Rites Will Launch Nixon Library : Second Presidential Repository in Two Weeks for Southland

For the second time in less than two weeks, a ground-breaking ceremony will be held in Southern California for a presidential library. This time, it will be Friday, for the Nixon Library and Birthplace, a $25-million project in Yorba Linda.

The 2:30 p.m. ceremony, at 18061 Yorba Linda Blvd., will be followed by a $1,000-a-person reception and dinner at the Anaheim Hilton.

President and Mrs. Reagan attended the ground breaking last Monday of the $43-million Reagan Library in eastern Ventura County. Former President Nixon is not expected to attend the ground breaking or dinner for his library.

A spokesman said Nixon wants his daughters to officiate in his place. Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state, will be the dinner speaker.

Unlike the Reagan project and eight existing presidential libraries, the Nixon library will be operated as well as built with private funds. Operating expenses will be provided by a trust fund established by the Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, sale of books and gifts, and a nominal entrance fee.

The Nixon Library will not be operated, as are other presidential libraries, by the National Archives, which will, however, continue to store most of the Nixon Administration papers, “pending resolution of disputes between the former President and the government,” according to a prepared statement by William E. Simon, foundation president. After the Watergate scandal, which forced Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed an act making the Nixon Presidential papers government property, under the jurisdiction of the National Archives in Washington.

Designed by the Newport Beach office of Langdon Wilson Mumper Architects, the Nixon library will consist of a 13,000-square-foot museum, with audio-visual materials and such documents as “copies of key Presidential file units.”

Koll Construction of Newport Beach is aiming to complete the museum by early 1990. The simple wood-frame farmhouse, where the nation’s 37th President was born in 1913, will be restored as part of the 9-acre complex, and it will have original furnishings and exhibits on Nixon’s early life.

DR