Nixon in Serious Condition After Suffering Stroke

Former President Richard Nixon suffered a stroke Monday and was hospitalized in serious condition, his spokeswoman said.

Nixon, 81, was felled at his Park Ridge, N.J., home and was taken by ambulance to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, spokeswoman Kim Taylor said from New Jersey. He was admitted to intensive care for observation and treatment with blood-thinner, she said.

Carolyn Migliore, a spokeswoman for the hospital, confirmed that Nixon was there but said she could not provide further details.

To avoid impeachment in the Watergate scandal, Nixon, the nation’s 37th chief executive, became the only President ever to resign. He served in the White House from Jan. 20, 1969, to Aug. 9, 1974.

Nixon dropped from the limelight after his forced retirement but surfaced frequently through extensive travel, books, articles and speeches. He visited Russia last month and caused a stir by meeting with right-wing leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

At the time of his visit, Nixon said he had done something “that no one has ever done, something that I have not done in my 10 visits to the Soviet Union. I met with every opposition leader. I covered everybody. It is very important in a democracy not to just meet the leaders in power.”

Nixon was a dedicated anti-communist at the start of his political career. As President, he ended two decades of distance and distrust between the United States and China--exchanging toasts with Chairman Mao Tse-tung in Beijing’s Forbidden City. He established a live-and-let-live policy of detente toward the Soviet Union and negotiated arms control agreements with its leaders.

Nixon inherited the Vietnam War and the hatreds it engendered at home. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon asked voters, he recalled later, “to take on faith my ability to end the war.”

Nixon came to the presidency after nearly a quarter-century as a Republican officeholder--congressman, senator and vice president.

A month after he resigned, the country was outraged when Nixon’s successor, Gerald R. Ford, issued a pardon for all crimes that Nixon “committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his presidency. Ford noted that Nixon had become liable “to possible indictment and trial.”

The Nixons lived in virtual exile in San Clemente for more than five years after his resignation. They moved east in 1980 to be near their grandchildren, Jennie, Melanie and Alex Eisenhower and Christopher Cox.

In 1974, Nixon nearly died after suffering a recurrence of phlebitis, inflammation of the veins, and resulting complications from surgery.

Nixon’s wife, Pat, died last year of lung cancer.