“Hers are concise notes, funny and practical; his are lengthy, flowery and eager,” the L.A. Times writes in an article about Richard Nixon’s love letters.
“‘Somehow on Tuesday there was something electric in the usually almost stifling air in Whittier,’ Richard Nixon wrote to Pat Ryan in an undated letter written during their courtship. ‘And now I know. An Irish gypsy who radiates all that is happy and beautiful was there.’
“The letter and others exchanged between Nixon and the woman who would become his wife of 53 years will be on display at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda over the next several months. They are part of an exhibit celebrating what would have been Pat Nixon’s 100th birthday. She was born March 16, 1912.
“The correspondence spans 1938 to 1940, when the couple married. Pat Nixon died in 1993 in New Jersey, one year before her husband.
“The letters show another side of a man rarely associated in the public imagination with romance and passion.”
The rest of the Times’ article, republished in the S.F. Chronicle, is here.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Nixon, to be sure is a very complex and many layered personality. I’m sure more than one forensic psychologist has had some interesting times trying to figure him out in retrospect. This is one more piece of the puzzle. The romantic in me would like to believe that this was the true character of a young, eloquent, very intelligent man (whatever his other failings, no doubt Nixon had a high IQ), who was very much in love with his soul-mate.
Does anybody know if Nixons’ brain is in a jar somewhere??