O.C. Grieves the Loss of a Hometown Hero

Old friends recalled the handwritten notes he sent when their children were born or got married. Admirers marveled how, even in his 80s, he could speak at length, without notes, on foreign policy. Some who had never met him stood in silence as flags were lowered to half-staff at his birthplace--soon to be his final resting place.

Orange County reacted with profound sadness Friday night as residents learned of the death of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, to many a hometown hero.

“We’re losing a great statesman that knew the international scene better than anyone,” agreed developer Gus Owen, a member of the conservative Republican Lincoln Club. “I’m very fond of the man and what he’s done for our nation as a whole and what he’s done for the free world. He’s going to go down in history as one of our greatest Presidents, I have no question about that.”

Thomas A. Fuentes has spent his whole life in politics, and Richard Nixon has always been there.

Fuentes walked his first precinct at age 12, passing out ‘Nixon Now’ buttons in the 1960 presidential election. He met Nixon face to face two years later at the Orange County fairgrounds. Now head of the county’s Republican Party, he last saw Nixon three months ago, at a celebration of the 25th anniversary of his inaugural in Yorba Linda.

“It is very difficult to think of our party and our country’s politics without him,” Fuentes said. “There will be a hollowness, a vacuum, a void created by his absence that I don’t know, really, who will be able to fix or replace.

“As an Orange Countian, we lose a neighbor. He is, always has been, one of us. That makes it very hard in a special way.”

Nixon is special to the residents of Orange County because he was born here, in a clapboard house in Yorba Linda. Because after his resignation he lived here, in a bluff-top San Clemente estate. And because now he will be buried here, beside his wife, Pat, at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace--soon to become his final resting place.

Nowhere did he have more support.

“I know it’s a tragedy to almost every person in San Clemente,” said Dorothy Fuller, president of that city’s historical society and author of an unpublished book about his years there.

Minutes after news of his death was announced in New York, about 150 people flocked to Yorba Linda, where they gathered at the library that serves as a monument to Nixon’s long political career.

They placed red and pink carnations at the foot of the door and milled around the steps as a row of California and American flags flew overhead. At 9 p.m., a Marine honor guard lowered the flags to half-staff, as a bugler played taps.

“I thought he was one of the greatest Presidents we’ve ever had,” said Yorba Linda resident Jack Reinhardt, 52. “I just wanted to be here to pay my respects.”

Jeff Haupert brought his 1-year-old daughter, Lauren, to witness history. Nixon “was a great President,” he said. “Presidents have come to him for help. Obviously, he’s a lot smarter than people thought when he was in office.”

Throughout the county Friday night, there was acknowledgment that a major player on the world stage was gone, a man of accomplishment and controversy who, for good and bad, left an undeniable mark on American history.

“He serves as an inspiration to everybody to stay in the game,” said William Buck Johns, a real estate developer and Republican heavyweight. “The man has probably made as profound a mark on our society as any individual of the modern era.”

Nixon also left a personal stamp on local politics, forever signing books to be auctioned at party benefits, or appearing at political fund-raisers. From 1977 to 1984, while La Habra resident Lois Lundberg chaired Orange County’s Republican Party, Nixon raised about $1 million at four events, she said.

Even in recent years, from his home in New Jersey, Nixon kept an eye on local politics, calling to gossip about who was running for what post, his friends said.

Fuentes said he has always taken pride in welcoming guests to Orange County, the home of John Wayne Airport, the Ronald Reagan federal courthouse and the Richard Nixon presidential library. “Those names say what we are as a community, what is our history, our being, our philosophy, our sensibilities,” he explained.

Elsewhere in the country, memories of Nixon are entwined with Watergate, the third-rate burglary at a Washington hotel that ultimately caused his political downfall. But it’s different in Orange County, where Lundberg called Watergate “a whole lot of fuss about not very much.

“He started so many, many of the great things that have happened in this century,” she said. “Most of the people who find Watergate so terrible didn’t know him, didn’t appreciate him and probably would have found something else that they didn’t like him for (if it hadn’t happened).”

As she mourned Friday, State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) said of Watergate: “There’s no question it was a mistake, but people had to admire, ultimately, his ability to come back. It’s rare you find that sort of stamina.”

For Placentia resident John Klewer, 40, though, “Watergate cast a real shadow over the whole thing.”

“I’m as serious a conservative as anyone,” he said, “but I think at times he was a sore loser. . . . I wouldn’t call him one of the greatest Presidents, by any means.”

Even with Watergate, Johns said, Nixon leaves a positive legacy of journalists investigating corruption in politics at the highest levels.

“He did make some very grave mistakes,” Johns admitted. “His participation in the so-called cover-up was a very unfortunate set of circumstances. He was judged very harshly for those. I think that sets another standard. The press has an obligation . . . not to wink at the activities and indiscretions of those in high office.”

Although Watergate overshadowed many of Nixon’s accomplishments, his supporters in Orange County say it should not so mar his memory.

Here, Nixon will be remembered not as the man who left the White House in disgrace, but as the one who re-established relations with China, opened the first period of detente with the Soviet Union and, essentially, started the end of the Cold War.

“What was amazing was his ability to almost have telescopic vision into the next century,” said Ken Khachigian, a San Clemente political consultant who spent a decade on Nixon’s personal staff.

“At some point we’ll have generations of people who are not bearing the baggage of scandal, or Watergate, or whether he was guilty of this, or guilty of that. We’ll see him in a broader perspective,” Khachigian said Friday. “Eventually, I think he will have been seen to have this vision, the ability to project Americans’ interest into a different time frame. He did so because of his extraordinary conception and knowledge about the cultures and the people and the geopolitics of the rest of the world.”

For Khachigian and other local politicos, Nixon’s death brings not only the end of an era, but the passing of a dear friend.

Carl Karcher, founder of Carl’s Jr., laughed as he recalled Nixon’s insistence that his first name was spelled with a ‘K’--and the resulting misspellings on several autographed books. Lundberg spent the four days since Nixon’s massive stroke Monday sorting through piles of pictures and notes she had collected from the President through the years. Khachigian recalled his phone chat with Nixon last Christmas when, as usual, they talked shop.

“We didn’t talk about China’s role in the world or what the next policy should be in the world or whatever--he could talk to Henry about that,” Khachigian said, a smile in his sad voice. “With me the talk would be California politics, presidential politics. He just always brought such a range of insight and a yearning for information about what was going on.”

Most Orange County Republican activists saw him in January at the library in Yorba Linda, where they celebrated the 25th anniversary of his inaugural. Six months earlier, they had also gathered at the library to bury his wife, Pat, who died last June after a battle with lung cancer.

On Wednesday they will once again return to the library--along with national and world leaders--for Richard Nixon’s funeral.

“There’s a display at the Nixon library of covers of Time magazine. It is just awesome how many weeks through the years Richard Nixon’s face has appeared on the front of Time magazine. It’s a whole wall. It just goes on and on,” said Fuentes, who spent Nixon’s last day alive at the library listening to former First Lady Barbara Bush speak.

“He has been so much a part of our world, our life, our community of thinking,” Fuentes continued. “It’s going to be tough not looking forward to the next book by Richard Nixon, the next world trip and public statement, the next commentary, the next interview . . . we have lost a leader of magnificent proportion.”

Times staff writers Anna Cekola, Eric Bailey, Lynn Franey and Mark I. Pinsky and correspondent Danielle A. Fouquette contributed to this article.