Pat Nixon

First Lady

• Born: March 16, 1912
• Birthplace: Ely, Nevada
• Died: June 22, 1993
• Place of death: Park Ridge, New Jersey

President:Richard M. Nixon 1969–1974

Overview

Pat Nixon had a great capacity for love and compassion. As First Lady, she was a promoter of community service, a goodwill ambassador, and an advocate for women. As the wife of a controversial president, Richard Nixon, she maintained her grace and self-respect in the face of protest and demonstration. Finally, she withstood the ultimate indignity as she watched the man she loved driven from office. Through it all, Pat maintained her composure, bolstered her family, and earned the admiration and respect of many Americans.

Early Life

Thelma Catherine Ryan was born on March 16, 1912, in a miner’s shack in Ely, Nevada. Kate Ryan insisted that her daughter be called Thelma Catherine, but her husband, Will, the son of Irish immigrants, was equally firm that his “Babe” celebrate her birthday on St. Patrick’s Day. In 1913, Thelma’s family purchased a ten-acre farm in Artesia, California, and moved into a small house that had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Survival on the Ryan farm was an all-consuming effort. With her two older brothers, Thelma tended the fields, fed the animals, drove the ox cart, and picked tomatoes and cauliflower.

The Ryan children learned early not to expect much and to be stoic in hiding their feelings. Despite his own violent mood swings, Will Ryan did not accept open demonstrations of emotion. His daughter would grow up to prefer silence to confrontation. Thelma learned about the larger world from her father as well. The escape through books, the love of travel and adventure, and a strong sense of independence became as much a part of her as they were of him. Thelma was a tomboy who loved the outdoors, but reading was her favorite pastime. As she explained, books were “the biggest influence on my life. [They] gave me a horizon beyond the small town we were living in. Somehow I always knew there was more in the world than what we were experiencing then.”

When she was six years old, Thelma joined her brothers in the mile-long walk to grammar school. Because she had already learned to read, she was recognized as an exceptional student and skipped second grade. She became a perfectionist about her schoolwork, her appearance, and even her chores. Thelma also excelled at oration, and soon she was asked to speak before local clubs. She gave one speech on behalf of Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette that was so powerful her father deserted the Democratic Party in 1924 to vote for him.

In her rare moments of free time, Thelma loved to garden and visit the beach. With her best friends, she learned to roll cigarettes. The girls scandalized Artesia by wearing blue jeans. In the summer of 1925, however, thirteen-year-old Thelma had to grow up. Her mother died of liver cancer. In addition to her schoolwork and farm chores, Thelma now had to do all the housekeeping for her father and older brothers. She became convinced that she could do anything if she had to.

Throughout her years at Excelsior High School, Thelma was active in student government and school plays. She was also a superb student who just missed graduating as valedictorian of the class of 1929. During her senior year, Will Ryan developed tuberculosis. Thelma had to add nursing to her list of responsibilities. She dreamed of broadening her horizons and earning a college degree, but the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression, and the Ryan farm had not produced a profit in more than a year. Instead of college, Thelma went to work to pay for her father’s hospitalization. He died in 1930, and she changed her name to Patricia in honor of her father’s Irish heritage.

Pat began working two or three jobs at a time—as a cleaning woman, chauffeur, stenographer, X-ray technician, librarian, sales clerk, model, detective, and movie extra—to pay for her education at Fullerton Junior College and the University of Southern California. In 1937, she graduated magna cum laude with degrees in business and education. She wanted to be a buyer for a department store, but in that time of national economic crisis, when Pat was offered a teaching position, she took it. For eighteen hundred dollars per year, she would teach typing and business courses at Whittier Union High School. The long summer vacations would allow her to pursue her passion for travel.

Pat moved to Whittier, a town of twenty-five thousand people fifteen miles south of Los Angeles, in the fall of 1937. Because of her openness, availability to students, and her compassion for those who had to work their way through school, Pat was a very popular teacher. In addition to her classroom duties, she coached the cheerleaders and directed student plays. Like all Whittier teachers, she was expected to take part in community activities.

Marriage and Family

In February 1938, Pat auditioned for a role in a play being produced by the Whittier Community Players. Richard Milhous Nixon, the twenty-four-year-old assistant city attorney, was also trying out for a role. From the moment he saw Pat Ryan, he could not take his eyes off of her. He fell in love with her that night. Although not usually impulsive, he told her he was going to marry her. Pat was stunned; they had barely spoken. She returned home and told her roommates she met a man who was “nuts.”

Richard, whom many considered Whittier’s most eligible bachelor, pursued Pat with single-minded devotion. He learned to dance and ice skate to impress her, helped her grade student papers, wrote poetry for her, and even drove her to Los Angeles for dates with other men. Gradually, Pat realized she had much in common with the young attorney. They were both shy and detested confrontations. Both had been orators in school and had skipped second grade. They loved to read and to walk the beach at San Clemente. Like Pat, Richard had wanderlust. He wanted to go places and make a difference. As Pat told her amused roommates, “he’s going to be president someday.”

On the second anniversary of the day they met, Richard wrote: “And when the winds blow and the rains fall and the sun shines through the clouds, as it is now, he still resolves as he did then, that nothing so fine ever happened to him or anyone else as falling in love with Thee—my dearest heart.” A month later, he proposed. The Nixons were married on June 21, 1940, in a small family ceremony. After a honeymoon in Mexico, they resolved to save all their money and travel the world. However, World War II intervened. While he volunteered for active duty in the Navy, she worked in Washington and San Francisco in the Office of Price Administration.

After the war ended, Nixon entered politics. He had dreamed of public service since he was a boy, and Republicans in California’s Twelfth Congressional District enthusiastically encouraged his candidacy. Pat had reservations about a political life, but she acquiesced: “I could see it was the life he wanted, so I told him it was his decision and I would do what he liked.” This reflected a great deal of faith in her husband. The campaign would be financed by the Nixons’ carefully accrued savings. Pat was pregnant with their first child.

In the 1946 congressional race, the “Dick and Pat” team was born. He respected and relied upon her advice. While he stumped for votes, she staffed the campaign office, answering mail, doing research, and writing speeches. Six hours after their daughter Tricia was born, on February 21, 1946, Pat was doing research in her hospital bed. Three weeks later she went back to work at the office. As the campaign progressed, Pat was increasingly called upon to go with the candidate to meet voters. She was nervous and ill at ease at first, but her natural grace and charm prevailed. Pat’s charisma softened her husband’s dour personality and made him seem more human and accessible to voters. The Dick and Pat team campaigned together for his reelection to the House in 1948, the year their daughter Julie was born, and for election to the Senate in 1950.

When General Dwight D. Eisenhower chose Senator Nixon as his running mate in 1952, Pat stated she would campaign with her husband because “we always work as a team.” She handled mail and news releases, attended women’s meetings, and made informal, nonpolitical speeches. A party official claimed, “She’s the best one on the ticket . . . the crowds just love her.” A seasoned campaigner by 1952, Pat was still troubled by the intrusion of the campaign into the family’s private life. Reporters and photographers hounded the Nixon girls, inventing stories about them when none were forthcoming.

The most intrusive issue in 1952 was the charge that Richard Nixon had accepted personal gifts from wealthy benefactors. The suddenness and fierceness of the attack and Eisenhower’s failure to support his vice presidential nominee shocked Pat. Yet when her husband pondered resigning from the ticket, Pat insisted he fight.

Nixon chose to plead his case on national television. Seated beside Pat, he made a full and detailed disclosure of their personal finances, described their modest lifestyle, and said that instead of fur, Pat wore “a respectable Republican cloth coat.” Nixon admitted that he had indeed accepted one gift, a puppy named Checkers whom his daughters loved and he refused to give back. He defused the scandal without answering the most important charges. The speech, which came to be known as the Checkers speech, was a huge success, and three million people wrote in support of Nixon. The Eisenhower ticket went on to victory in November. Pat Nixon, however, remained “scarred for life” by the experience. She would forever find it nearly impossible to talk about the charges or the Checkers speech. The unfairness of the charges, the loss of privacy, and the lingering suspicions wore away at her idealism and enthusiasm for political life.

Nonetheless, Pat became the most involved vice presidential spouse to date. Fulfilling her lifelong desire to see the world, she made frequent goodwill trips with her husband. Pat studied the countries she was to visit and, while traveling, tried to avoid ceremonial functions. She preferred to see schools, public housing projects, and hospitals. In Panama, she was the first dignitary to visit a leper colony. She insisted on meeting women’s groups in every country she visited. Pat wanted to bring attention to women’s accomplishments as well as their problems, especially in nations where women’s status was low. State Department officials and President Eisenhower praised Pat’s diplomatic skills. This was especially true in 1958, when the Nixons were targets of death threats and violent anti-American demonstrations in Peru and Venezuela. A Secret Service agent said Pat displayed, “more guts than any man I’ve ever seen.” The press called her “magnificent.”

Pat was so popular that when Nixon ran against Senator John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, the Republicans made her an important part of the campaign. “When you elect a president, you are electing a First Lady whose job is more than glamour,” they announced. “The First Lady has a working assignment. She represents America to all the world. Pat Nixon is part of the experienced Nixon team. She is uniquely qualified for the position of First Lady.” Pat attended coffees and rallies in her honor and encouraged women to engage in the political process. She described herself as “reflective of women all over America taking an active part not only in political life, but in all activities.” Pat also undertook her traditional Nixon campaign role. She advised the candidate, answered mail, wrote speeches and position papers, and did research. She joined her husband in fulfilling his campaign promise to visit all fifty states, even when that meant traveling to twenty-five states in fourteen days.

Pat Nixon gave so much of herself in the election of 1960 that she was bitterly disappointed by the outcome. The results were very close: Nixon lost by two-tenths of 1 percent of sixty-nine million ballots cast. Pat pushed for a recount, but Nixon, however, conceded. It was one of the few times in her life that Pat cried. The events of 1960 added to her disillusionment with politics, and even though she regretted losing, she was glad to be out of public life.

Pat had always tried to shield her daughters from politics. She told a reporter, “We are trying to let the girls grow up happily in a good home. I want that more than anything else.” Pat refused most requests for pictures of her daughters and entertained political guests in hotels, rather than in the Nixon family home. She agonized over long trips that took her away from Tricia and Julie, and while away, she wrote to her daughters every day. When she was in town, Pat made it a point to be home every afternoon when the girls returned from school. She made them cocoa and cinnamon toast, helped with their homework, and made their home a haven for neighborhood children. She dreaded the day when the girls would be old enough to read the news and see criticism of their father. Their security and well-being was always Pat’s first priority.

In 1962, when Richard decided to campaign for governor of California, Pat did not want to disrupt her family’s privacy and contentment. Nonetheless, when both Tricia and Julie supported their father’s plan, Pat gave in. When he lost the election, the Nixons moved to New York City. Pat rejoiced that they were “out of the rat race.” She did not miss politics. From 1963 to 1968, as Richard traveled the country in support of Republican candidates, Pat—for the first time in their marriage—stayed home. She filled her days with reading, swimming, running, and yoga, regaining some of the privacy she had surrendered to her husband’s ambition.

Pat was distraught when polls showed Nixon to be the leading Republican candidate for president in 1968. She was still greatly wounded by the Checkers incident and the bitter loss to Kennedy. Yet, in a tumultuous time in American history, with the United States mired in the Vietnam War abroad and antiwar and civil rights demonstrations at home, Pat truly believed her husband could make a difference for the United States. In the end, she swallowed her reservations. In a campaign Nixon described as “inordinately difficult for her,” Pat worked hard rallying the volunteers. She met with women of all perspectives and carried a message to the candidate: “They want peace.” Ignoring the long tradition of the Dick and Pat team in electoral politics, Nixon’s staff downplayed Pat’s contributions. They barred her from campaign strategizing and failed to introduce her when she made joint appearances with her husband.

Presidency and First Ladyship

During Richard Nixon’s presidency (1969–1974), Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman increasingly excluded Pat from political decisions and appearances. Nonetheless, she was an extraordinarily successful First Lady who made significant contributions to her husband’s administration and to the country.

Pat Nixon really loved people, and they responded to her warmth. She received fifteen hundred letters per month. While Pat could not read all of them, she insisted on being informed about the issues addressed to her. She wanted every letter answered within three days because she knew how important a letter from the White House was to people. For the same reason, Pat personally signed everything sent out in her name. People in crisis wrote to the First Lady, as they had to Eleanor Roosevelt, and Pat did whatever she could to help them through political channels.

As White House hostess, Pat wanted a warm house which was accessible to the public. She was the first First Lady since Florence Harding to come downstairs to welcome tourists. In her first four years in office, Pat met more than a quarter million White House visitors. Some were overcome with emotion at meeting the First Lady, and she greeted them with comforting hugs. She believed the White House belonged to the people, and she opened the place to them in new ways. She gave evening tours at Christmas for working people and opened the gardens during the summer. Pat designed less militaristic uniforms for the guards, narrated a filmed tour of the house, installed ramps for the disabled, and ordered that blind visitors be allowed to touch the antiques.

Pat’s love of people also inspired her first project as First Lady. In 1970, she announced plans to recruit a nationwide cadre of volunteers dedicated to community service. She said, “Our success as a nation depends upon our willingness to give generously of ourselves for the welfare and enrichment of the lives of others.” During her first tour on behalf of volunteerism, she visited and encouraged programs in the inner cities. She explained that such programs could accomplish things that legislation could not, and she sought out and commended programs for children, migrant workers, and the disabled. Pat belonged to several groups, including the National Center for Voluntary Action, and she frequently conferred with their leaders and attended awards ceremonies. She used the Thanksgiving holiday to put her support of voluntary action into practice. She invited senior citizens and soldiers without families to dinner at the White House. Pat was the first First Lady to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation encouraging peace and hope amid the antiwar demonstrations taking place in the United States.

Pat’s sincerity and warmth enabled her to be an outstanding goodwill ambassador for the United States. In sixty-five months as First Lady, she visited thirty-one nations. On foreign trips, Pat refused to be serviced by an entourage because she thought it was an unfair expense to the taxpayers. In marked contrast to other First Ladies, Pat packed her own suitcases and styled her own hair. Although Secret Service agents forbade it, she would have preferred to fly on commercial airlines.

Pat accompanied her husband on official trips to Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China. She also made important contributions to US diplomatic relations on solo journeys. Pat’s deep compassion for the suffering of others prompted her trip to Peru in 1970. When she learned that an earthquake there had killed 80,000 people and left 800,000 homeless, the First Lady contacted her network of voluntary associations to gather food, clothing, and medical supplies. She then flew to Peru to deliver relief, attend a memorial Mass, and inspect the worst-hit areas. Peruvian President Juan Velasco’s policies were anti-American; he sought ties with the Soviets and seized American-owned businesses. Pat’s concern for the suffering Peruvians changed this. Velasco’s aide claimed that her visit meant more than anything else President Nixon might have done. A Lima newspaper praised her “human warmth” and “solidarity.” The Peruvian president awarded Pat the Grand Cross of the Sun, the oldest decoration in the Western Hemisphere.

Another solo jaunt took the First Lady to Africa in 1972. There she was presented with Liberia’s highest honor, the Grand Cordon of the Most Venerable Order of Knighthood. She spoke to the National Assembly of Ghana and addressed a crowd of 250,000 in Ivory Coast (now Côte d’Ivoire). The nations of postcolonial Africa distrusted the United States, but wherever she went, Pat charmed the people. The president said, “The substitute was doing a much better job than the principal would have done.” His aide wrote: “Mrs. Nixon has broken through where we have failed. . . . People, men and women—identify with her—and in turn with you.”

Chief of Staff Haldeman ignored the First Lady’s diplomatic triumphs. He tried to isolate the president and omit Pat from presidential trips. Nonetheless, by 1972 Pat had visited thirty-nine states and more nations than any other First Lady. Although she had become a public figure in her own right, Pat deflected all praise back to the president. To the consternation of Haldeman, Pat advised her husband on television appearances, read issue papers, and attended cabinet meetings and briefings. She believed it was important for women to be politically informed, and she wanted to make women an important part of the administration.

Pat’s disillusionment with politics made her glad that her daughters would not be political wives. She had higher aspirations for them. She speculated that Julie might run for office some day and suggested that if she herself was younger, she might consider a political career. Pat’s own experience as a working woman made her sensitive to the women in her husband’s administration and to the nascent women’s movement. During Nixon’s presidency, the number of women in high level appointments tripled, and more than one thousand new women were employed in government. Pat publicly called upon her husband to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. He considered several but appointed men, leaving Pat disappointed that her advice had not been followed.

Pat considered the newly formed National Women’s Political Caucus “wild,” but she agreed with their goals of getting more women elected, “even if they were not Republicans.” To Pat, a woman who had supported herself, her father, and her brothers, put herself through college during the Depression, and held several jobs at a time, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was important on a personal level. She was the first sitting First Lady to support the ERA. She was also publicly in favor of abortion rights, which her husband renounced.

Although Pat could disagree with her husband on occasion, she strongly supported his policies in Vietnam. This made her a frequent target of protesters. At one public appearance, as confetti fell upon the First Lady, demonstrators shouted, “If this were napalm, you would now be dead.” At another event, women dressed as witches cursed her and chanted antiwar messages. When Pat spoke in Boston, thousands of protesters picketed, burned a car, smashed windows, and fought with police. When Pat attended a concert at the Washington Monument, she was booed. Despite her best efforts over the years to protect her daughters from publicity and political demonstrations, Julie had to forgo her graduation ceremony at Smith College because of threatened protest. The First Lady was deeply concerned with the antiwar demonstrators. On her second volunteerism tour, she deliberately scheduled stops on college campuses. Though under a death threat, Pat reached out to the students. One protester said, “She wanted to listen. I felt like this is a woman who really cares about what we are doing. I didn’t expect her to be like that.” As in the past, Pat softened the president’s image and brought unexpected credit to his administration.

Pat Nixon could not, however, save her husband from his greatest political crisis. In June, 1972, the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., was burglarized. Although the break-in received little media attention, two reporters traced the burglars to the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Nixon denied any knowledge of the break-in, and Pat believed him. Nonetheless, the Senate began an investigation. This made the president more and more reclusive, and he isolated the First Lady from his troubles. Pat did succeed in getting the president to fire Chief of Staff Haldeman when testimony revealed he was involved in the break-in. However, witnesses before the Senate also revealed that the president made secret recordings of his conversations in the Oval Office. There was a protracted struggle over release of the tapes.

During that interval, the press hounded the Nixons. They suggested that the president misused public funds. Pat was the first First Lady to have her marriage scrutinized while in office. Reporters charged her with bigamy and accused the president of having an affair with a communist spy. Rumors of divorce were rampant. False reports claimed that Pat was drinking heavily. As much as this pained the very private woman, she remained fiercely loyal. She told one reporter, “I have great faith in my husband . . . [and] I love him.”

In June 1974, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision requiring President Nixon to release the tapes. Pat was shocked when she read the transcripts. As Julie Nixon explained, “the Richard Nixon on those tapes was not the Richard Nixon the family saw every day.” Although incomplete, the tapes were very damning. They included the president’s ravings against his enemies, anti-Semitic and profane remarks, and his efforts to use federal agencies to harass private citizens. The tapes also proved that Nixon had ordered a cover-up of his role in the Watergate break-in.

In July1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment charging Nixon with obstruction of justice. Pat kept working. She was still proud of her husband and remained convinced that the entire scandal was a Democratic plot to destroy him. The president was awed by her strength, and when he realized the only alternative to impeachment was resignation, he could not bring himself to tell Pat of his decision. Julie told her mother the president had to quit. For only the second time in her adult life, Pat cried. Watergate only added to the personal anger and bitterness she had developed toward politics during the Checkers incident and the 1960 election. Her hopes and idealism irrevocably crushed, Pat Nixon dried her tears and began to gather boxes for the move back to California. On August 9, 1974, with Pat at his side, Richard Nixon departed the White House as the only president forced to resign from office.

Legacy

In retirement, the Nixons settled in San Clemente, California, on the same beach they had walked while courting. Pat, in deep despair, became a recluse. She refused to give interviews, serve on charity boards, or see her friends. Nonetheless, she remained one of the most admired women in the United States, according to a Ladies’ Home Journal poll. In July, 1976, Pat suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. As she recovered, and resumed reading and gardening, McCall’s magazine called her the “unsinkable Pat Nixon.” She remained bitter about politics but was convinced that her husband would eventually be fully vindicated.

In the 1980s, the Nixons moved to the New York City area to be closer to their children and grandchildren. A second stroke in 1983 left Pat in frail health. Although she had never permitted herself to be seen smoking in public, she was a lifelong smoker. In her later years, Pat suffered from lung problems and emphysema. She died of lung cancer on June 22, 1993. She was eighty-one years old and had fulfilled her childhood dreams of seeing the world and making a difference. She would be fondly remembered for her many contributions to her husband’s political career, for her sincerity and concern for the American people, and as an ambassador of goodwill in the United States and abroad.

Bibliography

Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power. Vol. 2. New York: William Morrow, 1991.

Eisenhower, Julie Nixon. Pat Nixon: The Untold Story. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

Nixon, Richard Milhous. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Small, Melvin. The Presidency of Richard Nixon. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Summers, Anthony, with Robbyn Swan. The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon. New York: Viking, 2000.