Remains of Nixon’s Checkers May Make Their Final Move

Checkers, the dog sometimes credited with saving Richard Nixon’s career, may someday be laid to rest near its owner.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Nixon’s daughter, would like to exhume the remains from a Long Island pet cemetery and move them to the grounds of the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, Calif., near the graves of the former president and his wife, Pat.

In an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that aired last week, Nixon’s daughter said: “Someday, we’re going to bring her to the library.”

Checkers was central to a speech that Nixon, then a candidate for vice president, made in 1952. In the speech, Nixon denied wrongfully accepting money from supporters, but admitted that he accepted one gift--”a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate,” sent from Texas. Checkers died in 1964.

“As a pet owner, I certainly understand that they might want it to be somewhere else,” said Marguerite Howard, a spokeswoman for Bide-A-Wee Pet Memorial Park in Wantagh, N.Y., where Checkers is buried. “But we haven’t been informed by anyone that they wish to move the dog.”

Presidential library spokeswoman Arianna Barrios called Checkers “a part of the Nixon legacy, as well as a part of the family.”