A Low-Key Holiday for a Highly Controversial Man

The world might not notice, but city workers will: Nixon Day is here again.

This weekend marks the 10th year the city has celebrated its most famous son by unilaterally declaring Jan. 9, former President Richard Nixon’s birthday, a holiday.

The problem is, hardly anyone knows.

The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace will mark the president’s 87th birthday with a band concert at 2 p.m. today. And municipal offices will be closed Monday, giving city employees the day off.

But the banks will remain open, mail will be delivered and even the garbage will be picked up, since it is done by a private contractor and not city employees.

“I don’t think it affects us,” said Gary Springer, 41, of the YL Vacuum & Appliance shop, when told of the holiday. “I liked Nixon and can appreciate that it’s his birthday, but for me it’s not a big holiday.”

So Springer hasn’t planned a special Nixon barbecue at his house. And he’s not going to watch a parade down Main Street, because one hasn’t been scheduled. He’s not even offering special deals on tape-recorder repairs at his shop.

“I’ll probably just guard our parking lot and reserve space for our customers,” said Springer, who lives in Anaheim Hills. “When something goes on at the library, they come park in our lot.”

David Gruchow, assistant city manager for Yorba Linda, said about 100 city employees will be affected by the paid holiday, one of 12 days off that they get annually. He said the number of holidays is consistent with those given to municipal employees elsewhere and similar to giving government workers a day off to commemorate the births of Lincoln and Washington.

Of course, celebrating birthdays as holidays isn’t the only way Americans honor dead presidents. There are the memorial libraries, which Nixon already has. And there are coins.

So far, though, Nixon’s famous profile hasn’t been minted for public circulation.

Ed Quigley, a former teacher who runs Main Street Coins and Collectibles, doesn’t think Nixon stands a chance of bumping Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Washington or Kennedy from the lower denomination coins.

That leaves the dollar coin, which currently carries suffragette Susan B. Anthony’s likeness. Anthony’s image is to be replaced in March with that of Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark’s 1804-06 expedition across the American continent.

Quigley said he can see Nixon as a contender for the coin the next time it’s redesigned, after five to seven years.

Of course, Nixon’s standing nationwide isn’t quite what it is in Yorba Linda, where the details of his fall from power and subsequent resignation in 1974 are seen as an asterisk to a life rather than as a defining denouement.

“I see Nixon the same as I see Clinton,” Quigley said. “They’ve done some outstanding things, but they’re human beings and their flaws have been magnified.”

Yet Nixon has also magnified Yorba Linda.

Barber Mike Ruocco remembers the day the world came to pay its respects at Nixon’s funeral, less than a mile from Yorba Linda’s Main Street shopping district.

The lines were long that day and Ruocco had his barbershop to run, so he didn’t make it to the funeral. But he did zip to the corner to watch President Clinton’s motorcade whiz by, one of those memories he’s filed away as interesting but not necessarily significant.

Sort of like Nixon’s birthday.

Ruocco said he’ll be closed Monday, but that’s because he closes every Monday. He didn’t know Nixon’s birthday was looming and even if he did he doubts he’d have planned anything special.

Still, the library is nearby and Nixon was a native son, so Ruocco keeps a memento of the funeral on a shelf. It’s a small framed photo of Nixon draped with a black band, a gift from someone.