Pat Nixon

Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in 1912 in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada.[1] 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.[1] 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.[1] Upon enrolling in college in 1931, she stopped using the name Thelma, replacing it with Pat and occasionally using the name Patricia. The name change was not a legal action, however; merely one of preference.[2][3]

After her birth, the Ryan family moved to California, and in 1914 settled on a small truck farm in Artesia (present-day Cerritos).[4] Thelma Ryan's high school yearbook page gives her nickname as "Buddy" and her ambition to run a boarding house.[5]

She worked on the family farm and also at a local bank as a janitor and bookkeeper. Her mother died of cancer in 1924.[6] 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;[1] her mother's first husband had died during a flash flood in South Dakota in 1936.[1]

It has been said that few, if any, First Ladies worked as consistently before marrying as did Pat Nixon.[1] As she told the writer Gloria Steinem during the 1968 presidential campaign, "I never had time to think about things like that—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."[7]

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.[1] She also earned money sweeping the floors of a local bank,[1] and from 1930 until 1931, she lived in New York City, working as a secretary and also as a radiographer.[6]

Determined "to make something out of myself",[8] 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."[9] She held part-time jobs on campus, worked as a sales clerk in Bullock's-Wilshire department store,[10] and taught touch typing and shorthand at a high school.[6] She also supplemented her income by working as an extra and bit player in the film industry,[11][12] for which she took several screen tests.[13] In this capacity, she made brief appearances in films such as Becky Sharp (1935), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and Small Town Girl (1936).[13][14] In some cases she ended up on the cutting room floor, such as with her spoken lines in Becky Sharp.[13][15] 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."[15]

In 1937, Pat Ryan graduated cum laude from USC with a Bachelor of Science degree in merchandising,[1] together with a certificate to teach at the high school level, which USC deemed equivalent to a master's degree.[16] Pat accepted a position as a high school teacher in Whittier, California.[11]

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.[6] Known as Dick, he asked Pat to marry him the first night they went out. "I thought he was nuts or something!" she recalled.[17] He courted the redhead he called his "wild Irish Gypsy" for two years,[18] 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.[19] 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".[8] 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!"[20] Following a brief honeymoon in Mexico, the two lived in a small apartment in Whittier.[19] 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.[19] 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.[19]

Veteran UPI reporter Helen Thomas suggested that in public, the Nixons "moved through life ritualistically", but privately, however, they were "very close".[21] In private, Richard Nixon was described as being "unabashedly sentimental", often praising Pat for her work, remembering anniversaries and surprising her with frequent gifts.[21] During state dinners, he ordered the protocol changed so that Pat could be served first.[22] Pat, in turn, felt that her husband was vulnerable and sought to protect him.[22] 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."[22]

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."[23] Pat participated in the campaign by doing research on his opponent, incumbent Jerry Voorhis.[1] She also wrote and distributed campaign literature.[24] 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.[25]

Vice President and Pat Nixon during a visit to Ghana, 1957

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.[26] 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.[26] 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,[7] 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."[27][28]

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.[1] On a trip to Venezuela, the Nixons' limousine was pelted with rocks and the couple was spat upon as representatives of the U.S. government.[9]

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 feel slothful and untalented".[29]

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.[8] "Of course, I didn't have to," she told The New York Times, "But when I don't have work to do, I just think up some new project."

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".[1] 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.[20] 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.[8] This permanently dimmed Pat Nixon's view of politics.[1]

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."[30] She eventually agreed to another run, citing that it meant a great deal to her husband,[30] 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.[31] Her husband was a deeply controversial figure in American politics,[32] and Pat had witnessed and shared the praise and vilification he had received without having established an independent public identity for herself.[7] Although she supported him in his career, she feared another "1960", when Nixon lost to Kennedy.[31] She consented, however, and participated in the campaign by traveling on campaign trips with her husband.[33] Richard Nixon made a political comeback with his presidential victory of 1968 over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey—and the country had a new First Lady.

Pat Nixon reaches out from her limousine to a young girl during an October 1972 campaign stop in Atlanta.

Historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony noted that ordinary citizens responded to, and identified with, Pat Nixon.[47] 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.[47] 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.[47] She mixed well with people of different races, and made no distinctions on that basis.[63] During the Nixons' trip to China in 1972, foreign minister Zhou En-lai was sufficiently smitten with her so as to give two rare giant pandas to the United States as a gift from China.[64]

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.[85] 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.[85] 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.[72] 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."[8] 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 who covered her saw a woman who was sharp, responsive, sensitive."[86]

Pat Nixon was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun in 1971 by the government of Peru, becoming the first Western woman to earn the distinction.

Press accounts framed Pat Nixon as an embodiment of Cold War domesticity, in stark contrast to the second-wave feminism of the time.[87] Journalists often portrayed her as dutiful and selfless[88] and seeing herself as a wife first and individual second.[41] 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."[89] 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[90][91] and her body language made her seem reserved, and at times, artificial.[92] 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".[8]

As for the criticisms, she said, "I am who I am and I will continue to be."[8] 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."[7]

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?"[93] Some journalists, such as columnist and White House Correspondent Robert 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."[72] Other journalists felt that Pat represented the failings of the feminine mystique, and portrayed her as being out of step with her times.[88] 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."[94] Veteran CBS correspondent Mike Wallace expressed regret that the one major interview he was never able to conduct was that of Pat Nixon.[95]

Pat Nixon's official White House portrait, painted in 1978 by Henriette Wyeth Hurd

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.[96] 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."[96] It was Pat's only solo public appearance in five and a half years in California.[96]

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.[1] She said that her recovery was "the hardest thing I have ever done physically".[97] In 1979, she and her husband moved to a townhouse on East 65th Street in Manhattan, New York.[98] They lived there only briefly and in 1981 moved to a 6,000 square feet (557 m²) house in Saddle River, New Jersey.[98] This gave the couple additional space, and enabled them to be near their children and grandchildren.[98] Pat, however, sustained another stroke in 1983[99] and two lung infections the following year.[100]

Nixon (seated second from left) attends the opening of the Ronald Reagan Library, November 1991

Appearing "frail and slightly bent",[101] 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.[102] 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.[103] 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",[104] 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."[105]

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.[98] A heavy smoker most of her adult life who nevertheless never allowed herself to be seen with a cigarette in public,[103] she eventually endured bouts of oral cancer,[106] emphysema, and ultimately lung cancer, with which she was diagnosed in December 1992 while hospitalized with respiratory problems.[6]

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.

A statue of Pat Nixon stands at the site of her girlhood home in Cerritos, California, now called Pat Nixon Park. It is one of the rare statues created in the image of a first lady.

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.[107] 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.[107] 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.[108]

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.[109] Her epitaph reads:

Even when people can't speak your language, they can tell if you have love in your heart.

In 1994, the Pat Nixon Park was established in Cerritos, California. The site where her girlhood home stood is on the property.[37] 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.[110]

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 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".[111][112] 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."[113]

• Anthony, Carl Sferrazza (1991). First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents' Wives and Their Power; 1961–1990 (Volume II). New York: William Morrow and Co.
• Brower, Kate Andersen (2015). The Residence: Inside the Private World of The White House. New York: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-230519-0.
• Burns, Lisa M. (2008). First Ladies and the Fourth Estate: Press Framing of Presidential Wives. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-87580-391-3.
• Bush, Barbara (1994). A Memoir. New York: Scribner.
• David, Lester (1978). The Lonely Lady of San Clemente: The Story of Pat Nixon. Crowell. ISBN 0-690-01688-3.
• Eisenhower, Julie Nixon (1986). Pat Nixon: The Untold Story. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-24424-8.
• Marton, Kati (2001). Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 0-375-40106-7.
• O'Brien, Cormac; Suteski, Monika (2005). Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House. Quirk Books. ISBN 1-59474-014-3.
• Swift, Will (2014). Pat and Dick: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4516-7694-5.
• Thomas, Helen (1999). Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-684-86809-1.

• Anthony, Carl Sferrazza (2001). "Thelma Catherine (Patricia) Ryan Nixon". In Gould, Lewis L. (ed.). American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
• Truman, Margaret (1999). First Ladies. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-43439-9.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pat Nixon.

• Richard Nixon Foundation biography of Pat Nixon
• White House biography on Pat Nixon
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Video of funeral services for Pat Nixon, 1993
  • Pat Nixon at C-SPAN's First Ladies: Influence & Image