Forever a Hero : Classmates Voice Respect for Ailing Nixon

He may go down in history books as the only President to be driven from office amid scandal and disgrace.

But Richard Nixon will forever remain a hero in Dolores Ball’s book. And in Clint Harris’ and Alice Newsome’s and Hubert Perry’s.

“A fine, fine person,” said Ball.

“A good guy,” said Harris.

“We’re so proud of him,” said Newsome.

“A great President,” said Perry.

And nothing will ever change their view, the four college classmates of Nixon vowed Wednesday as they returned to the campus they all graduated from 60 years ago.

They gathered in the school library’s Nixon Room to reminisce. A worn 1934 yearbook was on the table in front of them--opened to page 36, where a smiling photo of Student Body President Richard Nixon was printed. From a corner of the room, a larger-than-life sculpture of U.S. President Richard Nixon gazed down at them.

There were happy recollections of how Nixon had remained in contact over the years with the small Quaker college and how he had delighted in returning for his class’s 50th reunion.

And there was the sad realization that he will be missing from the 60th--planned for June 26. “It will be a luncheon,” Harris said. “At our age a lot of us don’t like to drive at night.”

Harris, now an 83-year-old Oldsmobile dealer, recalled double-dating with Nixon and making him ride in back in the roadster’s rumble seat. Harris allows that he would have been more polite if he’d known Nixon was destined to be President.

But there were clues to their classmate’s greatness even then, the group agreed.

Even though he was too scrawny and uncoordinated to make the football team, Nixon suited up for games all four years he attended Whittier College, said Harris, who was a regular starter.

“He was just a good guy. A buddy who had more motivation” than any of the others who actually won spots on the team, Harris said. “He studied hard. He got up early to work in his family’s grocery store. He was all drive, drive, drive.”

Ball nodded in agreement. “You never saw him sitting around. He was always going somewhere,” she said.

Nixon telephoned frequently when her husband, Ken--also a Nixon classmate--became ill a few years ago. When he died, Nixon called her to offer condolences.

“Those are the things you remember,” Ball said. “I have nothing but very good memories about him.”

Perhaps because it was a small class--fewer than 90 members--or perhaps because the Depression had given them a special sense of gritty camaraderie, the Class of ’34 retained lasting bonds, according to Newsome.

Classmates were invited to the White House by their former student body president. And she remembers Nixon being “so gracious” when he returned for the 45th class reunion a few years after his Aug. 9, 1974, resignation.

Nixon stepped down after it appeared he might be impeached as a result of the infamous Watergate Hotel burglary and a subsequent cover-up by some Administration officials.

“I cried all day the day he left the White House,” Newsome said. “My heart ached for Pat.”

Except for the death of Harris’ parents and his wife, “nothing ever hurt me like that did,” Harris said. “Watergate seemed so insignificant.”

Perry agreed. “Compared with other things presidents have been involved in, Watergate was nothing,” said the 80-year-old retired banker.

“Watergate was not something that should ever (have) gone as far as it did. It shouldn’t have been the tragic event that it was. Watergate was not a crime . . . no one was killed in Watergate. No one lost any money. There were no moral implications. . . . Nixon had no involvement in Watergate. I think it’s been blown completely out of proportion,” he said.

“It was a tragedy that a fine President was brought down. Quit calling it a crime. It was a sad misunderstanding. . . . I don’t know why it was put on Nixon’s shoulders.”

Before leaving, the four lingered in the Nixon Room--its collection includes about 3,000 books, a quarter-ton of newspaper clippings, about 800 photographs, campaign souvenirs and foreign government artifacts collected by Nixon during his political career.

In the end, these weren’t mementos of a skilled politician, an international statesman or a disgraced, unindicted co-conspirator.

To them, these were memories of a friend.