RICHARD NIXON: 1913-1994 : O.C. Recalls Local Boy Who Made It to the White House : Influence: Nixon friends and rivals reminisce on the former President’s impact on national, world events.

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.

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 Washington, several members of Orange County’s congressional delegation remembered Nixon with particular fondness.

“Nixon was a towering figure in American politics, a man whom I believe history will remember as a great statesman, a man with an incredible grasp of our nation’s interest abroad,” Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) said Saturday in a statement released by his aide.

“Especially at this time, when our foreign policy is uncertain at best, we can learn a lesson from Nixon--the quintessential Cold Warrior: advance democracy abroad through leadership, negotiate peace from a position of strength.”

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) called him “a central figure in the central struggle of the 20th Century--the struggle (for) freedom and democracy.”

“President Nixon was a great national resource. His vision on the critical foreign policy issues of our time has always been of high caliber and lasting significance.”

“I had the honor to be with him at a dinner recently. His analysis of world affairs--delivered without notes, as usual--was crisp and comprehensive. He was still a master on top of his game.

“As a politician, he was virtually without peer,” Royce said. “People who think Bill Clinton is the comeback kid have very short memories.”

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.”

State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) got to know Nixon after he returned in exile to Orange County. She was running for Assembly in 1976, and Nixon saw her debate on TV. She got a call from Ken Khachigian, who said the president had complimented her on the debate. “That was a real ego boost,” she recalled.

Not long after, she met Nixon during a gathering at the Western White House. He asked Bergeson about her career intentions and urged her to run for Congress.

“He really was a very warm person on a one-on-one basis when you had an opportunity to be with him in a small gathering,” Bergeson recalled.

Although the Watergate episode was unquestionably “a mistake” on Nixon’s part, the people of Orange County never lost faith, she said.

“The interesting thing about Orange County is that everyone stayed loyal to him, even in the critical times when the world had forsaken him because of Watergate,” she said. “People who had known him never lost support for him. It was a personal attachment, and it was a sign of respect for his ability and his leadership in foreign policy and other areas.”

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) concurs. “I think that any community is proud when one of its own achieves greatness,” he said. “I think Orange County felt very proud, even when he was at his lowest point. If you had polled Orange County during Watergate, I think Richard Nixon still could have gotten elected.”

Ferguson knew of Nixon early in his career. Ferguson’s aunt in Whittier gave Nixon one of his first political parties when he ran for Congress after World War II. As a Marine Corps officer, Ferguson met then-Vice President Nixon during a campaign breakfast in Ohio and later at a reception in Washington.

Though Nixon will always be remembered for Watergate and his foreign policy efforts, Ferguson said many people forget that the former president played a big part in putting environmentalism on the national agenda with the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I don’t think any environmentalist would salute him, but it wasn’t the fuzzy thinkers who started this, it was Nixon,” he said.

Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), who is running for state attorney general, said, “It is now the appropriate time to reflect on his positive contributions to life as we know it here today in the United States--most notably establishing detente with the former Soviet Union and opening the doors to China.”

Umberg said the Watergate scandal left him with a sense of betrayal back then. “Now, 20 years have elapsed and I can put Watergate and the events surrounding it in a different perspective,” Umberg said. “One healthy thing is that we know that government can survive a crisis, and that institutions are stronger than politicians.”

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.”

Times staff writers Jim Newton in Los Angeles, Faye Fiore and Ed Chen in Washington, Eric Bailey in Sacramento and Marlene Cimons in New York contributed to this story.