Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon (née Ryan; March 16, 1912 – June 22, 1993) was the First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974 as the wife of President Richard Nixon. She also served as the second lady of the United States from 1953 to 1961 when her husband was vice president.
Born in Ely, Nevada,
she grew up with her two brothers in what is now Cerritos, California, graduating from Excelsior Union High School in Norwalk,
California in 1929. She attended Fullerton
Junior College and later the University
of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple
jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In
1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon
and they had two daughters, Tricia and
Julie. Dubbed the "Nixon
team", Richard and Pat Nixon
campaigned together in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948.
Richard Nixon was elected vice
president in 1952 alongside General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. Pat Nixon did much to add substance to the role of the
vice president's wife, insisting on visiting schools, orphanages, hospitals,
and village markets as she undertook many missions of goodwill across the
world.
As First Lady, Pat
Nixon promoted a number of charitable causes, including volunteerism. She
oversaw the collection of more than 600 pieces of historic art and furnishings
for the White House, an acquisition
larger than that of any other administration. She was the most traveled First Lady in U.S. history, a record
unsurpassed until twenty-five years later. She accompanied the President as the
first First Lady to visit China and
the Soviet Union, and was the first
president's wife to be officially designated a representative of the United States on her solo trips to Africa and South America, which gained her recognition as "Madame Ambassador"; she was also the first First Lady to enter a combat zone.
Though her husband was re-elected in a landslide victory in 1972, her tenure as
First Lady ended two years later,
when President Nixon resigned amid the Watergate
scandal.
Her public appearances became increasingly rare later in
life. She and her husband settled in San
Clemente, California, and later moved to New Jersey. She suffered two strokes, one in 1976 and another in
1983, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1992. She died in 1993, aged 81.
Early life
Thelma Catherine Ryan
was born in 1912 in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada. Her father,
William M. Ryan Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish
ancestry; her mother, Katherine
Halberstadt, was a German immigrant. The nickname "Pat" was given to her by her father, because of her
birth on the day before Saint Patrick's
Day and her Irish ancestry. When she enrolled in college in 1931 she
started using the name "Pat"
(and occasionally "Patricia")
instead of "Thelma" but she
did not legally change her name.
After her birth, the Ryan
family moved to California, and in
1914 settled on a small truck farm in Artesia
(present-day Cerritos). Thelma
Ryan's high school yearbook page gives her nickname as "Buddy" and her ambition to run a boarding house.
She worked on the family farm and also at a local bank as a
janitor and bookkeeper. Her mother died of cancer in 1924. Pat, who was only
12, assumed all the household duties for her father (who died himself of
silicosis 5 years later) and her two older brothers, William Jr. (1910–1997) and Thomas
(1911–1992). She also had a half-sister, Neva
Bender (1909–1981), and a half-brother, Matthew Bender (1907–1973), from her mother's first marriage; her
mother's first husband had died during a flash flood in South Dakota.
Education and career
After graduating from Excelsior
High School in 1929, she attended Fullerton
College. She paid for her education by working odd jobs, including as a
driver, a pharmacy manager, a telephone operator, and a typist. She also earned
money sweeping the floors of a local bank, and from 1930 until 1931, she lived
in New York City, working as a
secretary and also as a radiographer.
Determined "to
make something out of myself", she enrolled in 1931 at the University of Southern California (USC), where
she majored in merchandising. A former professor noted that she "stood out from the empty-headed,
overdressed little sorority girls of that era like a good piece of literature
on a shelf of cheap paperbacks". She held part-time jobs on campus,
worked as a sales clerk in Bullock's-Wilshire
department store, and taught touch typing and shorthand at a high school.
She also supplemented her income by working as an extra and bit player in the
film industry, for which she took several screen tests. In this capacity, she
made brief appearances in films such as Becky
Sharp (1935), The Great Ziegfeld
(1936), and Small Town Girl (1936).
In some cases she ended up on the cutting room floor, such as with her spoken
lines in Becky Sharp. She told
Hollywood columnist Erskine Johnson in 1959 that her time in films was "too fleeting even for recollections
embellished by the years" and that "my
choice of a career was teaching school and the many jobs I pursued were merely
to help with college expenses." During the 1968 presidential campaign,
she explained to the writer Gloria
Steinem, "I never had time to
think about things like... who I wanted to be, or who I admired, or to have ideas.
I never had time to dream about being anyone else. I had to work."
In 1937, Pat Ryan
graduated cum laude from USC with a Bachelor
of Science degree in merchandising, together with a certificate to teach at
the high school level, which USC deemed equivalent to a master's degree. Pat
accepted a position as a high school teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier,
California.
Marriage and family,
early campaigns
While in Whittier, Pat
Ryan met Richard Nixon, a young
lawyer who had recently graduated from the Duke
University School of Law. The two became acquainted at a Little Theater group when they were cast
together in The Dark Tower. Known as
Dick, he asked Pat to marry him the first night they went out. "I thought he was nuts or
something!" she recalled. He courted the redhead he called his "wild Irish Gypsy" for two
years, even driving her to and from her dates with other men.
They eventually married on June 21, 1940, at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California. She said that she had been attracted to the
young Nixon because he "was going
places, he was vital and ambitious ... he was always doing things". Later,
referring to Richard Nixon, she said, "Oh
but you just don't realize how much fun he is! He's just so much fun!"
In a letter to a friend she wrote "He’s
not that big but he knows how to satisfy a girl". Following a brief
honeymoon in Mexico, the two lived
in a small apartment in Whittier. As U.S. involvement in World War II began, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., with Richard taking a position as a lawyer for
the Office of Price Administration
(OPA); Pat worked as a secretary for the American Red Cross, but also
qualified as a price analyst for the OPA. He then joined the United States Navy, and while he was
stationed in San Francisco, she
resumed work for the OPA as an economic analyst.
Veteran UPI reporter
Helen Thomas suggested that in public, the Nixons "moved through life ritualistically", but privately, however,
they were "very close". In
private, Richard Nixon was described
as being "unabashedly
sentimental", often praising Pat for her work, remembering
anniversaries and surprising her with frequent gifts. During state dinners, he
ordered the protocol changed so that Pat could be served first. Pat, in turn,
felt that her husband was vulnerable and sought to protect him, although she
did have a nickname for him whom he despised, so she rarely used it: "Little Dicky". Of his
critics, she said that "Lincoln had
worse critics. He was big enough not to let it bother him. That's the way my
husband is."
Pat campaigned at her husband's side in 1946 when he entered
politics and successfully ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. That same year, she gave
birth to a daughter and namesake, Patricia, known as Tricia. In 1948, Pat had
her second and last child, Julie. When asked about her husband's career, Pat
once stated, "The only thing I could
do was help him, but [politics] was not a life I would have chosen." Pat
participated in the campaign by doing research on his opponent, incumbent Jerry Voorhis. She also wrote and distributed
campaign literature. Nixon was elected in his first campaign to represent
California's 12th congressional district. During the next six years, Pat saw
her husband move from the U.S. House of
Representatives to the United States
Senate, and then be nominated as Dwight
D. Eisenhower's vice presidential candidate.
Although Pat Nixon
was a Methodist, she and her husband
attended whichever Protestant church
was nearest to their home, especially after moving to Washington. They attended the Metropolitan
Memorial Methodist Church because it sponsored her daughters' Brownie
troop, occasional Baptist services
with Billy Graham, and Norman Vincent Peale's Marble Collegiate
Church.
Second Lady of the
United States, 1953–1961
At the time of her husband coming under consideration for
the vice presidential nomination, Pat Nixon was against her husband accepting
the selection, as she despised campaigns and had been relieved that as a newly
elected senator he would not have another one for six years. She thought she
had prevailed in convincing him, until she heard the announcement of the pick
from a news bulletin while at the 1952
Republican National Convention. During the Presidential campaign of 1952, Pat Nixon's attitude toward politics
changed when her husband was accused of accepting illegal campaign
contributions. Pat encouraged him to fight the charges, and he did so by
delivering the famed "Checkers
speech", so-called for the family's dog, a cocker spaniel given to
them by a political supporter. This was Pat's first national television
appearance, and she, her daughters, and the dog were featured prominently.
Defending himself as a man of the people, Nixon stressed his wife's abilities
as a stenographer, and then said, "I
should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a
respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she would look good in
anything."
Pat Nixon
accompanied her husband abroad during his vice presidential years. She traveled
to 53 nations, often bypassing luncheons and teas and instead visiting
hospitals, orphanages, and even a leper colony in Panama. On a trip to Venezuela,
crowds pelted the Nixons' limousine with rocks and spit on the couple for being
representatives of the U.S. government.
A November 1, 1958, article in The Seattle Times was typical of the media's favorable coverage of the
future First Lady, stating that "Mrs. Nixon is always reported to be
gracious and friendly. And she sure is friendly. She greets a stranger as a
friend. She doesn't just shake hands but clasps a visitor's hand in both her
hands. Her manner is direct ... Mrs. Nixon also upheld her reputation of always
looking neat, no matter how long her day has been." A year and a half
later, during her husband's campaign for the presidency, The New York Times
called her "a paragon of wifely
virtues" whose "efficiency
makes other women feels slothful and untalented".
Pat Nixon was
named Outstanding Homemaker of the Year
(1953), Mother of the Year (1955), and the Nation's Ideal Housewife (1957). She once said that, on a rare
evening to herself, she pressed all of her husband's suits, adding, "Of course, I didn't have to. But when
I don't have work to do, I just think up some new project."
Her husband's
campaigns—1960, 1962 and 1968
In the 1960 election, Vice
President Nixon ran for president of the United States against Democratic
opponent Senator John F. Kennedy.
Pat was featured prominently in the effort; an entire advertising campaign was
built around the slogan "Pat for
First Lady". Nixon conceded the election to Kennedy, although the race
was very close and there were allegations of voter fraud. Pat had urged her
husband to demand a recount of votes, though Nixon declined. Pat was most upset
about the television cameras, which recorded her reaction when her husband
lost—"millions of television viewers
witnessed her desperate fight to hold a smile upon her lips as her face came
apart and the bitter tears flowed from her eyes", as one reporter put it.
This permanently dimmed Pat Nixon's view of politics.
In 1962, the Nixons embarked on another campaign, this time
for Governor of California. Prior to
Richard Nixon's announcement of his
candidacy, Pat's brother Tom Ryan
said, "Pat told me that if Dick ran
for governor she was going to take her shoe to him." She eventually
agreed to another run, citing that it meant a great deal to her husband, but Richard Nixon lost the gubernatorial
election to Pat Brown.
Six years later, Richard
Nixon ran again for the presidency. Pat was reluctant to face another campaign,
her eighth since 1946. Her husband was a deeply controversial figure in
American politics, and Pat had witnessed and shared the praise and vilification
he had received without having established an independent public identity for
herself. Although she supported him in his career, she feared another "1960", when Nixon lost to
Kennedy. She consented, however, and participated in the campaign by traveling
on campaign trips with her husband. Richard
Nixon made a political comeback with his narrow presidential victory of
1968 over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey—and
the country had a new First Lady.
First Lady of the
United States, 1969–1974
Major initiatives
Pat Nixon felt
that the First Lady should always
set a public example of high virtue as a symbol of dignity, but she refused to
revel in the trappings of the position. When considering ideas for a project as
First Lady, Pat refused to do (or
be) something simply to emulate her predecessor, Lady Bird Johnson. She decided to continue what she called "personal diplomacy", which
meant traveling and visiting people in other states or other nations.
One of her major initiatives as First Lady was the promotion of volunteerism, in which she
encouraged Americans to address social problems at the local level through
volunteering at hospitals, civic organizations, and rehabilitation centers. She
stated, "Our success as a nation
depends on our willingness to give generously of ourselves for the welfare and
enrichment of the lives of others." She undertook a "Vest Pockets for Volunteerism"
trip, where she visited ten different volunteer programs. Susan Porter, in charge of the First
Lady's scheduling, noted that Pat "saw
volunteers as unsung heroes who hadn't been encouraged or given credit for
their sacrifices and who needed to be". Her second volunteerism
tour—she traveled 4,130 miles (6,647 km) within the United States—helped to
boost the notion that not all students were protesting the Vietnam War. She herself belonged to several volunteer groups,
including Women in Community Services
and Urban Services League, and was
an advocate of the Domestic Volunteer Service
Act of 1973, a bill that encouraged volunteerism by providing benefits to a
number of volunteer organizations. Some reporters viewed her choice of
volunteerism as safe and dull compared to the initiatives undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline
Kennedy.
Pat Nixon became
involved in the development of recreation areas and parkland, was a member of
the President's Committee on Employment
of the Handicapped, and lent her support to organizations dedicated to
improving the lives of handicapped children. For her first Thanksgiving in the White
House, Pat organized a meal for 225 senior citizens who did not have
families. The following year, she invited wounded servicemen to a second annual
Thanksgiving meal in the White House. Though presidents since George Washington had been issuing Thanksgiving proclamations, Pat became
the only First Lady to issue one.
Life in the White
House
After her husband was elected president in 1968, Pat Nixon met with the outgoing First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. Together,
they toured the private quarters of the White House on December 12. She
eventually asked Sarah Jackson Doyle,
an interior decorator who had worked for the Nixons since 1965 and who
decorated the family's 10-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York
with French and English antiques, to serve as a design consultant. She hired Clement Conger from the State Department to be the Executive Mansion's new curator,
replacing James Ketchum, who had
been hired by Jacqueline Kennedy.
Pat Nixon
developed and led a coordinated effort to improve the authenticity of the White House as an historic residence
and museum. She added more than 600 paintings, antiques and furnishings to the Executive Mansion and its collections,
the largest number of acquisitions by any administration; this greatly, and
dramatically, expanded upon Jacqueline
Kennedy's more publicized efforts. She created the Map Room and renovated the China
room, and refurbished nine other rooms, including the Red Room, Blue Room and Green
Room. She worked with engineers to develop an exterior lighting system for
the entire White House, making it
glow a soft white. She ordered the American flag atop the White House flown day and night, even when the president was not in
residence.
She ordered pamphlets describing the rooms of the house for
tourists so they could understand everything, and had they translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Russian for foreigners. She had ramps
installed for the handicapped and physically disabled. She instructed the
police who served as tour guides to attend sessions at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library (to learn how tours were guided
"in a real museum"), and
arranged for them to wear less menacing uniforms, with their guns hidden
underneath. The tour guides were to speak slowly to deaf groups, to help those
who lip-read, and Pat ordered that the blind be able to touch the antiques.
The First Lady
had long been irritated by the perception that the White House and access to
the President and First Lady were exclusively for the wealthy and famous; she
routinely came down from the family quarters to greet tourists, shake hands,
sign autographs, and pose for photos. Her daughter Julie Eisenhower reflected, "She
invited so many groups to the White House to give them recognition, not famous
ones, but little-known organizations..."
She invited former First
Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her children Caroline and John Jr. to dine with her family and view the White House's official portraits of her
and her husband, the late President
Kennedy. It was the first time that the three Kennedys had returned to the
White House since the president's assassination eight years earlier. Pat had
ordered the visit to be kept secret from the media until after the trip's
conclusion in an attempt to maintain privacy for the Kennedys. She also invited
President Kennedy's mother Rose Kennedy
to see her son's official portrait.
She opened the White
House for evening tours so that the public could see the interior design
work that had been implemented. The tours that were conducted in December displayed the White House's Christmas decor. In
addition, she instituted a series of performances by artists at the White House
in varied American traditions, from opera to bluegrass; among the guests were The Carpenters in 1972. These events
were described as ranging from "creative
to indifferent, to downright embarrassing". When they entered the
White House in 1969, the Nixons began inviting families to non-denominational
Sunday church services in the East Room
of the White House. She also oversaw
the White House wedding of her
daughter, Tricia, to Edward Ridley Finch
Cox in 1971.
In October 1969, she announced her appointment of Constance Stuart as her staff director
and press secretary. To the White House residence staff, the Nixons were
perceived as more stiff and formal than other first families, but nonetheless
kind.
She spoke out in favor of women running for political office
and encouraged her husband to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court, saying "woman
power is unbeatable; I've seen it all across this country". She was
the first of the American First Ladies
to publicly support the Equal Rights
Amendment, though her views on abortion were mixed. Following the Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, Pat
stated she was pro-choice. However, in 1972, she said, "I'm really not for abortion. I think it's a personal thing. I
mean abortion on demand—wholesale."
In 1972, she became the first Republican First Lady to address a national convention. Her efforts
in the 1972 reelection campaign—traveling across the country and speaking on
behalf of her husband—were copied by future candidates' spouses.
Travels
Pat Nixon held
the record as the most-traveled First
Lady until her mark was surpassed by Hillary
Rodham Clinton. In President Nixon's first term, Pat traveled to 39 of 50
states, and in the first year alone, shook hands with a quarter of a million
people. She undertook many missions of goodwill to foreign nations as well. Her
first foreign trip took in Guam, India,
the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Romania, and England. On such trips, Pat refused to
be serviced by an entourage, feeling that they were an unnecessary barrier and
a burden for taxpayers. Soon after, during a trip to South Vietnam, Pat became the first First Lady to enter a combat zone. She had tea with the wife of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in a palace,
visited an orphanage, and lifted off in an open-door helicopter—armed by
military guards with machine guns—to witness U.S. troops fighting in a jungle
below. She later admitted to experiencing a "moment
of fear going into a battle zone", because, as author and historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony noted, "Pat Nixon was literally in a line of
fire." She later visited an army hospital, where, for two hours, she
walked through the wards and spoke with each wounded patient. The First Lady of South Vietnam, Madame Thieu,
said Pat Nixon's trip "intensified
our morale".
After hearing about the Great
Peruvian earthquake of 1970, which caused an avalanche and additional
destruction, Pat initiated a "volunteer
American relief drive" and flew to the country, where she aided in taking
relief supplies to earthquake victims. She toured damaged regions and embraced
homeless townspeople; they trailed her as she climbed up hills of rubble and
under fallen beams. Her trip was heralded in newspapers around the world for
her acts of compassion and disregard for her personal safety or comfort, and
her presence was a direct boost to political relations. One Peruvian official
commented: "Her coming here meant
more than anything else President Nixon could have done," and an
editorial in Peru's Lima Prensa said
that Peruvians could never forget Pat
Nixon. Fran Lewine of the Associated
Press wrote that no First Lady had ever undertaken a "mercy mission" resulting in such "diplomatic side effects". On the trip, the Peruvian
government presented her with the Grand
Cross of the Order of the Sun, the highest Peruvian distinction and the
oldest such honor in the Americas.
She became the first First
Lady to visit Africa in 1972, on
a 10,000-mile (16,093 km), eight-day journey to Ghana, Liberia, and the Ivory
Coast. Upon arrival in Liberia,
Pat was honored with a 19-gun salute, a tribute reserved only for heads of
government, and she reviewed troops. She later donned a traditional native
costume and danced with locals. She was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Most Venerable Order of Knighthood, Liberia's
highest honor. In Ghana, she again
danced with local residents, and addressed the nation's Parliament. In the Ivory Coast, she was met by a quarter
of a million people shouting "Vive
Madame Nixon!" She conferred with leaders of all three African
nations. Upon her return home, White
House staffer Charles Colson sent a memo to the President reading in part, "Mrs. Nixon has now broken through
where we have failed ... People—men and women—identify with her, and in return
with you."
Another notable journey was the Nixons' historic visit to
the People's Republic of China in
1972. While President Nixon was in meetings, Pat toured through Beijing in her
red coat. According to Carl Sferrazza
Anthony, China was Pat Nixon's "moment", her turning point as
an acclaimed First Lady in the United States. She accompanied her
husband to the Nixon–Brezhnev summit
meetings in the Soviet Union later
in the year. Though security constraints left her unable to walk freely through
the streets as she did in China, Pat
was still able to visit with children and walk arm-in-arm with Soviet First Lady Viktoria Brezhneva.
Later, she visited Brazil and Venezuela in 1974 with the unique
diplomatic standing of personal representative of the president. The Nixons'
last major trip was in June 1974, to Austria,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Jordan.
Fashion and style
The traditional role of a First Lady as the nation's hostess puts her personal appearance and
style under scrutiny, and the attention to Pat was lively. Women's Wear Daily stated that Pat had a "good figure and good posture", as well as "the best-looking legs of any woman in
public life today". Some fashion writers tended to have a lackluster
opinion of her well-tailored, but nondescript, American-made clothes. "I consider it my duty to use American
designers", she said, and favored them because; "they are now using so many materials which are great for
traveling because they're non crushable". She preferred to buy
readymade garments rather than made-to-order outfits. "I'm a size 10," she told The New York Times. "I can just walk in and buy. I've
bought things in various stores in various cities. Only some of my clothes are
by designers." She did, however, wear the custom work of some
well-known talents, notably Geoffrey
Beene, at the suggestion of Clara
Treyz, her personal shopper. Many fashion observers concluded that Pat Nixon did not greatly advance the
cause of American fashion. Nixon's yellow-satin inaugural gown by Harvey Berin was criticized as "a schoolteacher on her night
out", but Treyz defended her wardrobe selections by saying, "Mrs. Nixon must be ladylike."
Nixon did not sport the outrageous fashions of the 1970s,
because she was concerned about appearing conservatively dressed, especially as
her husband's political star rose.
"Always before, it was sort of fun to get some ... thing that was
completely different, high-style", she told a reporter. "But this is not appropriate now. I
avoid the spectacular."
Watergate
At the time the Watergate
scandal broke to the media, Nixon "barely
noticed" the reports of a break-in at the Democratic National
Committee headquarters. Later, when asked by the press about Watergate, she
replied curtly, "I know only what I
read in the newspapers." In 1974, when a reporter asked "Is the press the cause of the
president's problems?", she shot back, "What problems?" Privately, she felt that the power of
her husband's staff was increasing, and President Nixon was becoming more
removed from what was occurring in the administration.
Pat Nixon did not
know of the secret tape recordings her husband had made. Julie Nixon Eisenhower stated that the First Lady would have
ordered the tapes destroyed immediately, had she known of their existence. Once
she did learn of the tapes, she vigorously opposed making them public, and
compared them to "private love letters—for
one person alone". Believing in her husband's innocence, she also
encouraged him not to resign and instead fight all the impeachment charges that
were eventually leveled against him. She said to her friend Helene Drown, "Dick has done so much for the country. Why is this
happening?"
After President Nixon told his family he would resign the
office of the presidency, she replied "But
why?" She contacted White House
curator Clement Conger to cancel any further development of a new official
china pattern from the Lenox China
Company, and began supervising the packing of the family's personal
belongings. On August 7, 1974, the family met in the solarium of the White House for their last dinner. Pat
sat on the edge of a couch and held her chin high, a sign of tension to her
husband. When the president walked in, she threw her arms around him, kissed
him, and said, "We're all very proud
of you, Daddy." Later Pat Nixon
said of the photographs taken that evening, "Our
hearts were breaking and there we are smiling."
On the morning of August 9 in the East Room, Nixon gave a televised 20-minute farewell speech to the
White House staff, during which time he read from Theodore Roosevelt's biography and praised his own parents. The First Lady could hardly contain her
tears; she was most upset about the cameras, because they recorded her anguish,
as they had during the 1960 election defeat. The Nixons walked onto the Executive
Mansion's South Lawn with Vice
President Gerald Ford and Betty
Ford. The outgoing president departed from the White House on Marine One.
As the family walked towards the helicopter, Pat, with one arm around her
husband's waist and one around Betty's, said to Betty "You'll see many of these red carpets, and you'll get so you hate
'em." The helicopter transported them to Andrews Air Force Base; from there they flew to California.
Pat Nixon later
told her daughter Julie, "Watergate
is the only crisis that ever got me down ... And I know I will never live to
see the vindication."
Public perception
Historian Carl
Sferrazza Anthony noted that ordinary citizens responded to, and identified
with, Pat Nixon. When a group of
people from a rural community visited the White
House to present a quilt to the First
Lady, many were overcome with nervousness; upon hearing their weeping, Pat
hugged each individual tightly, and the tension dissipated. When a young boy
doubted that the Executive Mansion
was her house because he could not see her washing machine, Pat led him through
the halls and up an elevator, into the family quarters and the laundry room.
She mixed well with people of different races, and made no distinctions on that
basis. During the Nixons' trip to China in 1972, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was sufficiently smitten with her so as
to give two rare giant pandas to the United
States as a gift from China.
Pat Nixon was
listed on the Gallup Organization's
top-ten list of the most admired women fourteen times, from 1959 to 1962 and
1968 to 1979. She was ranked third in 1969, second in 1970 and 1971, and first
in 1972. She remained on the top-ten list until 1979, five years after her
husband left office. To many, she was seen as an example of the "American Dream", having risen
from a poor background, with her greatest popularity among the "great silent majority" of
voters. Mary Brooks, the director of
the United States Mint and a
long-time friend of Pat's, illustrated some of the cultural divides present at the
time when she described the First Lady
as "a good example to the women of
this country–if they're not part of those Women's Liberation groups". Additionally, it was the view of veteran UPI correspondent Helen Thomas that Pat
"was the warmest First Lady I
covered and the one who loved people the most. I think newspeople that covered
her saw a woman who was sharp, responsive, and sensitive."
Press accounts framed Pat
Nixon as an embodiment of Cold War
domesticity, in stark contrast to the second-wave feminism of the time.
Journalists often portrayed her as dutiful and selfless and seeing herself as a
wife first and individual second. Time magazine
described her as "the perfect wife
and mother–pressing [her husband's] pants, making dresses for daughters Tricia
and Julie, doing her own housework even as the Vice President's wife". In
the early years of her tenure as First Lady she was tagged "Plastic Pat", a derogatory nickname applied because,
according to critics, she was always smiling while her face rarely expressed
emotion and her body language made her seem reserved, and at times, artificial.
Some observers described Pat Nixon
as "a paper doll, a Barbie
doll–plastic, antiseptic, unalive" and that she "put every bit of the energy and drive of her youth into playing a
role, and she may no longer recognize it as such".
As for the criticisms, she said, "I am who I am and I will continue to be." She
unguardedly revealed some of her opinions of her own life in a 1968 interview
aboard a campaign plane with Gloria
Steinem: "Now, I have friends in
all the countries of the world. I haven't just sat back and thought of myself
or my ideas or what I wanted to do. Oh no, I've stayed interested in people.
I've kept working. Right here in the plane I keep this case with me, and the
minute I sit down, I write my thank you notes. Nobody gets by without a
personal note. I don't have time to worry about who I admire or who I identify
with. I've never had it easy. I'm not like all you ... all those people who had
it easy."
Despite her largely demure public persona as a traditional
wife and homemaker, she was not as self-effacing and timid as her critics often
claimed. When a news photographer wanted her to strike yet another pose while
wearing an apron, she firmly responded, "I
think we've had enough of this kitchen thing, don't you?" Some
journalists, such as columnist and White
House Correspondent Robert E. Thompson, felt that Pat was an ideal balance
for the 1970s; Thompson wrote that she proved that "women can play a vital role in world affairs" while
still retaining a "feminine manner".
Other journalists felt that Pat represented the failings of the feminine
mystique, and portrayed her as being out of step with her times. Those who
opposed the Vietnam War identified her
with the Nixon administration's policies, and, as a result, occasionally
picketed her speaking events. After she had spoken to some of them in one
instance in 1970, however, one of the students told the press that "she wanted to listen. I felt like this
is a woman who really cares about what we are doing. I was surprised."
Veteran CBS correspondent Mike Wallace
expressed regret that the one major interview he was never able to conduct was
that of Pat Nixon.
Later life
After returning to San
Clemente, California, in 1974 and settling into the Nixons' home, La Casa
Pacifica, Pat Nixon rarely appeared in public and only granted occasional
interviews to the press. In late May 1975, Pat went to her girlhood hometown of
Artesia to dedicate the Patricia Nixon Elementary School. In
her remarks, she said, "I'm proud to
have the school carry my name. I always thought that only those who have gone
had schools named after them. I am happy to tell you that I'm not gone—I mean, not
really gone." It was Pat's only solo public appearance in five and a
half years in California.
On July 7, 1976, at La
Casa Pacifica, Nixon suffered a stroke, which resulted in the paralysis of
her entire left side. Physical therapy enabled her to eventually regain all
movement. She said that her recovery was "the
hardest thing I have ever done physically". In 1979, she and her
husband moved to a townhouse on East
65th Street in Manhattan, New York. They lived there only briefly and in
1981 moved to a 6,000 square feet (557 m2) house in Saddle River, New Jersey. This gave the couple additional space,
and enabled them to be near their children and grandchildren. Pat, however,
sustained another stroke in 1983 and two lung infections the following year.
Appearing "frail
and slightly bent", she appeared in public for the opening of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace (now
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and
Museum) in Yorba Linda, California,
on July 19, 1990. The dedication ceremony included 50,000 friends and
well-wishers, as well as former Presidents
Ford, Reagan, and Bush and their
wives. The library includes a Pat Nixon
room, a Pat Nixon amphitheater,
and rose gardens planted with the red-black Pat Nixon Rose developed by a French company in 1972, when she was
first lady. Pat also attended the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, in November 1991. Former First Lady Barbara Bush reflected, "I loved Pat Nixon, who was a sensational, gracious, and
thoughtful First Lady", and at the dedication of the Reagan Library,
Bush remembered, "There was one sad
thing. Pat Nixon did not look well at all. Through her smile you could see that
she was in great pain and having a terrible time getting air into her
lungs."
The Nixons moved
to a gated complex in Park Ridge, New
Jersey, in 1991. Pat's health was failing, and the house was smaller and
contained an elevator. A heavy smoker most of her adult life who nevertheless
never allowed herself to be seen with a cigarette in public, she eventually
endured bouts of oral cancer, emphysema, and ultimately lung cancer, with which
she was diagnosed in December 1992 while hospitalized with respiratory
problems.
Death and funeral
Pat Nixon died at
her Park Ridge, New Jersey, home at
5:45 a.m. on June 22, 1993, the day after her fifty-third wedding anniversary.
She was 81 years old. Her daughters and husband were by her side.
The funeral service for Pat
Nixon took place on the grounds of the Richard
Nixon Library in Yorba Linda on
June 26, 1993. Speakers at the ceremony, including California Governor Pete Wilson, Kansas senator Bob Dole, and the Reverend Dr. Billy Graham, eulogized
the former First Lady. In addition
to her husband and immediate family, former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald
Ford and their wives,
Nancy and Betty were also in attendance. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton did not
attend the funeral and former presidents Jimmy
Carter and George H. W. Bush and
their wives Rosalynn and Barbara also did not attend. Lady Bird Johnson was unable to attend
because she was in the hospital recovering from a stroke, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did not attend
either. President Nixon sobbed
openly, profusely, and at times uncontrollably during the ceremony. It was a rare
display of emotion from the former president, and Helen McCain Smith said that she had never seen him more
distraught.
Nixon's tombstone gives her name as "Patricia Ryan Nixon", the name by which she was
popularly known. Her husband survived her by ten months, dying on April 22,
1994. He was also 81. Her epitaph reads:
Even when people can't
speak your language, they can tell if you have love in your heart.
Popular culture
impact
In 1994, the Pat
Nixon Park was established in Cerritos,
California. The site where her girlhood home stood is on the property. The Cerritos City Council voted in April
1996 to erect a statue of the former First
Lady, one of the few statues created in the image of a first lady.
Pat has been portrayed by Joan Allen in the 1995 film
Nixon (for which Allen earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), Patty McCormack in the
2008 film Frost/Nixon and Nicole Sullivan in the 2009 film Black Dynamite. She was sung by soprano
Carolann Page in John Adams' opera Nixon in China 1987
world premiere in Houston, Texas; a New York Times critic noted that the
performance captured "the First Lady's
shy mannerisms" while one from the Los Angeles Times described the subject as the "chronically demure First Lady". The part was later sung
by Scottish soprano Janis Kelly in the 2011 Metropolitan Opera premiere in New York. This New York Times
critic wrote that Kelly "was
wonderful as Pat Nixon. During the affecting Act II scene in which she is
guided by Chinese escorts and journalists to a glass factory, a people's
commune and a health clinic, she is finally taken to a school. She speaks of coming
from a poor family and tells the obliging children that for a while she was a
schoolteacher. In Mr. Adams's tender music, as sung by Ms. Kelly, you sense
Mrs. Nixon wistfully pondering the much different life she might have
had."
Historical assessments
Since 1982 Siena
College Research Institute has periodically conducted surveys asking
historians to assess American first ladies according to a cumulative score on
the independent criteria of their background, value to the country,
intelligence, courage, accomplishments, integrity, leadership, being their own
women, public image, and value to the president. In terms of cumulative
assessment, Nixon has been ranked:
37nd-best of 42 in
1982
18th-best of 37 in
1993
33rd-best of 38 in
2003
35th-best of 38 in
2008
33rd-best of 39 in
2014
In the 2014 survey, Nixon and her husband were ranked the
29th-highest out of 39 first couples in terms of being a "power couple".
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