American Experience

Pat Hillings on Hannah Nixon's telegram

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The whole Nixon campaign had halted in Portland, Oregon in early, or in September of 1952, and it looked as if, at the time, that he might be replaced on the ticket. We stopped to figure out what we were going to do and that led to the famous Checkers broadcast. But at the time we were getting telegrams and messages from all over the country, a great number of them from friends of Nixon in Congress, like in the Chowder and Marching Society, and others saying that they were for him and all that. And then one evening I got a telegram from his mother. And she addressed him as Richard, which she always did, and said that she was praying for him and that she knew everything would be allright, and it was a little spiritual tone which was part of her Quaker background. And, at the time, I felt it would cheer him up. My judgment was bad. I took it into him and gave it to him, and he was sitting in a large chair, with his arms on the side, almost like the Lincoln statue that you see in Washington, the Lincoln Memorial, and I handed him the telegram, and he read it and he dropped it on his, in the chair and his head fell forward, and tears came down his eyes. And it was obvious that he'd been terribly moved by what all this meant. That it was so important to him to prove to his mother that he had never done anything wrong. And I was criticized later by Mr. Chotiner and some of my colleagues for doing that, but it turned out, I believe, that it inspired him. He's told me since, that that was one of the things that kept him fired up to go on and meet the challenge, which ultimately turned out to be successful.

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