Nixon's Secret (6 page)

Additionally, Frank Nixon was a polarizing figure in the community, particularly for his propensity for engaging patrons of his shop in political “debates.” His debates were so great in length and competitiveness that he at times would run patrons from the store.
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Neither Hannah’s generosity with strangers nor Frank’s difficult nature was particularly helpful to a family struggling to support themselves. Still, selling a variety of fresh vegetables, patent medicines, and local poultry and pumping gasoline, the small Nixon store thrived for a time.

Hannah, ever the conservative Quaker, made it her duty to ensure her children were raised to be properly God-fearing individuals. In one story of Richard’s childhood, when Hannah caught Richard and his older brother Harold eating grapes taken from a neighbor’s property, she made them use their hard-earned savings to pay the neighbor, Mrs. Trueblood. Hannah did this despite Mrs. Trueblood’s objection that it wasn’t necessary. In the words of Yorba Linda native Richard Gardner, “From that day on, nobody can remember the Nixon boys ever did a dishonest thing.”
13

Nixon attended East Whittier Elementary School, where he was president of his eighth-grade class. Even at that young age his intelligence was obvious to his teachers and fellow students alike. Nixon’s mother had taught him to read before he began kindergarten, and his memory was prodigious. A neighboring child remembers the teacher bringing Nixon into her third grade class when he was in kindergarten to recite a lengthy poem. The neighbor, Virginia Shaw, is quoted as saying, “It was amazing that a kindergartener could learn that vast amount of poetry . . . I remember all of us were very, very envious.”
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Nixon would be advanced from the first grade directly to the third in response to his academic prowess.

Further evidence of Nixon’s intelligence and ambition can be found in a letter he drafted at age eleven, for an application to a job with the
Los Angeles Times
, the paper to which the Nixon family subscribed. “Please consider me for the position of office boy mentioned in the
Times
paper. I am eleven years of age and I am in the Sixth grade of the East Whittier grammar school. I am very willing to work . . . I am willing to come to your office at any time and I will accept any pay offered.”
15
While Nixon, the working-class boy from the suburbs, was not offered the job, this provides us with early evidence of the man he would become—driven, hardworking, and confident in his intelligence.

For his first two years of high school, Richard attended Fullerton Union High School, at which he received excellent grades despite needing to ride a bus for an hour each way to school his freshman year (during his sophomore year, he would live with an aunt in Fullerton during the week). At Fullerton, he played football and was an accomplished debater.
16

For his final two years of high school Richard transferred to Whittier High School. His older brother Harold had been diagnosed with tuberculosis the preceding year, and Richard was put in charge of the vegetable counter at the family grocery store in his brother’s stead. As a result of this responsibility, Richard woke at 4 a.m. to drive into Los Angeles to purchase vegetables at the market. After returning with the vegetables, he washed and displayed them at the store, all this before making his way to school. At Whittier, Nixon attempted to join as many clubs and organizations as he possibly could, but that at which he most excelled was debate.

Nixon’s debate coach would later be quoted speaking admirably regarding his competency. According to Mrs. Clifford Vincent, “He was so good that it kind of disturbed me. He had this ability to kind of slide around an argument instead of meeting it head on, and he could take any side of a debate.”
17
Naturally, to those who have sought to demonize Nixon since the end of his time in office, this statement is not praise, but rather a criticism. However, this was high praise, particularly the closing phrase that Nixon “could take any side of a debate.” As anyone who has had any exposure to competitive debate will tell you, having the mental flexibility to address an issue from all angles and understand all credible arguments is of the utmost importance for success. Perhaps most impressively, despite all these drains on his time, Nixon managed to finish third in his class at Whittier High. Never let it be said that Richard Nixon wasn’t a driven man.

While at Whittier High, Nixon had met a fellow student by the name of Ola Florence Welch, with whom he appeared in the school’s rendition of Virgil’s
Aeneid
.
18
Ola, the daughter of Whittier’s deputy chief of police, played the role of Dido (Queen of Carthage and love interest of Aeneas), and their romance developed from their involvement in the play. Their relationship would follow Nixon to college, where it would continue to flourish despite their vast differences in personality and politics. Ola was a staunch Democrat and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, a thoroughly outgoing person, and a lover of dance.
19
Nixon, like his father, remained a Republican, as distant as he had ever been, and as a byproduct of his Quaker upbringing, or simply a manifestation of his shyness, was a very unenthusiastic dancer.
20
Nixon’s activity in amateur theater would hold him in good stead. He would not only meet future wife Thelma Ryan in an amateur theater production, but he would develop an uncanny ability to cry at will. He would use this in future theatrical productions, and it would become handy in his future political career.

While Nixon was accepted to Harvard University with a tuition grant, his brother’s continued illness and the cost of Harvard tuition in total caused him to remain at home and attend Whittier College. Whittier, while a rather academically rigorous institution, was very much a product of its Quaker heritage. Students were expected to participate in a mandatory chapel hour daily, and the administration and policies of the college were unabashedly Christian. Nixon’s inability to attend Harvard University would be both a badge of honor and a source of resentment—honor for how far he was able to come and resentment at the treatment he received from those who believed themselves his superior as a result of their inheritance. In my opinion, this is what watered the seeds of Nixon’s hatred for the Ivy League and those he perceived as privileged or feeling themselves entitled. His hatred of the Kennedys with their Harvard pedigree would never disappear. “No Harvard men,” he would bark at Chief of Staff Haldeman during his 1968 presidential transition.

While Whittier did not have fraternities and sororities, their traditional role was played instead by Whittier’s literary societies. At the time of Nixon’s admission there was only one active men’s literary society, a group known as the Franklins. The Franklins were, or at least the Franklins viewed themselves as, occupants of the highest end of the social milieu. They were the children of the prominent and wealthy, who had been groomed for, and taught the ins and outs of, high society.
21
They were, in short, the antithesis of Nixon in terms of background or breeding.

Nixon, despite his love of literature and superior intelligence, was predictably snubbed by the blue-blooded Franklins. Nixon, always sensitive to his humble roots, responded to this injustice by becoming a founding member of a new society, the Orthogonian Society, Orthogonian meaning, “square shooters.” This name was a sort of self-deprecating humor from the new group, made up of many football players and others not academically, or socially, qualified for the Franklins. Nixon would later describe the difference between the Franklins and the Orthoginians as such, “[The Franklins] were the haves and we were the have-nots.”
22
In a courageous gesture, the Orthogonians even inducted fellow athlete William Brock, a black man, into the society.
23
To Nixon it didn’t matter that he was black, only that like Nixon himself, he, too, was an underdog wrongly discriminated against by the Franklins. Brock would repay Nixon’s principle later in life when he would defend Nixon against accusations of racism.

That Nixon was able to rally a group comprised primarily of the members of the Whittier football players to his side is not as shocking as it might seem. While Nixon was a rather poor football player, he was a determined player. He was allowed to practice with the team, and then in games decided by a large margin was allowed to play in games, having earned the respect and affection of his fellow players in something of a precursor of his navy years. Still, his coach at Whittier and a lifetime friend, Wallace Newman, has admitted to worrying about Nixon during practices: “When he scrimmaged he was the cannon fodder. I used to get concerned at how we worked him over.”
24
Nixon’s determination appeared to win himself a number of accolades at Whittier, as a former teammate from his time on the team recalled, “I shall never forget the tremendous roar which went up from the rooting section when Dick got into the lineup for the last few minutes of a few games.”
25

During his time at Whittier College, Nixon successfully built on his prior debate experience to become an extraordinarily accomplished debater.
26
Despite founding the Orthogonians and finding great success both academically, and as a champion debater, Nixon would never forget the slight he received from the Franklins. Indeed, the resentment he harbored toward the Franklins, and those like them, would fuel Nixon for the remainder of his life. Nixon would take a certain amount of revenge on the Franklins his senior year when he orchestrated a successful campaign for the presidency of the student council, defeating a Franklin.
27
Through his collegiate interactions with the Franklins, Nixon had begun to learn a lesson, fully realized in his later navy years, which would have great bearing on his electoral success; Nixon, through his thoroughly unremarkable roots, was attractive to others because of how outwardly average he appeared. Nixon was not, nor could he ever be, a Franklin; the majority of those he interacted with could never be Franklins either. Nixon resented the Franklins of the world for trying to make him feel inferior when Nixon knew fully well he was their intellectual superior he would spend his life trying to prove it to them. After graduating from Whittier in 1934, Nixon received a full scholarship to attend Duke University School of Law, then a new school seeking to make a name for itself. While the school offered a large number of scholarships to first-year students, it reduced the numbers of those offered for second- and third-year students. This incited an intense competition among the student body. Nixon excelled during his time at Duke, despite sharing a room with three other students in a farmhouse a mile from campus without running water and heated only by a small stove.
28
During his second year, Nixon was elected president of the Duke Bar Association and, upon his graduation as third in his class in 1937, inducted into the elite Order of the Coif; the order’s membership now extends to forty-five of the top fifty law schools in the country and limits its membership to the top 10 percent of each school’s graduating class.
29

While by almost any measure Nixon’s time at Duke was a great success for him, in terms of his personal life it was a more mixed bag. Ola, his relationship with her having survived Whittier College, would not stay faithful to him upon his departure for Duke.
30
While he would never speak out against her as many other men would have in his place, and to her credit she was always kind in her words to those who would ask her about him, he surely was disappointed to find she had left him for a man who was, “more fun.”
31

On the advice of his friend, Dean Horick, Nixon returned to Whittier and took a job at the law firm of Wingert & Bewley. He accepted the position after completing a bar examination course in three months rather than the expected five. However, Wingert & Bowley was not Nixon’s first choice. He spent Christmas of his final year in law school interviewing for positions at the top-tier New York City law firms. His lack of pedigree, coupled with Duke’s status as a newly created law school, meant he was unable to land one of those coveted positions.
32
Once again, Nixon found himself weakened by his lack of social standing, despite whatever other merit he had.

Wingert & Bewley represented local oil companies, as well as handling wills and some other similar matters.
33
It did not handle criminal matters and handled very little in the way of litigation. However, through Wingert & Bowley’s representation of many of Whittier’s major commercial ventures, Nixon was exposed to many of the individuals who would help launch his political career in his first bid for public office.

Within a year at Wingert & Bewley, Nixon became a partner and the firm became Wingert, Bewley, and Nixon. As a part of his partnership Nixon opened a new branch of the firm in the town of La Habra. His secretary during his time at Wingert and Bewley notes that the young Mr. Nixon “would sleep on the couch in his office some nights.”
34
Despite an exhausting work schedule, he participated in a number of civic programs. Nixon became president of the Whittier 20-30 Club, sat on the Board of Trustees at Whittier College, and took part in amateur theater productions. It was during his time with the amateur theater that Nixon met Thelma Patricia “Pat” Ryan.

Pat Ryan endured a childhood that was even more difficult than that of Nixon. Her father, a failure at everything he tried, drank heavily and eventually died from tuberculosis when Pat was eighteen years old.
35
Her mother having died from liver cancer four years earlier, Pat was left in charge of the family home. She was offered an escape from California by family in Connecticut, and took a job for two years working with her aunt. Her aunt was a nun and head of the X-ray and pharmacy unit at the Sisters of Charity’s Seton Hospital.
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