Little Town Parties for a President

The small white house stands on a modest hill where orange groves used to perfume the summer nights.

Frank Nixon built the house, sawed every board and hammered every nail. He was an industrious young man who had come to California from Ohio. In his new home, he met a young woman named Hannah who also had made the westward move from Indiana.

The couple were married and had a family of five boys--Harold, Richard, Donald, Arthur and Edward. Harold and Edward died when they were small boys.

The young family would never have expected the scene on Jan. 9 of this year. Down the knoll from the small house stands the Richard M. Nixon Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, the little town that used to be the heart of citrus country before the land became too valuable to grow anything but houses. The children of the town were singing “Happy Birthday” to Richard Nixon. This was the first celebration of the Nixon birthday, which became a holiday in Yorba Linda after the library opened six months ago.

I had been there before, in 1989, the day the ground was dedicated, and all of the staff and supporters of Nixon were there to watch Julie Nixon push the control button that turned the first scoop of dirt. There were hundreds of people there that day, people who had lived through the glory days and the days of darkness. We had seen it all. Anything that starts with trumpets is hard to watch die.

The children there know more about towns than orange groves, but they are boys and girls who have a strong pride in their schools and in living in a town where a President was born.

They presented a long-distance birthday party for the former President. Barbara Maple and some of her friends, who graduated from Whittier College after Nixon had gone on to Duke law school, were among the guests.

The Nixons were celebrating his birthday at David and Julie Eisenhower’s farm in Pennsylvania. Nixon heard the 300 Yorba Linda children sing to him via satellite.

Evelyn Young, the director of the education support program at the museum, had thought it would be nice to have the children of Placentia Unified School District sing for the birthday.

Young called Jerry Jertberg, director of the educational support program for Placentia Unified School District, and he agreed that it was a good idea.

The singers were from El Dorado High School, Yorba Linda Middle School, Mabel Paine Elementary School and Yorba Linda-Placentia Pre-School.

The celebration and the singing, attended by a few hundred townspeople, had been planned for the lawn in front of the library, but rain moved the event inside.

The choral director was Bil Peterson, who teaches at El Dorado High School. “My choir practiced Monday and Tuesday and so did the other children. We were not together until the morning of the event. I was nervous as heck,” he said. “My supervisor said, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be great.’

“My choir was supposed to sing the first chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ alone because they sing harmony. I was afraid the grade school kids would sing too, but they didn’t until the right time. It was very professional and I was very proud.

“Even the banner went well. That was the banner saying, ‘Happy 78th Birthday, Mr. President.’ I was afraid the kids would get wound up in the banner, but they unfurled it with a flourish even though the grade school kids had to duck under it.”

They sang Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” and “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”

There were 300 guests at the museum where a plaque was dedicated to the city of Yorba Linda because the city had contributed the land for the museum and library.

Nixon thanked the children and said he had heard the Berlin anthem sung all over the world but never as beautifully. He told the kids he hoped some of them were planning on being teachers because that’s where we would get the leaders of our country. Everyone took the rain as a good omen in our parched land.