) that PN had taken a strong stand against the proposal, which was (and apparently still is) brought up regularly at the beginning of new administrations, to have a dedicated chapel space in the White House.  She thought that would be inappropriate.

The half-hour Nixon White House services followed a prescribed formula: an opening prayer followed by a hymn; a 10-12 minute sermon, another hymn, and a benediction.  Most services included the Doxology — the hymn “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow”.

In March 1974, Dr. Peale conducted the last of the Nixon Sunday Worship Services; his sermon was titled “The Answer Is Love.”

Half Smart

November 16, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Movies, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

At the risk of attracting deserved ridicule for watching “Get Smart” again (my only excuse: OD’ed on firestorm coverage), a couple of points.

On the minus side, the film crudely suggests that there are piano parts in Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in Gm and Beethoven’s Ninth. If you’re going to the trouble and expense of filming in LA’s exquisite Disney Concert Hall, you should get such details right. Only Oliver Stone would sink so low!

On the plus side, while I’d previously noted the cheap shot at RN, it’s suggestive (of what, I don’t know) that the intuitive, wise, and beautiful Agent 99, played by Anne Hathaway, displays a photo of the similarly gifted Pat Nixon in her office.

Today at Wikipedia

October 13, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Pat Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The featured article at Wikipedia today is about First Lady Pat Nixon.

Mrs. Nixon: “I Hate To See A Fence Anywhere”

August 21, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Domestic issues, Pat Nixon | 2 Comments 

An interesting perspective on Mrs. Nixon’s visit to the U.S.-Mexican border in August 1971.

Was It Time?

April 12, 2008 by Kathy O'Connor | Filed Under Faith, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

“Peace at the center”: RN smiling at Marie Abplanalp’s wedding

Saturday, April 16, 1994 was a great day in the life of the 37^th President. Marie Abplanalp, daughter of his friend Bob, was getting married in Bronxville, New York. President Nixon was a special guest at the beautiful service at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and the wedding reception that followed at the Westchester Country Club.

Seldom one to linger at social occasions, the former President enjoyed every minute of this one. Surrounded by family and close friends, including Julie and David Eisenhower, Tricia and Ed Cox, Bebe Rebozo, and of course the Abplanalp family, his day was filled with laughter and happiness. Tons of photographs were taken of the delighted President with the happy couple and other guests.

And yet the all-too-brief countdown to the end of the life of a 20th century icon, a beloved father and grandfather, peacemaker, and admired and respected boss had begun.

Monday began with additional cause for celebration. The page proofs for Beyond Peace, his last book, arrived and were waiting for him on his desk in his office in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, a mile or so from his home in Park Ridge. Working from home most of the day, the President was feeling good and reviewing his options for the upcoming book tour he would begin shortly.

But everything changed dramatically when, in the early evening, as he relaxed on his patio before dinner, President Nixon suffered a devastating stroke and was rushed to New York Hospital. His family, friends, and staff kept a grueling five-day vigil that ended with his peaceful passing at 9:08 p.m. on Friday, April 22, exactly 10 months to the day after Mrs. Nixon’s passing.

I often refer to President Nixon’s death as untimely. People have asked why I describe it as such since he lived a full life and was 81 years old.

But it was just too soon. He wasn’t done yet. There were people and places he wanted to visit. He had hoped to visit Rome that summer and seek an audience with John Paul II. There were important policy issues he was working on, ongoing dialogs with world leaders. There were additional books he planned to write, even though after every one, he would inevitably claim it was his last.

Most important of all, there were grandchildren he wanted to watch grow up — grandsons he wanted to take to baseball games, granddaughters he wanted to watch in school plays and dance recitals. There never enough hours in the day for Richard Nixon, never enough days in the year.

As I said goodbye to this amazing man and cherished mentor, like many who knew Richard Nixon and loved him, I was overwhelmed with sadness. His energy and drive made one think he would be around forever.

As a Christian, I naturally took comfort in knowing he was Home. I remembered something he said after Mrs. Nixon’s passing in June 1993. Perhaps experiencing a moment of absolute clarity, the former President said, “Don’t worry, Pat, I’ll be with you again soon.” That thought still makes me smile.

Pat’s The One

April 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Pat Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Noting President Clinton’s misstatement about Sen. Clinton’s war zone foray, “Terminal Chaosity” says we should vote for the former First Lady — Pat Nixon, that is.

The Old Clinton Not Reading The New Nixon

April 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Pat Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Defending Sen. Clinton, the former President repeats her erroneous statement that she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to visit a war zone. It was, of course, Pat Nixon.

Another Pat Nixon War Zone Pilot Steps Forward

March 28, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Election 2008, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

A recent commenter of John Taylor’s post on Pat Nixon’s visit to the Vietnam war zone also remembers this historic event. In fact, he was one of the helicopter pilots who transported the President and his party in South Vietnam. The following is the account of CW4 Harry Holzman:

Sir

I was one of the six helicopter pilots picked to fly President Nixon’s party when they arrived in Vietnam in 1969. I was a pilot for the 190th AHC stationed at Bien Hoa. We picked up the President and his party at the airport in Saigon and flew him to the South Vietnam Presidential palace. From there two helicopters, including mine , flew him to Dian to visit the 1st INF Division. Mrs Nixon flew to visit an orphanage near Long Bien. We flew in UH-1 Hueys from our unit. This was one of the only times a President flew in a single engine aircraft.We had very good security. I am finally retiring from the Army next month with over 41 years of service. I was very proud that day to be able to fly with the President.

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