RICHARD NIXON: 1913-1994 : O.C. Schools Draw Lessons From Historic Ceremony

On the day former President Richard Nixon was buried in a state funeral a few miles away, teacher Kathy DeBie discussed the 37th President with her class at Raymond Elementary School in Fullerton.

She learned that while her first-through third-graders know nothing about the Watergate burglary or Nixon’s role in the cover-up, the children realize that his presidency was troubled, and they are saddened by his death.

“We got no response on Watergate,” she said. “But they know some people didn’t like Nixon.”

Throughout Orange County, school officials said students expressed sorrow, even tears, on the funeral day of a man whose political career preceded their births but who they had heard about from parents and teachers.

Tom Joliet, a fourth-grade teacher at Truman Benedict Elementary School in San Clemente, said that more than half the students in his current events class chose Nixon’s stroke and funeral as their topic Wednesday. Many were teary-eyed.

“It seemed it was a reflection of what their parents felt at home,” Joliet said.

One girl brought with her a photograph of her mother as a child standing next to Nixon at the Western White House in San Clemente in 1969.

The class was also aware of Nixon’s historic departure from the presidency, he said.

“They knew what it was to be impeached and that he resigned,” Joliet said, “but they used the word fired. One student said he got fired and another corrected him, saying ‘No, he quit before they fired him.’ ”

Some students skipped school Wednesday or arrived late, school officials said, because their parents took them to the public viewing of the casket.

“One father called and said his children went to the Nixon library at 9:30 last night and didn’t get to the coffin until 10 or 10:30 this morning,” said Marsha Rodriguez, office manager at Ladera Vista Junior High School in Fullerton. The children “are not coming in at all because they are sleeping.”

When classes were over at the school, Richard Nam, 14, said he too would be making a pilgrimage to Yorba Linda, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ceremony from the rooftop of a friend’s apartment building. “I like Richard Nixon a lot,” Nam said.

There is also a lot of warm sentiment for Nixon at Fullerton High School, where he was a student from 1926 to 1928. On Wednesday morning, Principal Edward Shaw read over the loudspeaker part of a letter Nixon sent in October for the school’s centennial celebration.

“It is with great respect that we pay tribute,” said Shaw, adding that the students also marked the day with a half-staff ceremony at the school’s flagpole.

“Fullerton High is a conservative, Republican high school, reflecting the students’ parents,” said Mark Henderson, a history teacher and student government adviser. Some seniors here are familiar with Nixon’s record on Southeast Asia, he said, because “we spent six to seven weeks discussing Vietnam and we ended with Nixon.”

And he noted that even sophomores, who have not studied the Nixon presidency, were excited by the state funeral. “Sophomores have no understanding of Watergate and very little of Vietnam. They are more into the pomp and circumstance of it,” he said.

Nixon was not the central topic, however, in Carroll Smith’s fifth-grade history discussion at Ladera Vista.

“I concentrated on the election in South Africa because I felt that was more important,” Smith said. “Because we are studying the growth of democracy in the U.S., I wanted them to know what was happening in other countries.”