Pat Nixon

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Name	Pat Nixon
Birth date	March 16, 1912
Birth place	Ely, Nevada, U.S.
Death date	June 22, 1993
Death place	Park Ridge, New Jersey, U.S.
Restingplace	Nixon Presidential LibraryYorba Linda, California
Occupation	First Lady of the United States
Office1	First Lady of the United States
Term start1	January 20, 1969
Term end1	August 9, 1974
Predecessor1	Lady Bird Johnson
Successor1	Betty Ford
Office2	Second Lady of the United States
Term start2	January 20, 1953
Term end2	January 20, 1961
Predecessor2	Jane Hadley Barkley
Successor2	Lady Bird Johnson
Spouse	Richard Nixon
Children	Tricia Nixon Cox (b.1946) Julie Nixon Eisenhower (b.1948)
Parents	William Ryan, Sr. and Katherine Halberstadt
Religion	Methodist
Signature	Pat Nixon Signature.svg

Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon (March 16, 1912 – June 22, 1993) was the wife of Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, and was First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974. She was commonly known as Patricia or Pat Nixon.

Born in Nevada, Pat Ryan grew up in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from high school in 1929, then attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, X-ray technician, and retail store clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters. Pat campaigned for her husband in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in the Eisenhower administration, whereupon Pat undertook many missions of goodwill with her husband and gained favorable media coverage. She assisted her husband in both his unsuccessful 1960 presidential campaign, and later in his successful presidential campaign of 1968.

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. Pat became the most traveled First Lady in U.S. history up to that time, visiting about 80 nations; she was the first First Lady to enter a combat zone. These trips gained her favorable reception in the media and the host countries. Her tenure ended when, after being re-elected in a landslide victory in 1972, President Nixon resigned two years later amid the Watergate scandal.

Her public appearances became less frequent in her later life. She and her husband returned to California, and later moved to New Jersey. Pat suffered two strokes—one in 1976 and another in 1983—and was later diagnosed with lung cancer in 1992. She died in 1993 aged 81.

Early life

Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada, the day before St. Patrick's Day. Her father, William M. Ryan Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish descent. Her mother, Katherine Halberstadt, was a German immigrant.

After her birth, the Ryan family moved near Los Angeles, California, and in 1914 settled on a small truck farm in Artesia (present-day Cerritos). During this time 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 12 at the time, assumed all the household duties for her father, who died in 1929 of silicosis, and two older brothers, William Jr. (1910–1997) and Thomas (1911–1992). She also had a half-sister, Neva Bender (born 1909), and a half-brother, Matthew Bender (born 1907), from her mother's first marriage;

After graduating from Excelsior High School in 1929, Pat Ryan attended Fullerton Junior College. She paid for her education by working odd jobs, including as a driver, a pharmacy manager, a telephone operator, and a typist. she enrolled in 1931 at the University of Southern California (USC), where she majored in merchandising. As a former professor noted, "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." The young Ryan held part-time jobs on campus, worked as a sales clerk in Bullock's-Wilshire department store, taught typing and shorthand at a high school,

In 1937, Pat Ryan graduated cum laude from USC with a Bachelor of Science degree in merchandising, Pat accepted a position as a high school teacher in Whittier, California.

Marriage and family

While in Whittier, Pat Ryan met a young lawyer fresh out of Duke University law school, Richard Milhous Nixon. The two became acquainted at a Little Theater group when they were cast together in The Dark Tower. He courted the redhead he called his "wild Irish Gypsy" for two years, even driving her to and from her dates with other men. Eventually they married at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California on June 21, 1940. 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". Pat, in turn, felt that her husband was vulnerable and sought to protect him. Pat participated in the campaign by doing research on his opponent, incumbent Jerry Voorhis. 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 the Reverend Dr. Billy Graham, and Norman Vincent Peale's Marble Collegiate Church.

Wife of the Vice President, 1953–1961

, 1957]] 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 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,

Pat Nixon accompanied her husband abroad in his vice presidential years. She visited 53 nations, often bypassing luncheons and teas and instead visiting hospitals, orphanages, and even a leper colony in Panama.

Pat Nixon was named Outstanding Homemaker of the Year (1953), Mother of the Year (1955), and the Nation's Ideal Housewife (1957), and once admitted that she pressed all of her husband's suits one evening. 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. She eventually agreed to another run, citing that it meant a great deal to her husband, 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. Richard Nixon would make a political comeback with his presidential victory of 1968 over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey—and the country would have 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. She herself belonged to several volunteer groups, including Women in Community Services and Urban Services League, Some reporters viewed her choice of volunteerism as safe and dull compared to the initiatives undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Additionally, Pat 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. The following year, she invited wounded servicemen to a second annual Thanksgiving meal in the White House. Eventually she 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 the house's first curator, James Ketchum, who had been hired by Jacqueline Kennedy.

Pat Nixon had an interest in adding artifacts to the Executive Mansion, and built on Jacqueline Kennedy's more publicized efforts. She added more than 600 paintings and furnishings to the White House and its collections, the largest number of acquisitions by any administration. she would routinely come down from the family quarters to greet tourists, shake hands, sign autographs, and pose for photos.

She opened the White House for evening tours so that the public could see the interior design work that had been implemented. Among these tours were those conducted in December, displaying 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".

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.

In 1972, Pat became the first Republican First Lady to address a national convention. 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. The First Lady of South Vietnam, Madame Thieu, said Pat Nixon's trip "intensified our morale". 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, Fran Lewine of the Associated Press wrote that no First Lady had ever undertaken a "mercy mission" resulting in such "diplomatic side effects". Upon arrival to Liberia, Pat was honored with a 19-gun salute, a tribute reserved only for heads of government, and she reviewed troops.

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 Peking 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.

Fashion and style

, 1970]] The fashion press tends to take special interest in First Ladies. The traditional role of a First Lady as the nation's hostess puts her personal appearance and style under scrutiny, and the attention to Mrs. Nixon 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."

Pat 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, Pat "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?", Pat shot back, "What problems?" Privately, Pat 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. 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?" 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."

The next morning, a televised 20-minute farewell speech to the White House staff took place in the East Room, during which the President 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 to Marine One. As they walked, 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 carried 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 Pat. Journalists often portrayed her as dutiful and selfless and seeing herself as a wife first and individual second. The derogatory nickname was applied to her 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 "has put every bit of the energy and drive of her youth into playing a role, and she may no longer recognize it as such". Columnist and White House Correspondent Robert Thompson commented that Pat was an ideal balance for the 1970s, writing that she proved that "women can play a vital role in world affairs" while still retaining a "feminine manner". Veteran CBS correspondent Mike Wallace expressed regret that the one major interview he was never able to conduct was that of Pat Nixon.

Pat Nixon was listed on the Gallup Organization's top-ten list of the most admired women fourteen times, from 1959–1962 and 1968–1979. She was third in 1969, and remained at number two until 1972, when she was ranked first as the most admired woman. She remained on the top-ten list until 1979, five years after her husband left office.

Later life

After returning to San Clemente, California in 1974 and settling into the Nixons' home, La Casa Pacifica, Mrs. Nixon rarely appeared in public and only granted occasional interviews to the press. In late May 1975, Pat went to her girlhood town of Artesia, California (present-day Cerritos) 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." In 1979, she and her husband moved to a townhouse on East 65th Street in Manhattan, New York City. They lived there only briefly and in 1981 moved to a house in Saddle River, New Jersey. 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 President and Mrs. Ford, former President and Mrs. Reagan, and President and Mrs. Bush. 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. emphysema, and ultimately lung cancer, with which she was diagnosed in December 1992 while hospitalized with respiratory problems. 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, due to complications of cancer.

Mrs. Nixon's tombstone gives her name as "Patricia Nixon", the name by which she was popularly known. Former President Nixon survived her by 10 months, dying on April 22, 1994. Her epitaph reads:

In 1994, the Pat Nixon Park was established in Cerritos, California. The site where her girlhood home stood is on the property.

Pat has been portrayed by Joan Allen in the 1995 film Nixon, 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 the 1987 opera ''Nixon in China.

Footnotes

References

External links

Richard Nixon Foundation biography of Pat Nixon

White House biography on Pat Nixon

Video of funeral services for Pat Nixon, 1993

Category:1912 births Category:1993 deaths Category:American Methodists Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:California Republicans Category:Cancer deaths in New Jersey Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:First Ladies of the United States Category:Nixon family Category:People from Bergen County, New Jersey Category:People from Cerritos, California Category:People from White Pine County, Nevada Category:People from New York City Category:Second Ladies of the United States Category:Spouses of California politicians Category:Spouses of members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Spouses of United States Senators Category:University of Southern California alumni