Bush, Reagan, Ford to Attend Nixon Opening

President Bush and his two Republican predecessors will join Richard M. Nixon next month for the opening of his long-awaited presidential library in Yorba Linda as the political thaw surrounding the Watergate president continues, officials said Monday.

Jimmy Carter, the only Democrat elected president since Nixon resigned in 1974, sent his regrets. A spokeswoman said Carter wanted to attend the July 19 event but he that had a previous commitment.

The occasion, however, will be the first meeting of the four living Republican presidents since Bush was elected, and it also will be a reunion for many who served in the Nixon Administration. In addition, Nixon’s ailing wife, Pat, is expected to make her first public appearance since leaving the White House almost 16 years ago.

“The justice of time has finally been kind and fair to Richard Nixon,” said Orange County Republican Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes, who greeted Nixon at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station when he returned to California after his resignation in August, 1974. “His receiving such distinguished guests on the occasion of the opening of his library says to the world that indeed his contribution is now being recognized.”

Hugh Hewitt, director of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, said: “We already have a tremendously exciting event. Everything else is just gravy.”

The library dedication, which will be open to the public, is scheduled for 10 a.m. on the site where Nixon was born in 1913 in a tiny white clapboard house. The house, built by Nixon’s father, has been restored in the shadow of the California pepper tree where Nixon played in as a child.

About 1,500 people are expected to attend a private black-tie dinner that evening at the Century Plaza Hotel. It was not clear whether Bush or former presidents Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford plan to attend both events.

Hewitt said the White House has not yet confirmed whether Bush will be at the dedication, but an official for the administration told The Times that Bush is going.

Bush was chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate scandal and, as a result, acted as a point man for many of the accusations aimed at the Nixon Administration.

Hewitt declined to identify other dignitaries planning to attend. He did say that Nixon’s daughters Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Eisenhower, their husbands and his four grandchildren will be there.

Sources said, however, that Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state, would attend, as would Alexander Haig, a chief of staff in the Nixon White House; former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld; former treasury secretary William E. Simon and evangelist Billy Graham.

Several members of the Nixon Administration attended the ground breaking for the library in 1988, among them Kissinger; Maurice H. Stans, Nixon’s secretary of commerce; and former White House chief of staff H.R. (Bob) Haldeman. Many of the ex-Nixon aides have stayed in touch, meeting annually in Washington in a group called the February Club.

Hewitt said about 3,000 invitations to the opening and dinner have been mailed since last Wednesday and that more will be sent today. The cover of the invitation is inscribed with the phrase, “Celebrating the Roots, Life and Legacy of an Architect of Peace.”

Hewitt said Nixon has been helping compile the invitation list but that the names are “in 100 different places” and that Nixon has not seen a complete list.

Hewitt said he did not know whether Nixon has talked with Bush or the other ex-presidents about coming to the event.

Nixon attended the library dedication of former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, was invited to the opening of Nixon’s library, but a spokeswoman said she was not scheduled to attend.

With “In the Arena,” his new book that explores Watergate, Nixon has been enjoying a return to the public spotlight recently. There is a planned appearance on public television and a visit to Washington, where he has been heralded as an elder statesman. The presence of Bush, Reagan and Ford at the opening also represents a softening in the attitude of elected officials to embrace the former president.

The library is scheduled to open to the public July 20--almost 16 years after Nixon left office. The Carter and Ford libraries, by contrast, are already open. Reagan’s is under construction in Simi Valley and is scheduled to open next February.

Ironically, the 84,000-square-foot Nixon library will contain no original papers from Nixon’s years in the White House. After the Watergate scandal--Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator on criminal charges--Congress passed an act giving custody of 44 million pages of his presidential papers and 4,000 hours of tape recordings to the National Archives and Records Administration.

Instead, the library will have copies of documents from his presidential term.