1,500 Check Out Nixon Library : History, Politics Draw ‘Just Folks’

Some people might have thought that Bryan Miller’s T-shirt was a joke. Sporting a cartoon drawing of Richard M. Nixon in sunglasses and a red Hawaiian shirt, it read, “He’s Tanned, Rested & Ready--Nixon in ’88.”

But Miller, 19, a construction worker from the California desert town of Anza who traveled to Yorba Linda for the ground breaking of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library on Friday, was not fooling.

“Oh yeah, I wanted him to run for President again. I wrote him several letters,” said Miller, who was born a month after Nixon took office. “I was writing him letters in crayon when I was a kid.”

Across the dirt field where the presidential library will soon stand, another spectator, Paul Gibbs, said he too had a T-shirt that he almost wore to the ceremony. His reads: “The one and only and last Democrat in Orange County.”

“I decided not to wear it,” said Gibbs, 81, a 38-year resident of Yorba Linda who never voted for Nixon. “I didn’t want to spoil his day.”

Gibbs and Miller were among the 1,500 people who flocked to the balloon-decorated field next to Nixon’s boyhood home and birthplace to see a 35-ton machine scrape up the first bucket of dirt for the construction of the library.

Most of the crowd appeared to share Miller’s sentiments--foursquare behind the former President.

For Yorba Linda Mayor Roland E. Bigonger, the ground breaking marked a successful end to his 20-year mission to honor the small city’s most famous son.

When Bigonger, who was instrumental both in preserving Nixon’s birthplace and in wooing the library away from San Clemente, got up to speak, his voice faltered.

“I’m so excited that this day has arrived that my lips are quivering and the words are stumbling,” Bigonger said, sharing a laugh with the crowd. He pulled himself together, presented Julie Nixon Eisenhower with a proclamation and told her: “Your father was a very fine man. We all loved him.”

County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez was in the eighth grade when Nixon first gained the presidency in 1968. In August, after he addressed the Republican National Convention in New Orleans, Vasquez received a personal letter of thanks and praise from Nixon.

Vasquez returned the praise on Friday. “This is a day that will launch a permanent tribute to one of Orange County’s native sons who brought glory to all of us by ascending to the presidency,” he said. “No one can erase the tremendous strides Richard Nixon made in the interest of world peace.”

While politicians made the speeches, it was just plain folks who made up most of the crowd.

Bob Gopher, a framer who lives in Orange, left work at noon to bring his wife, Sara, and their two small daughters to the ground breaking. Gopher’s father once grew citrus not far from where the Nixon Library will stand, Gopher said.

“I feel it’s very important that we remember our past,” said Gopher, wearing a cowboy hat and boots. “Richard Nixon did a lot of great things and he also made some mistakes. But he was a President of this country, and I’m proud they’re building a library here.”

Paul Gibbs was proud too that the library was being built in Yorba Linda, even if he and his wife, Frances, never cared for Nixon. “This is history,” said Gibbs, whose daughter, granddaughter and two great-grandchildren came to the ceremony. “The library should be here.”

As a President, Nixon was “not all bad,” Gibbs said. “But I thought he had such great opportunities when he became President.” Nixon had a chance to end the Vietnam War, he said, but instead he escalated the fighting during his first term before ending it after his reelection. “And that whole Watergate thing was so unnecessary.”

Proud to vote for Nixon’s opponents, Gibbs said it used to annoy him, seeing the fuss his fellow Yorba Linda residents used to make over their native son. “It’s all over now, but when he was President it used to rankle me,” he said, adding with a chuckle, “It was a great day when he resigned.”

Frances Gibbs added that she thought it was only proper that Nixon’s presidential papers and tapes will not be at the library. (They remain in a warehouse after Congress passed a law, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, to turn over the tapes and documents to the National Archives.) The library should not whitewash Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, she said. “People should not forget.”

Anaheim resident Shirley Lewis, who wore her patriotism on her lapel in the form of an American flag pin, thought differently. “I think we don’t realize what a great President we had,” she said. “I think we should forgive him, forget the past and press on.”

That might be good advice, in one sense, for residents of San Clemente. The seaside city once seemed to have a lock on the library but saw it slip away after months of dickering with the Lusk Co. of Irvine, which wanted approval for a huge development along coastal bluffs in return for donating land for the library.

But San Clemente resident Judy Johnson seemed to harbor no ill will Friday toward either Yorba Linda or the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Archives Foundation.

“I wanted to participate with old friends in honoring President Nixon,” said Johnson, a San Clemente resident and former press aide to Nixon who now works for Thomas Wilck Associates, an Irvine public relations firm. “I also wanted to drool over a library site that should be in San Clemente. I would like to have the materials . . . displayed . . . in San Clemente instead, because I know how rich in history they are. So, more power to Yorba Linda.”

Times staff writers Lonn Johnston, Steven R. Churm and Jeffrey Perlman contributed to this report.

HIGHLIGHTS OF NIXON’S DINNER REMARKS Excerpts from Richard M. Nixon’s videotaped message at Friday night’s Presidential Library dinner: On the difficulty in becoming President: . . . And I would say that it helps to be wealthy. It helps also to have influential friends. But today it is possible still for someone if he works hard, sets his goals high, to go to the White House from Yorba Linda. On his goal of achieving peace: . . . When we talk of peace, there’s a tendency to think that there’s some formula out there whereby we can have peace and it’s going to be perfect and it’s going to be permanent. What we have to understand is that that isn’t the case. What we can do is to make progress toward peace. In our Administration, we made progress toward peace. We had the opening to China that everybody is aware of. We ended the war in Vietnam. We opened a new relationship with the Soviet Union, the first arms control agreement that was negotiated with the Soviet Union. We saved Israel in 1973 in the Yom Kippur war. . . . And I think all the leaders today must understand there’s no easy formula out there. Never assume that simply because you made this deal or that deal with the Soviet Union or anybody else, that peace is here and it is permanent. Peace is like a very delicate plant. It must always be cultivated and nurtured or it will wither away and die. Major achievements of his Administration: . . . Most assume that I’m going to say, well, the opening to China. It was a great achievement. . . . But I also believe that ending the war in Vietnam was a great achievement. I believe that developing the new relationship with the Soviet Union was a very great achievement. . . . But sometimes we overlook what I think are very significant achievements on the domestic front. I appointed four members to the Supreme Court. One of them, (William H.) Rehnquist, is now the chief justice of the Supreme Court and probably will be that in the next century.

OTHER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES Franklin D. Roosevelt Library: Dedicated on July 4, 1940, at Hyde Park, N.Y., by Roosevelt, it contains not only an extensive collection of documents but also a small naval museum and many family mementos. Roosevelt was the first President to plan a library while in office, and the arrangements he made provided the basis for future repositories, via the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955. Cost: $369,000 Harry S. Truman Library: Along with the presidential papers, the library, which was dedicated at Independence, Mo., on July 6, 1957, contains a large mural and several paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, one of Truman’s favorite artists, and a replica of the Oval Office. The President is buried in the courtyard of the building. Cost: $1.67 million Lyndon Baines Johnson Library: Situated on the Austin campus of the University of Texas, in a building constructed by the university, the library was dedicated May 22, 1971, by the former President. It is the only presidential library to offer free admission. Cost: $10 million Eisenhower Center: A complex of buildings in Abilene, Kan., it includes not only the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library housing the presidential papers, but also a nondenominational church. Memorabilia from Eisenhower’s military career and from the White House are displayed in a museum. The library was dedicated May 1, 1972. Cost: $3 million Herbert Hoover Library: Situated in West Branch, Iowa, the birthplace of the President, it was dedicated on Aug. 10, 1972. The library contains the records of Hoover’s long career in public service, rare books, his fishing tackle and a collection of valuable Chinese porcelain. Cost: $1 million John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library: It is housed in a building designed by I.M. Pei on the Columbia Point promontory in Boston, near the University of Massachusetts. It was dedicated on Oct. 20, 1979. Cost: $12 million Gerald R. Ford Library: Dedicated on April 27, 1981, at Ann Arbor, Mich., on the University of Michigan campus, it houses Ford’s papers, including many from his years in the House of Representatives. A museum is under construction in Grand Rapids, Mich. Cost: $11.4 million Carter Center: The center, on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, houses the Jimmy Carter Library, as well as a museum and educational center. It was dedicated on Oct. 1, 1986. Cost: $10 million Reagan Library: Ground was broken at the Ventura County site on Nov. 21, 1988. With 60 million documents, the facility will house the largest collection of papers of any presidential library. Cost: estimated at $43 million Nixon Library: Ground breaking Friday in Yorba Linda. Facility will not contain original presidential papers, but will house copies and materials from his days in Congress, as vice president and private citizen. Cost: estimated at $25 million. Note: All presidential libraries are privately funded. Source: “Facts About the Presidents , “ The National Archives and Records Administration