Four Presidents to Share Stage at Library Opening

The last time four living U.S. presidents got together was for a somber conference at the White House to prepare for the 1981 funeral of slain Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

This week, less than nine years later, four living presidents, former and serving, will gather at an unprecedented public ceremony in Orange County to mark what they hope will be the triumphant political resurrection of Richard M. Nixon.

The historic meeting of Nixon, President Bush, Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford will highlight a weeklong celebration centered on the privately funded, $21-million Nixon library in Yorba Linda, birthplace of the only President to resign.

The four Republicans will appear at an outdoor, public dedication Thursday morning. The interior of the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace will open to the public Friday.

“It’s a symbolic redemption, a final recovery,” Nixon biographer Stephen E. Ambrose of about the library dedication. “It puts Nixon in all of the final categories of the other former presidents. . . . It’s absolutely the capstone to his life, and it makes it all worthwhile.”

The library opening is the latest of recent public events that Nixon supporters hope will shape history so his presidency will be remembered more for foreign policy breakthroughs than for Watergate, a burglary that grew into a scandal which led to his resignation in 1974.

Within the last year, he has released a best-selling book, “In the Arena,” which takes on his critics and defends presidential actions such as using the Internal Revenue Service against his enemies. In March, Nixon was cheered at the U.S. Capitol, where congressmen once clamored for his impeachment.

He has toured China, granted three lengthy interviews and was on an April cover of Time magazine, his 66th appearance there.

This week, he will not only take the stage with his presidential peers but will visit the Reagan home in Bel-Air and attend a reunion of supporters and White House employees, including former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and former Press Secretary Ron Ziegler.

“History’s respect for Nixon was inevitable because the career was so broad and so deep,” said Hugh Hewitt, executive director of the Nixon library. “This is a wonderful celebration.”

Biographer Ambrose downplayed the significance of the opening, calling the Nixon complex more of a museum than a library because of the former President’s decision to control the exhibits and present only selected papers. Ambrose and other Nixon scholars already have access to the full complement of Nixon presidential material in a National Archives building outside Washington.

“Not everybody thinks it is that important,” Ambrose said about the new library. “I think it’s a California event in a very real way. He’s the only native-born Californian to become President.”

Nixon’s will be the 10th presidential library to open but the first in California and the first to be built and operated solely with private money. The next library will be Reagan’s, which is scheduled to open in 1991 in Simi Valley.

In terms of tourism, the library is expected to be just a minor draw in a sun-drenched landscape ruled by Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and the yachting bastion of Newport Beach, Orange County tourism officials said.

Library officials said they hope to draw 450,000 visitors a year, about the same as the popular Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Tex.

Yet Ambrose acknowledged the undeniable historical and political significance of the ceremonies: “No other President has had three other presidents at the opening of his library, and there’s obviously great symbolic significance for the Republican Party, which I’m betting now will welcome him to a tumultuous reception at the ’92 convention.”

The 5,500-square-foot museum and library, which will feature exhibits marking different stages of Nixon’s political rise and fall, has been built next to the restored 900-square-foot farmhouse where the nation’s 37th President was born Jan. 9, 1913.

The idea behind the juxtaposition, Hewitt said, is to emphasize Nixon’s rise from poverty to power, a theme the former President struck in a January letter to William E. Simon, former Treasury secretary and president of the Nixon library’s foundation.

“They will see how in America a boy born in a tiny farmhouse his father built can someday be President,” Nixon wrote.

Expected in the audience will be some of the biggest names from the Nixon era: Haldeman, an Orange County businessman who was sent to jail for Watergate crimes he committed while in Nixon’s service; Alexander M. Haig, who took over from Haldeman as chief of staff; Maurice Stans, a Pasadena accountant and former secretary of Commerce, who was fined for election law violations as Nixon’s 1972 campaign finance chairman, and Patrick J. Buchanan, former speech writer and now syndicated columnist.

Missing, however, will be other big names: John W. Dean III, former White House counsel who went to jail for 16 months; John D. Ehrlichman, the former Nixon domestic adviser who went to jail and is now a novelist-artist in Santa Fe, N.M., and G. Gordon Liddy, White House aide, who was convicted of Watergate crimes and is also known for debating Timothy Leary on stage and for holding his hand over a candle flame to demonstrate his iron will.

This week’s festivities will start this evening, when about 300 Yorba Linda city, school and Chamber of Commerce officials and guests will be thanked for their help by the Nixon foundation staff with a visit to the library. It is not certain whether Nixon will be present.

The city became the only jurisdiction in the country to make Nixon’s birthday a legal holiday, and it offered no resistance in building the library.

Nixon’s earliest expected appearance will come Tuesday, when he has made an appointment to visit Reagan in that former President’s Century City office, Reagan spokesman Mark Weinberg said. The two former presidents will meet alone for private talks, which in all likelihood will turn to such favorite topics as foreign affairs, Weinberg said.

“It is an opportunity to review recent world developments. They’ve known each other for many, many years. They’ve had exchange of correspondence often,” Weinberg said.

After the office visit, Nixon and his wife, Pat, will join the Reagans at their Bel-Air home for more casual conversation, Weinberg said. Pat Nixon will make a rare public appearance during the library festivities.

Later Tuesday night, about 250 corporate library donors will meet at the Yorba Linda complex. The crowd will include such Orange County figures as developers George Argyros, William Lyon and Donald Koll. Hewitt said he did not know whether Nixon will attend.

On Wednesday, former members of the Nixon White House will get together at a small luncheon at the library, at which Simon will be host.

Later, an even larger event will be thrown by the so-called February Group--a far-flung network of Nixon admirers and employees who range from his former barber to those notorious for criminal convictions resulting from Watergate. Dewey Clower, director of the February Group, said the former President is expected to make an appearance.

Also late Wednesday, President Bush will arrive at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. He will spend the night at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers.

At 8 a.m. Thursday, Bush will make a brief appearance at a Republican fund-raiser with Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), said Orange County political consultant Eileen Padberg, whose office is helping to coordinate the event. It will cost $3,500 for each of the 100 couples invited.

Then Bush will head to the Yorba Linda library, where he is scheduled to have a private breakfast and be part of the historic meeting with three of his predecessors.

Gates will open to the public for the formal dedication ceremonies at 8 a.m. Admission is free. The event will feature four bands: the Santa Ana Youth Band, the USC Marching Band, the Marine Corps Band and Disneyland’s All-American College Band.

Vicki Carr is scheduled to sing the National Anthem, followed by comments from Simon and the president of the library foundation. All four of the presidents are scheduled to speak, as well as Wilson, Gov. George Deukmejian and ministers Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale.

The “grand finale” will include the release of hundreds of “peace doves.”

The last time three former presidents met in one room with an incumbent was in the White House on Oct. 9, 1981. Nixon, Ford and Jimmy Carter landed in a helicopter on the South Lawn of the Executive Mansion, where then-President Reagan was waiting to usher them inside for talk, hors d’oeuvres and cocktails in the Blue Room before they attended the funeral of Sadat, who was assassinated by religious fanatics. Also in the Blue Room was then-Vice President Bush.

It was apparently the first time in history that four living presidents had been in one place, historians said.

Thursday will see another first: four living presidents together for a ceremony to which the public is invited. The fifth living President, Democrat Carter, declined an invitation.

The presidents will take the stage at 10 a.m. Thursday for the hourlong ceremony, then retire to a private room at 11 a.m., where they will have an early lunch before going their separate ways.

Bush is scheduled to fly out of El Toro by about 1:30 p.m., en route to appearances in Boise, Idaho, and Billings, Mont. Neither Ford nor Reagan will attend other Nixon events, their representatives said.

Soon after the presidential departures, NBC-TV crews will set up a temporary set for anchor Tom Brokaw to broadcast the network’s evening news from the library, Hewitt said.

Later, at 7 p.m., Nixon will appear at a black-tie dinner for about 1,500 invited guests at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, Hewitt said.

How To Get To The Dedication In anticipation of a large crowd for Thursday’s Nixon library dedication at 9 a.m.,the city is encouraging visitors to park on nearby public streets, particularly those north of Imperial Highway between Valley View and Lakeview avenues. Free buses will shuttle visitors to the library from three satellite parking lots, as well as from side streets. The dedication is free and open to the public. The library officially opens Friday. Dedication Parking 1. Invited guests only-Valley View Park, 4756 Valley View Ave. (1,200 parking spaces) 2. Invited guests and public-Parking lot on north side of Bastanchury Road at Casa Loma Avenue.(800 spaces) 3. Main public lot-Friends Christian School, 5211 Lakeview Ave. (300 spaces) Source: City of Yorba Linda On Thursday, this area will be closed to traffic, except that of residents and patrons of businesses inside the area