Nixon Library Proves a Perfect Home for Holiday : History: Presidents Day visitors offer emotions ranging from respect to ridicule as they seek to define former chief executive’s legacy.

What could be a better way to spend Presidents Day than visiting the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace? said Chris Fowler.

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Fowler, a “bedrock conservative and loyal Republican,” was sitting outside the Presidential museum Monday, chewing on a sandwich and using his free hand to shade his eyes from the bright afternoon sun.

“Richard Nixon is one of my heroes,” said Fowler, 51, an Arizona resident. “He’s certainly the most influential man to emerge during my lifetime. Whether you loved him or hated him, you’ve got to give him credit for beginning the process that ended the Cold War.”

“Yeah. He was a great President and a crook,” deadpanned Fowler’s companion, Fred Wright, of Woodland Hills.

Almost one year after his death, Nixon still evokes sharp differences of opinion among Americans who are equally passionate in their defense and loathing of the 37th President. Nixon, the disgraced former President, resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate political scandal.

So it should come as no surprise that not everyone who visited the Nixon Library on Monday was an admirer.

“Oh, I voted for him in 1968, but only because I felt that he wanted to be President so badly,” said Frances O’Brien, who said she was “over 60.” “But in 1960 I voted for Kennedy. With a name like O’Brien, how could I not vote for Kennedy?”

O’Brien, a New York native who lives in Anaheim, was visiting the library with friends Ann Yost and Ruth Tarnutzer. She said that Pat Nixon, whose maiden name was Ryan, was her father’s cousin. Both families trace their roots to the same Irish town, O’Brien said.

Yost, 49 and a Pasadena resident, said she attended a private school for girls in Los Angeles with Tricia and Julie Nixon. Yost said that she remembered the Nixon girls did not come to school the day after their father lost the gubernatorial race to Democrat Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr. in 1962.

“I voted for Nixon in 1972 because I believed in what he stood for then. I’m still a registered Republican, but I don’t vote Republican anymore,” Yost said. She called Watergate “a stupid event.”

Tarnutzer, who lives in Los Angeles and said she is “over 75,” described herself as a “dyed-in-the wool Republican” who has voted for the GOP presidential candidate every time “except the two times I voted for (Franklin D.) Roosevelt.”

“Nixon was a great President. I believe that without hesitation,” Tarnutzer said. “I don’t think that Watergate was his own doing. I think he was pushed into the whole mess. He got caught up in the investigation. I don’t think he knew about the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters when it happened, but I think he should have.”.

Inside the museum, Tom Richardson and his family were enjoying two new exhibits featuring John W. Orth’s oil portraits of 36 Presidents and a series of photographs by Matthew Brady showing Abraham Lincoln and his contemporaries.

“I don’t really associate Nixon with Presidents Day. I think that we’re still celebrating Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays today,” said Richardson, who lives in Riverside. “I don’t have any feelings for Nixon either way. My dad hated him, but my grandfather liked him ‘cause he was anti-Communist.”

Looking back at Nixon’s days on the House Un-American Activities Committee, Yost called Nixon’s and the committee’s search for Communists “ridiculous.”

“So what if somebody is a Communist?” Yost said.

By 2 p.m., the parking lot outside the library began to get crowded, prompting O’Brien to comment, “I guess this is where everybody comes for Presidents Day.”

Unless they want to drive up the freeway to Simi Valley and visit the Ronald Reagan Library, a visitor said.

“Oh, no thank you,” O’Brien said. “One Republican is enough for me.”