Americans Recall Heroic, Tragic Figure

In Orange County’s Little Saigon, he was a hero, the American leader who tried to stop the Communists from taking over Vietnam. At an Earth Day celebration in Palo Alto, he was the man who divided a nation during the turbulent 1960s. And in his hometown of Whittier, he was a local boy who rose from humble beginnings to the White House.

Across the nation Saturday, Americans sifted through a complicated mix of emotions as they remembered Richard Nixon. One day after the 37th President died, he was lauded for improving Cold War relations with the Soviet Union and China and vilified for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in.

In Yorba Linda, crowds gathered throughout the day at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace. Mourners stood in small groups on the library’s concrete steps and approached its closed front doors, where roses, burning candles, children’s drawings and handwritten notes formed an ever-growing tribute.

Amy and Shu Ping Yu, a Walnut couple who emigrated from China in 1979, stood side by side before the doors, gratefully remembering the man responsible for the historic opening to China in 1972.

“We care so much for this man,” said Shu Ping Yu, 52, blinking back tears as he remembered watching Nixon’s motorcade pass by him on a Beijing street 22 years earlier. “Then, I never thought I could be here. He opened the door for so many people, for me. He gave us a brand-new life.”

Nearby, Dawn Miller of Yorba Linda was talking quietly to her 5-year-old daughter, Ali, as they walked down the steps, past a bed of colorful pansies and out toward the parking lot.

“I wanted to bring her so that maybe she can remember him too,” Miller said. “Unfortunately, so many people remember him just for Watergate. I really admire the fact that he was able to look beyond that. I want her to know that when you make mistakes, you go on and keep trying to do other good things.”

Not far away, Robert Cornwell, 41, gazed through a white railing entwined with bougainvillea at the tiny clapboard farmhouse where Nixon was born. But unlike many of the other visitors, Cornwell admitted to a measure of ambivalence about the man he had come to remember.

“I disagreed with the man strongly about many things and really felt betrayed by Watergate,” Cornwell said. “But I also think he made some very tough, good decisions.”

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, former soldiers offered conflicting assessments of the man who presided over some of the bloodiest episodes of the Vietnam War but later began the U.S. withdrawal from the conflict.

“Hey, he got me home 20 days early,” said Roy Jessee, 45, a former infantryman who was selling T-shirts at a booth to raise money for veterans. He said Nixon was no worse than any other White House occupant.

“He just got caught,” Jessee said. “Watergate, Whitewater--what’s the difference? Nixon was just the scapegoat.”

At a nearby tent dedicated to a final accounting of the missing in action, veteran Valerie Menard said she prayed for Nixon on Saturday morning. But she criticized him for not doing more for the troops she said were left behind in Vietnam.

“I don’t like it that he said everyone was back,” Menard said. “That was obviously, blatantly false.”

In Yonkers, N.Y., at a small, family-run drugstore, customers praised Nixon as a wise statesman whose writings and foreign travels offered a unique perspective on the Soviet Union and China.

“I think what he wanted to do in the years after (his resignation) was make some contribution, and I think he did do that,” said Barbara Smith, an assistant school principal.

“He made some mistakes,” she added, “but we all do.”

In California, Nixon’s home state, the former President was remembered by figures ranging from actress Zsa Zsa Gabor to Former Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown.

Brown, a dedicated liberal, supported Nixon’s opponents for Congress, Senate and the presidency, and in a statement Saturday he said he was “most proud” of his own defeat of Nixon in the 1962 governor’s race.

“We disagreed in principle and in practice, in ideals and ideas,” he said.

“Over the years there has been a mellowing between Dick Nixon and myself,” said Brown, who was appointed by Nixon to a commission on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and co-chaired the first U.S. visit of China’s table tennis team under Nixon’s “Ping-Pong diplomacy” of the 1970s.

More recently, Nixon invited Brown to the Yorba Linda library to discuss their 1962 contest.

“Time is a great healer,” Brown said. “President Nixon accomplished some great things for our nation. He will be missed by his friends.”

Praise was fervent in some Vietnamese immigrant communities.

“He was the greatest President of the United States and one of the greatest leaders of the world,” said Dr. Co D. L. Pham, a physician who heads the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Westminster. “When Nixon resigned, all of us felt like we lost our President. We respected him and we adored him so much. We look at him like a savior.”

Yen Do, editor of the Nguoi Viet Daily News, the community’s largest newspaper, said: “Everybody knows that he was a very, very strong anti-Communist. He was a real hero for the refugees because he was a strong anti-Communist and because he was a strong leader.”

A famous former protester against the Vietnam War, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), expressed “compassion” for Nixon, but said he and the former President stood at opposite poles of the 1960s “intergenerational breakdown” between youth and their World War II-generation parents.

Hayden, who was indicted by the Nixon Administration for inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, faulted the former President for failing to understand the youthful rage of that time.

Rather than seeing the protests that swept the country as a legitimate reaction to a war many felt was unjust, Nixon chose to view the dissenters as pawns of foreign agents and Communist propaganda, Hayden said.

“What he could not deal with was that it was an honest reaction to his generation,” said Hayden, who was attending a rainy Earth Day celebration in Palo Alto. “That was what was tragic about Nixon.”

In his hometown of Whittier, Nixon was the prime topic of conversation Saturday. Many remembered him fondly.

“When I think of Nixon, I don’t think first of Watergate. I think of foreign policy. I think the country is really going to miss his consultation,” said one resident, Gary Walker. “I think he’ll be remembered as a great elder statesman.”

At tiny Whittier College, where Nixon was graduated in 1934 before attending attending law school at Duke University, flags flew at half-staff. On the athletic field of the wooded campus, Nixon and his late wife, Pat, are listed among the major underwriting donors of the complex’s lighting system.

And in the college’s Hall of Fame, there is a plaque honoring Nixon’s less-than-illustrious football career. He was a “great inspiration to (the) team with halftime pep talks, bench-cheering leadership,” the plaque reads.

Gail Hug, who was strolling on the campus with her 9-year-old son, Daniel, was a freshman at Whittier High School in 1969. She said she remembers students being torn between their allegiance to the home-grown President and their growing opposition to the Vietnam War.

She said some came to consider Nixon as “the enemy incarnate.” Her own views softened over the years, she said.

For Daniel, who considers himself a history buff, Nixon’s death was a tragedy.

“I thought it was pretty sad. We lost a President who lived here,” he said. “He went to school right here.”

In the Crenshaw District in Los Angeles, where hundreds gathered for a parade honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., many said they had little in common with Nixon and his Administration but generally praised the former President as a skillful leader in international relations.

“We should all be saddened anytime a great leader passes, whether we agree or disagree with his policies,” said Lynwood Mayor Paul L. Richards. “He made many contributions and perhaps they will outweigh his other legacies.”

Added Louis Byrd, Lynwood’s mayor pro tem: “People here, like everywhere, have mixed emotions. . . . He was real diplomat, a real American.”

But Byrd and others were also critical of the former President, questioning his commitment to civil rights and saying that his domestic agenda did not focus on economic development in the African American and other minority communities.

“Richard Nixon is not a hero of black people, poor people or minority people. The devastation that is happening to our cities is because of Richard Nixon and his policies,” said homeless activist Ted Hayes, who was leading a mule-drawn replica of the casket that carried King.

Many at the parade were youths born after Nixon left the White House in disgrace in 1974. High school student Christopher Juarez just shrugged his shoulders when asked about Nixon.

“He was an ex-President. He was an intelligent man,” said Juarez, who was marching with his Air Force Junior ROTC unit. “He cared about his country. That’s about all I know.”

Times staff writers Jim Newton in Los Angeles, Jodi Wilgoren in Orange County, Ed Chen in Washington and Marlene Cimons in New York contributed to this story.