Service Offers Echoes of a Complex Life

Perhaps now, Richard Nixon can rest.

Through 81 eventful years, Nixon engaged in a tireless quest--to escape his pinched and provincial youth, to win the esteem of his peers, to confound his enemies and to redeem his tarnished name.

On a chilly, gusty April afternoon, Nixon’s quest finally ended. He found peace--and the honor that had so eluded him through a long and contentious life.

As President Clinton and the four living former presidents looked on, Nixon was eulogized as a towering intellect and an indomitable fighter.

No single eulogy could capture the complexities of this bitter and striving man who bestrode the latter half of the 20th Century.

And for that the service seemed ultimately unsatisfying. The man loomed so large and for so long that a mere 85 minutes could not contain his memory. There were passing references to his “mistakes,” to his “bitter journey” and to his “suffering.” But it was impossible to capture in a single moment what Nixon meant to a nation that found him alternately fascinating, frightening and inspiring for his tenacity in the face of repeated humiliation.

Henry A. Kissinger came closest in noting that in an astonishing lifetime, Nixon achieved greatly and suffered deeply.

Echoing Hamlet, Kissinger said: “He was a man. Take him. For all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

Clinton urged the crowd of nearly 2,000 dignitaries from around the globe and a nationwide television audience to judge Nixon on his entire life and career, not merely on his famous victories and his divisive defeats.

The funeral service, set before the mail-order house that Nixon’s father built and where the future President was born on Jan. 9, 1913, offered a tableau of power and politics. Half the Senate was there, along with 64 House members and representatives of 87 nations.

It was a gathering of old elephants, the Nixon faithful of his early years in California and late converts brought into the circle of believers by Nixon’s tireless efforts to reclaim the mantle of statesmanship.

The partisan Republican tenor of the crowd was evident in the reception accorded Clinton and former President Ronald Reagan. As Reagan and his wife, Nancy, emerged through the funeral sprays, hundreds in the crowd spontaneously stood and gave a standing ovation.

The entrance of Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, two minutes later, was met with a palpable silence.

Eras overlapped and the worlds of politics, diplomacy and Hollywood mingled freely, if stiffly at times, throughout the afternoon. Former Nixon Cabinet officers and aides mixed with current and former members of Congress, foreign dignitaries and long-lived show business figures, including Bob Hope, Red Skelton and Buddy Ebsen.

But no sight was more poignant than that of Nixon’s brother, Edward, a lonely, awkward figure sitting off to one side, his hands folded in his lap, his face mournful.

So much the image of the late President, with the ski-slope nose and the trademark Nixon jowls. So much a reminder of an era at an end.

Kissinger, Nixon’s foreign policy alter ego, said the former President would take comfort in the “tide of concern, respect, admiration and affection evoked by his last great battle.” After Kissinger concluded his remarks, he bowed formally to the coffin bearing the remains of the man he considered his ablest student.

Indeed, Nixon was more honored in the last four days of his life after suffering a stroke last week than in his previous four decades in the political arena.

Clinton paid dutiful but restrained homage to his predecessor, the man who offered him counsel in private but who harshly criticized his domestic and foreign policies in a soon-to-be-published book.

Clinton, perhaps thinking of his own triumphs and trials, said Nixon’s enduring lesson is that he “never gave up being part of the action and passion of his times.”

Those attending the service included the great and near-great, the famous and the notorious.

G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate conspirator who spent more time in jail than any of his fellow felons because he refused to rat on his boss, was there looking as menacing as ever.

Spiro T. Agnew, the vice president who resigned in disgrace the year before Nixon yielded the presidency and who was not sure he would be welcome, showed up too.

Robert Abplanalp and C. G. (Bebe) Rebozo, the two wealthy Nixon cronies who provided aid and succor during the tumultuous final months of his presidency and the painful months after his resignation, were accorded places of honor behind Nixon’s daughters and their husbands.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), an accomplished political pugilist himself, called Nixon “the most durable public figure of our time.”

“The American people love a fighter, and in Dick Nixon, they found a gallant one,” Dole said before losing his voice in a rush of emotion. He returned to his seat in tears.

Aboard Air Force One carrying Clinton and numerous current and past government leaders, a pensive George S. McGovern, Nixon’s opponent in the bitter 1972 presidential campaign, said he and Nixon had made peace in 1976, when the former President responded in a friendly fashion to a phone call McGovern had placed after Nixon’s wife, Pat, suffered a stroke.

In the years since, the two men had spoken occasionally, generally trading thoughts on foreign policy issues.

“Richard Nixon has been around so long, and my own career has been so intertwined with his that I really had the feeling that an old friend has left the scene,” McGovern said.

“I must say it touched me to see this old man, 81 years of age, still trying to figure out what these Russians are all about.” he said. “He underwent emotional trauma that I doubt that very many people could have withstood. The withdrawal in disgrace after Watergate had to just be a calamitous thing in his life.”

Just outside the library’s front entrance, several signs stood among flower arrangements of every color and variety. A printed placard from a group in Beijing gratefully acknowledged Nixon’s greatest foreign policy triumph, the opening to China in 1972, with the words, “We will remember you for giving us freedom by pushing down the first domino.”

Another, handwritten, compared Nixon to the current occupant of the White House: “Compared to the Clintons, the Nixons were saints.”

Following the hourlong service, an honor guard bore Nixon’s coffin to the little plot of land behind his boyhood home where Pat Nixon was buried after her death last year.

The Rev. Billy Graham presided at the committal service, which was attended only by Nixon’s immediate family, Clinton and the four former presidents.

On a slab of black marble marking Nixon’s grave are carved these words from his first inaugural address: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”

Despite all his efforts in office and out, that title yet eludes Nixon, who waged war in Southeast Asia for four years and did battle with his political enemies throughout his public life.

Historians may yet bestow that honor on the 37th President. As Graham said in his eulogy: “There is hope beyond the grave.”

* Times Link: 808-8463

To hear excerpts from Wednesday’s eulogies, some of Richard Nixon’s famous speeches and memoirs, and President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, call TimesLink and press * and the desired four-digit code. “Checkers” speech: * 7350 “Last” press conference: * 7360 Inaugural address, 1968: * 7361 Resignation speech: * 7362 “In the Arena”: * 7363 President Ford’s pardon: * 7364 Pres. Clinton’s eulogy: * 7370 Henry Kissinger’s eulogy: * 7371 Call TimesLink from area codes 213, 310, 714, 818 or 909. From other regions, use the area code nearest you.