Love letters reveal Nixon’s sensitive side

In this June 5, 1960 photo, for­mer Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and his wife Pat pose for pho­tos while cam­paign­ing at Rock­e­feller Cen­ter in New York. Six love let­ters between the 37th pres­i­dent and his wife will go on dis­play Fri­day as part of an exhibit at the Richard Nixon Pres­i­den­tial Library and Museum. The exhibit is intended to cel­e­brate what would have been Pat Nixon’s 100th birth­day and is ded­i­cated to her life and accom­plish­ments. (Asso­ci­ated Press file)

GILLIAN FLACCUS

Asso­ci­ated Press

YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Long before Richard Nixon rose to power and fell from grace, he was just another man in love.

Decades before he became known to some as “Tricky Dick,” Nixon was the one pen­ning nick­names (sweet ones) to his future bride in gushy love notes that reveal a sur­pris­ingly soft and roman­tic side of the man taken down by Water­gate. Nixon shared the stage with Patri­cia Ryan in a com­mu­nity the­ater pro­duc­tion and six of the dozens of let­ters they exchanged dur­ing their two-year courtship will be unveiled Fri­day at the Richard Nixon Pres­i­den­tial Library and Museum as part of an exhibit cel­e­brat­ing the 100th birth­day of the woman Nixon play­fully called his “Irish gypsy.”

In Nixon’s let­ters, he recalls their first meet­ing in flow­ery prose, day­dreams about their future together and waxes poetic about the first time his “dear­est heart” agreed to take a drive with him.

“Every day and every night I want to see you and be with you. Yet I have no feel­ing of self­ish own­er­ship or jeal­ousy,” he writes in one undated let­ter. “Let’s go for a long ride Sun­day; let’s go to the moun­tains week­ends; let’s read books in front of fires; most of all, let’s really grow together and find the hap­pi­ness we know is ours.”

Eigh­teen years after his death, the cor­re­spon­dence offers a tiny win­dow into a fiercely pri­vate side of Nixon that almost no one ever saw and rep­re­sents a love let­ter of sorts to fans of the 37th pres­i­dent, who were infu­ri­ated when the National Archives took over the museum and over­hauled it to include a detailed chron­i­cle of Watergate.

“These let­ters are fab­u­lous. It’s a totally dif­fer­ent per­son from the Water­gate tapes that peo­ple know. Pres­i­dent Nixon started out as an ide­al­is­tic young man ready to con­quer the world and with Pat Ryan he knew he could do it. There’s a lot of hope, there’s a lot of ten­der­ness and it’s very poetic,” said Olivia Anas­tasiadis, super­vi­sory museum curator.

“He loved her, he was absolutely enthralled by her and that’s all he thought about.”

The let­ters stand in stark con­trast to the grim-faced leader forced to resign in 1974, disgraced.

Instead, Nixon comes across as an ardent and per­sis­tent suitor in the let­ters, which date from 1938 to just before the couple’s mar­riage in June 1940.

The two met while audi­tion­ing for “The Dark Tower” in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia town of Whit­tier and dated for two years until Nixon pro­posed to his sweet­heart on the south Orange County cliffs over­look­ing the Pacific Ocean. He later deliv­ered her engage­ment ring in a small bas­ket over­flow­ing with mayflow­ers. They were mar­ried in a small cer­e­mony on June 21, 1940.

The roman­tic touch and chivalry that Nixon brought to his sea­side pro­posal comes through in the let­ters, as well.

In two of the hand­writ­ten notes, Nixon — raised a Quaker — uses “thee” instead of “you” to refer to his future bride, a pro­noun that sig­nals a spe­cial close­ness in the Quaker tra­di­tion. He also writes about him­self in the third per­son, refer­ring to him­self as a “pro­saic per­son” whose heart was nonethe­less “filled with that grand poetic music” upon know­ing her.

“Some­how on Tues­day there was some­thing elec­tric in the usu­ally almost sti­fling air in Whit­tier. And now I know. An Irish gypsy who radi­ates all that is happy and beau­ti­ful was there. She left behind her a note addressed to a strug­gling bar­ris­ter who looks from a win­dow and dreams. And in that note he found sun­shine and flow­ers, and a great spirit which only great ladies can inspire,” Nixon wrote. “Some­day let me see you again? In Sep­tem­ber? Maybe?”

A much more prac­ti­cal — and some­what less impul­sive — Pat Ryan replies in one short note: “In case I don’t see you before why don’t you come early Wednes­day (6) — and I’ll see if I can burn a ham­burger for you.” The object of Nixon’s affec­tion was slower to come around, but even­tu­ally was just as smit­ten with Nixon as he was with her, said Ed Nixon, Nixon’s youngest brother, in a phone inter­view from his Seat­tle home.

“She was quite an inde­pen­dent young lady and she was very cau­tious about any­one she met and if they couldn’t smile, she wouldn’t want to do too much unless she could make them smile. That cap­tured Dick’s imag­i­na­tion,” the younger Nixon said. “She was chal­leng­ing. She chal­lenged me and I think she chal­lenged Dick.”

Nixon’s pres­i­dency began to unravel in 1972 when bur­glars who were later tied to his re-election com­mit­tee broke into the Demo­c­ra­tic head­quar­ters to get dirt on his polit­i­cal adver­saries. Nixon denied know­ing about plans for the break-in before­hand, but an 18 1/2 minute gap in a record­ing of a post-Watergate White House meet­ing led many to sus­pect a cover-up.

Faced with impeach­ment and a pos­si­ble crim­i­nal indict­ment, Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974 and retreated to his native Cal­i­for­nia. The fol­low­ing month he was granted a par­don by Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford.

Pat Nixon never doubted her hus­band and stood by him until she died in 1993, a day after their 53rd wed­ding anniver­sary, said Robert Bostock, a con­sul­tant to the Richard Nixon Foun­da­tion, which is co-sponsoring the exhibit, and a for­mer aide to Nixon after he left the White House.

Her loy­alty and spirit was a tes­ta­ment to their love and part of what bound them together from the ear­li­est days of their courtship in Whit­tier, when he was a young attor­ney and she a high school stenog­ra­phy teacher fresh out of college.

“She was with him the whole way; she never lost faith in him. Her feel­ing was that it was the country’s loss when he had to resign, that he had accom­plished so much good and had so much more good to accom­plish,” Bostock said. “Her favorite say­ing was, ‘Onward and upward.’ She spent no time look­ing back. She was always look­ing forward.”

Posted by AP News on Mar 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.