Nixon Came A-Calling--and Once Disappeared--at His Yorba Linda House

In the 12 years that Vince Ellingson lived in the Yorba Linda home in which Richard Nixon was born, Nixon visited three times: during his campaign for the presidency in 1968, during the Watergate investigation and after he left office.

Ellingson--director of maintenance, operations, transportation and grounds for the Yorba Linda Elementary School District--remembers them all vividly: “More than anything else, living in that house made me realize the importance of preserving history.”

The Ellingson family has lived considerably longer than the Nixon family in the home, which occupies a site where construction will begin this summer on the Nixon library.

Vince came first, living in the house and maintaining it from 1967 to 1979. Since then, his sister, Maxine Wood, his older brother, Ronald, and finally his younger brother, Harold--who lives there with his family now--have followed Vince. Nixon lived in the house from 1913 to 1922.

All of Nixon’s visits--along with a lot of other action--took place during Vince’s residency.

He’s acutely aware of that--and of the ways in which the visits touched his life. Vince Ellingson is a stocky, earnest, thoughtful man who is still putting the Nixon experience into perspective.

“It had an especially profound effect on my kids,” he said, strolling the grounds--once a lemon grove--around the Nixon birthplace. “We came down here from Montana, and none of us had what you would call outgoing personalities. But this forced my kids to come out. It gave them an immediate identity at school and with their friends. That boosted their self-esteem--and it showed up in all sorts of ways.”

Mark Ellingson (now an Oregon banker) was 6, his sister, Marcy, (who works for a Phoenix importer) was 3, and Greg (a carpet installer in Riverside) was an infant the first time Nixon appeared at their front door.

“It was during his first campaign for President,” Ellingson recalled. “We found out he was coming about a week ahead of time, when the Secret Service showed up and searched every cranny of this house. They even emptied the woodbin outside.”

The Ellingsons were told to stay in the house and greet Nixon at the front door. He arrived with an entourage of several hundred local officials, reporters and hangers-on in a whirlwind of limousines.

“When we answered the door, Mr. Nixon, his wife, Pat, and our congressman, Charles Wiggins, were standing there. The people behind them were pressing in so closely, they almost pushed the Nixons into our house. Mr. Nixon turned to them and said, ‘This is just between the Ellingsons and us, so please step back.’ Then he and his wife came in and we showed them through the house.”

Ellingson remembers Nixon commenting about the absence of plumbing when he lived there and inquiring about the irrigation ditch--long since paved over--where he “got in trouble for swimming” when he was very young.

“I had lots of preconceived ideas about him,” Ellingson said, “and I was very nervous. He made a real effort to settle us down, and I appreciated that.”

The Nixon home was built by the former President’s father, Frank, in 1912--a year before Richard was born in the tiny living room--and passed through a number of private hands before it was bought as a school site by the Yorba Linda Elementary School District. School district employees lived in the house for several decades, maintaining it in exchange for reduced rent.

When it became available in 1967, Ellingson--then a groundskeeper making $505 a month--offered to pay $80 a month in rent and to perform maintenance work. He got the house.

Maintenance was a serious problem, because the house had deteriorated badly. In fact, it might have been torn down except for the intercession of a determined band of local citizens who formed the Nixon Birthplace Foundation shortly after Nixon was elected President in 1968. Several members of this group--including the former President’s sister-in-law, Clara Jane Nixon, and a distant cousin named Hurless Barton--were relatives, but for the most part the group was a political and philosophical mix dedicated to preserving history.

The group worked tirelessly to collect the money to buy the home, somehow riding out the Watergate years. In 1979, the foundation bought the house for $125,000, then set about raising more money to restore it and find and preserve the furnishings that were in the house when Richard Nixon lived there.

Ellingson remembers especially the efforts of Barton, how deceased: “He used to visit weekly to see what I needed to keep the house together. His dedication has been a model for me.”

Age, weather and lack of money weren’t the only problems Ellingson faced in preserving the home. Souvenir-seekers were destructive and pervasive. Although the home was identified only by a modest sign at the street and could be reached only by navigating a rutted, tortuous gravel driveway, Ellingson says:

“We could expect about 15 to 20 visitors a day. . . . We got a sign, finally, that said ‘Private residence, do not disturb,’ but that didn’t seem to stop people. They were looking in our windows all hours of the day and night, and I don’t know how many times I was wakened by headlights sweeping across our windows. They would take pieces of siding and nails and anything else they could get loose.”

Some of the depredations were more serious. The foundation had erected a monument at the foot of the driveway made up of stones from each of the 50 states, identified by brass markers. Most of the markers have been pried loose and taken.

Barton was also responsible for getting flags from the White House to fly from a pole in front of the Nixon birthplace. After three had been stolen within a few weeks, Ellingson was awakened one night by sounds outside. He looked through the window and saw a figure shinnying up the flagpole and another standing at the base.

“I grabbed my shotgun--there was nothing in it--and ran out of the house,” he said. “When these two guys took off, I yelled, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ and they stood there with their hands up till the police came. The flag was still on the pole, and I figured I’d caught them in time, but it turned out they were two students from Cal State Fullerton on a scavenger hunt, and they were taping a clue to the flagpole.”

Not all of the incursions were that innocent. By far the worst period for the Ellingson family was during the latter stages of the Vietnam War, when a large group of protesters set up a camp at the foot of the driveway for almost a month.

“There were only a few dozen at first,” Ellingson said, “but as soon as they were shown on TV, a lot of others joined the first group. And they used our front yard and the school grounds for a toilet.”

Twice they threatened violence. Once a protester came to the front door and told Ellingson they were “going to blow this place up in 15 minutes.” Ellingson called police and sat tight. “It took (officers) 30 minutes to get there, but fortunately nothing happened.”

Later the protesters set a fire in one of the school classrooms and gutted it. “That night,” Ellingson said, “I found a lot of rolled newspapers stuck under our eaves. I took them down and called the police, and again nothing happened. But I asked the police to at least get them out of our front yard and was told there was nothing they could do. I don’t know what we would have done if it had kept up, but one day they all just disappeared.”

Nixon, too, pulled a disappearing act at his birthplace that still has Ellingson puzzled. During the Watergate investigation, Ellingson came home from work one day and found the presidential limousine parked in his front yard. His wife, Dolores, said she had had no visitors, and there was no one around to explain the presence of the car. The President was in the area at the time, and Ellingson speculates that he was trying to dodge the reporters following him and was picked up at the home by another car, leaving the limousine as bait.

It was driven off later that night, and the Ellingsons never had a clue as to what was taking place.

Nixon’s third visit was the most relaxed. He was out of office then. One of his aides called the Ellingsons and asked whether Nixon could come by to soak up some of the atmosphere of his childhood home for the memoirs he was writing.

“There were only a few people with him this time, and he was a lot more reflective,” Ellingson said. “I asked if he wanted to be alone, and he said he would like that, so I just let him do his thing. He spent about a half hour sitting on his bed upstairs, and then had some pictures taken with my kids before he left.

“I had a chance to tell him how much I appreciated that my boys wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam because of his efforts to end that war.”

Nixon hasn’t been back since, and the Ellingsons moved out of the house when the Foundation bought it. Ellingson was offered another home on school district property and expected the Foundation to begin renovating the Nixon home soon. That hasn’t happened yet, but Ellingson has no regrets about moving out.

“The years since have given us a chance to put all that happened in perspective,” he said.

The clearest insight came from a trip the Ellingson family took to Washington four years ago. “It was the first time I’d ever been there,” Ellingson said, “and I was awed at the way the history of our country has been preserved. For the first time I fully understood the importance of people--like Mr. Barton here in Yorba Linda--who had the foresight to preserve even the trivia.

“You can’t really appreciate this country until you see the price that was paid for our freedoms and the people who were involved--and I really felt gratitude that the evidence has been preserved for us to see. It made me glad to have been a small part of that process in Yorba Linda.”

History is happening again in Yorba Linda since the long-homeless Nixon library and museum--rebuffed elsewhere--was embraced by the municipal officials of his birthplace. The city announced Dec. 7 that it is buying 6 acres around the Nixon home (and hopes to add 3 more) as a site for the library. Ground breaking is scheduled for July 1, and the home will be restored as a museum, with as many of the original furnishings as possible moved there. Completion is projected for January, 1990.

Nixon plans to be on hand for the ground-breaking ceremony, and Ellingson will be there to watch--an older and wiser man than the one who first greeted a presidential candidate on his doorstep in 1968.

In fact, Ellingson is still distressed over a public hearing he recently attended. The day-care center, now housed in the old Nixon Elementary School, will have to be moved this summer, and citizens who live around the new site were protesting the move.

“One of them said to leave the day-care center where it was, that he didn’t care if we had a Nixon library--and a lot people cheered,” Ellingson recalled sadly. “We shouldn’t put judgments on history. History happens.”