Former President Nixon Dies : Major Figure on World Stage Had Triumphs, Defeats : Biography: Yorba Linda native drew strength from Orange County, ‘Nixon territory.’ He will be buried here.

Richard Milhous Nixon was born in a modest Yorba Linda farmhouse during a record cold snap. He played violin for the Fullerton High School orchestra in the 1920s and proposed to Thelma (Pat) Ryan in Dana Point as they watched the sun set from the front seat of an Oldsmobile.

His 1950 U.S. Senate campaign swept through Orange County, and he delivered a speech branding his Democrat opponent a Communist sympathizer. It was pure Nixon, and the audience was receptive.

Years later as President, La Casa Pacifica, a sprawling enclave on the bluff above the ocean in San Clemente, became the Western White House. He used to walk the beach below wearing a coat, tie and wingtips. When the Watergate scandal finally drove him from office, Nixon retreated into seclusion there, but not before thousands gathered at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to welcome him home.

In 1990, the multitudes of the faithful would turn out again--this time in 100-degree weather--for the opening of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. The former President’s final resting place will be on the grounds, a few hundred feet from the old family farmhouse and beside his wife’s grave.

“I don’t think Orange County ever abandoned him and he never abandoned us,” said Thomas A. Fuentes, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County. “He was born here, and it has always been a welcoming and warm place for him.”

Since the late-1940s, everything on the California map south of the Los Angeles County line has been Nixon territory, especially Orange County. The conservative stronghold nurtured him politically, and nursed him in defeat. His life and local history are so entwined that he is lodged permanently in the region’s political psyche.

Orange County became so loyal to him during his presidency that the Yorba Linda Weekly Star never printed any stories about Watergate because, as the editor put it, “We print only news of particular interest to our readers.”

Nixon was born Jan. 9, 1913, in a white frame house his father built from a kit. Painter Norman Rockwell could have used it for inspiration. Yorba Linda was a community of about 200, surrounded by avocado and citrus groves, and fields of barley, alfalfa and beans. As a child, Nixon said, he used to be awakened at night by the whistles of passing trains and dreamed of places he would like to visit someday.

But his first venture into the world was a modest one--about 15 miles up the road to Whittier where his family moved in 1922 to open a gas station and general store. But he did not sever all his ties. Despite the distance from home, he attended Fullerton High School for two years before going on to Whittier College and Duke University Law School.

After graduation from Duke, Nixon practiced law in Whittier and La Habra until the outbreak of World War II. He joined the Navy and served as an operations officer assigned to an air transport command in the South Pacific.

When Nixon ran for U.S. Senate in 1950, he gave a key speech in Orange County attacking Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas as being soft on communism. “The Pink Lady,” he called her. Before the race began, Nixon said there would be no name-calling, no smears and no misrepresentation because Douglas was a woman.

Exploiting the fear of communism for political gain was his campaign trademark. He unholstered it again as Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate in the 1952 presidential election.

In another local speech, Nixon needled Democratic presidential nominee Adlai E. Stevenson for getting a “Ph.D. from Dean Acheson’s College of Cowardly Communist Containment.” Orange County voters loved it.

“He’s a hometown boy in many ways,” said Roger Morris, the author of a Nixon biography. “It’s very much home territory for him. That whole area from L.A. south is Nixon country. Many of his closest supporters live and come from there.”

But in 1962, Nixon got into a tiff with some of the county’s leading Republicans during his unsuccessful run for governor. Trying to moderate his fervent anti-communism, he said the John Birch Society’s extremism and totalitarian leadership might hurt the GOP.

The Birch Society had its origins in Orange County and some viewed the gubernatorial candidate’s remarks as an insult. Walter Knott, the founder of Knott’s Berry Farm and later eulogized as the county’s Mr. Republican, warned Nixon to stop criticizing the archconservative group. Congressman James B. Utt issued a similar entreaty.

After his defeat for President at the hands of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and in the governor’s race to Democratic incumbent Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in 1962, Nixon retreated from public life and moved to New York to practice law for six years before making one of several political resurrections.

Emerging from exile, Nixon defeated Democratic nominee Hubert H. Humphrey for President in 1968. Shortly after the election, he purchased two houses in Florida and La Casa Pacifica, a 26-acre property that bordered the Camp Pendleton Marine base on the southern edge of San Clemente. It is also known as the old Cotton Estate and overlooks some of Southern California’s best surfing areas.

During his presidency, Nixon used the property to escape the pressures of the Vietnam War, foreign policy and student unrest that had paralyzed some of the nation’s colleges and universities. Though it was a retreat, a considerable amount of government business was conducted there, including meetings with heads of state such as then-Soviet Premier Leonid I. Brezhnev.

As close as any news reporter to the Western White House was Larry Thomas, a political writer for the San Diego Union, who is now a senior vice president in charge of communications for the Irvine Co.

Thomas, 46, was a member of an army of media that spent hours shuffling between La Casa Pacifica, the San Clemente Inn and the Surf and Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach, where the press corps ultimately set up its headquarters.

“Generally, when Nixon came to San Clemente it was for rest and relaxation, and contact with him directly and personally was extremely limited,” Thomas said. “It was kind of a down time for the press and his staff.”

While most of the major business was done in Washington, one of the most significant foreign policy announcements of Nixon’s presidency was issued from the Western White House. In 1972, the Administration sought to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

“It was unusual because all we heard was that Nixon was going to fly by helicopter to a TV studio in L.A.,” where he disclosed the secret negotiations, Thomas said.

The following day, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger delivered a detailed briefing to the news media at the Surf and Sand. He described how he had been traveling in Pakistan and faked a stomach ache that supposedly kept him bedridden to cover up his absence while he secretly flew to Beijing.

On a far more local level, Nixon made himself a hero among surfers by turning the most popular stretches of the Camp Pendleton coastline, such as San Onofre State Park and Trestles, where Nixon used to walk, into public surfing areas. Until that decision, the Marines regularly confiscated the surfboards of those who trespassed on the base to ride the waves.

Nixon played golf at the Shorecliffs Country Club in San Clemente and liked to eat at the El Adobe restaurant in San Juan Capistrano. The now-defunct Ambrosia in Newport Beach and the Cordon Bleu in Laguna Canyon also were favorites.

South County rancher Richard O’Neill said Nixon would come to the El Adobe to eat Mexican food--even though at the time it was a continental restaurant. He would call ahead and set off a tempest in the kitchen.

“The cooks would rush around madly and everybody would go into a big tither and prepare a dinner for him. When he was leaving he would say it was the best Mexican food he ever had,” said O’Neill, who bought the restaurant in 1980.

The El Adobe also catered dinners at the Western White House and sent waiters and a mariachi band, O’Neill said. “One of the musicians slipped him a note once and asked Nixon to help him stay in this country. A lieutenant commander called us later and said not to bring that crowd again.”

In his honor, the El Adobe still offers an entree called the El Presidente. “It’s a combination of different dishes, not always the same,” O’Neill said.

Nixon was one of the many who lost his necktie during a visit to the rustic Trabuco Oaks Steak House in Trabuco Canyon. A hostess quickly snipped it off and it is still there.

“He came out to the restaurant two or three times for dinner,” said Steve Nordeck, who bought the Trabuco Oaks in 1987, long after the visits. “He not only liked the food, but he and the Secret Service loved the back room because it had no windows and was private.”

On Aug. 9, 1974, a month after a House Judiciary Committee recommended his impeachment, Nixon became the first President in the nation’s history to resign. On the White House lawn, he gave an anguished farewell just before a presidential helicopter shuttled him away to private life.

He returned to Orange County the same day, arriving at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Base. He was among friends. In his book “In the Arena,” Nixon recalled the sight from his circling plane:

“I could see hundreds of cars lined up, trying to get into the already-overflowing parking area. I had not thought I could find the energy to make another speech that day, but I managed to thank them for welcoming us home, and I vowed to continue to fight for the great causes of peace, freedom and opportunity.”

Four years of seclusion at Casa Pacifica followed--a period he would refer to as “the wilderness.” But Nixon needed the isolation to recover and get his affairs in order.

When he left the White House, more than a dozen lawsuits had been filed against him. He owed back taxes, and had mortgages to pay on three homes. On top of that, he almost died from a bout of phlebitis and complications from surgery.

Helping him through his ordeal was Kenneth L. Khachigian, a young attorney and one of his speech writers from 1970-1974. Khachigian, now a lawyer and political consultant in San Clemente, said the former President was alone, the trappings of power were just a memory, and Casa Pacifica seemed “eerily detached” from the rest of the world.

The compound stood out in stark contrast to the Western White House that Khachigian used to know. Celebrities, such as Chuck Connors, Cesar Romero and John Wayne, no longer attended catered affairs for foreign heads of state.

The enclave was now still, and the contingent of Coast Guard personnel no longer saluted smartly when visitors entered the gate. The two gleaming white helicopters stationed at the entrance to the compound were gone.

Nixon and his wife Pat were shut-ins, separated from the world by a wall and Cyclone fence that surrounds the property. Every now and then they ventured out in their limousine along Ortega Highway or out El Toro Road toward Coto de Caza.

The Nixons would go to the El Adobe to eat once in a while, but the entourage was gone and the mood was more subdued. The hot line to the Kremlin that had been installed in the cellar for him had long since been removed.

When Khachigian visited Casa Pacifica for the first time after Nixon’s resignation, he noticed the helicopter pad had been converted into a makeshift tennis court. The net drooped across the Tarmac. Two enlisted Coast Guardsmen played a “desultory” game of tennis, he recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh geez, this is horrible.’ ”

“Those first weeks were very sad and dreary, but he didn’t waste one moment feeling sorry for himself,” Khachigian said. “He had a yellow legal pad full of notes. He was lifting himself up from the despair of resignation and making plans for his future.”

From Casa Pacifica, Nixon re-entered the waters of public life a few calculated steps at a time. For a U.S. Bicentennial celebration, he made his first public appearance at the Newport Beach Marriott on July 4, 1976.

By 1977, he was ready to hold his first fund-raiser, although some members of the local GOP still harbored resentment toward him. The event, one of four he eventually attended, was held at the home of Athalie Clark in Corona del Mar. Lois Lundberg, the chair of the county GOP from 1977 to 1984, recalled that she screened the guest list to make sure those in attendance were loyal to Nixon.

He spoke at Oxford University in Britain in 1978 and agreed to an interview on French television. But those events followed his first major post-Watergate appearance in a series of TV interviews conducted by commentator David Frost.

“I let down my friends,” Nixon told Frost while discussing Watergate. “I let down the country. I let down our system of government and the dreams of all these young people that ought to get into government but think it’s too corrupt. . . . I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.”

The one-on-one sessions were broadcast from the home of Harold and Martha Smith in Monarch Bay. Nixon earned $540,000, which helped to defray his enormous debts.

Meanwhile, Khachigian, Frank Gannon and Diane Sawyer, now an ABC News anchorwoman, worked at Casa Pacifica, providing the research for Nixon’s memoirs “RN” published in 1978.

“Those were the times he began coming out,” Khachigian said. “He did not go out of his way to seek publicity and he did not cringe at the thought of exposure. The memoirs and the fund raising were cathartic experiences for him.”

Feeling that his work was finished in California, Nixon and his wife moved to the East Coast in 1980 to be closer to their daughters’ families. It was akin to his move back to New York following his gubernatorial defeat almost two decades before.

But Nixon was lured back to Orange County in April, 1982, to hold a final party fund-raiser at the Disneyland Hotel. If there was any distance between Nixon and the American people because of Watergate, it was not present here. The event was sold out, and after dinner, people lined up across the grand ballroom to get his autograph.

“Nixon was entirely responsible for the eight years of success I had as chairperson,” said Lundberg, who estimated that about $1 million was raised for the local GOP with Nixon’s help. “By the time I left, we were a real Republican empire.”

Perhaps the greatest expression of Orange County support for Nixon has been the Library & Birthplace, which opened in 1990. The library cost about $21 million, and it is the only facility of its kind in the nation that does not receive federal funding.

It houses thousands of Nixon’s personal papers, but not his Watergate records, which remain in possession of the National Archives. Nixon’s early years in the House and Senate are documented there. So are his vice presidential years.

Visitors can watch a videotape of his televised debate with Kennedy in 1960. Nixon’s China initiative is detailed in another room, and the development of Nixon’s “Silent Majority” speech can be traced from his rough drafts on display.

Four former Presidents were one hand for the opening ceremonies. About 50,000 people were on the grounds in the sweltering heat. “You just don’t get those kinds of numbers,” said Fuentes, who, as a 12-year-old, handed out “Nixon Now” buttons during the 1960 presidential campaign. “It was an exceptional expression of support and respect. It was 106 degrees outside.”

In June 1993, Pat Nixon died of lung cancer and was buried on the library grounds near the garden. The coffin was covered with roses in her favorite colors--yellow, peach and white. Her husband openly wept as the Rev. Billy Graham delivered the eulogy.

Nixon’s last visit to Orange County and the library was Jan. 20 for the 25th anniversary of his inauguration. He seemed in good health. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, was there for the luncheon, so was Ford’s wife, Betty, and past secretaries of state George P. Schultz, William P. Rogers and Kissinger.

Amid the red and blue tables decorated with irises and tulips, Charles (Bebe) Rebozo, Nixon’s longtime friend, rose and made a simple toast: “To history.”

Richard Nixon Comes Home

Former President Richard Nixon will be buried at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace next to his wife, Pat, who died last year. The public will be able to pay last respects beginning Tuesday.

Tuesday

Nixon’s body arrives: In the afternoon, on Air force One

Public gathering at library: 1 p.m.

Public viewing: 3 p.m. through 11 a.m. Wednesday

Wednesday

Service: For family and friends only at 4 p.m.

Officiant: the Rev. Billy Graham

Eulogists: President Clinton, Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas, California Gov. Pete Wilson

Interment: Private, following services at a location near Mrs. Nixon’s grave

Messages and Flowers

Address: 1800 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda, 92686

Fax: (714) 528-0544

Information: (714) 993-3393

Sources: Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace