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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Remember Them," Steve Adubato with Jacqui Triccarico.

Hey Jacqui, we honor, we remember one of the most interesting, and as the book covered behind me says, "One of the most mysterious first ladies in the history of the United States," Pat Nixon, who actually passed away in Bergen County, New Jersey back in 1993.

The interview I do is with the author of this book, Heath Hardage Lee, what'd you take from that interview?

- What Heath says is this isn't a book about Richard Nixon.

We know about Richard Nixon, or there's lots of books about him, lots to know there.

Watergate, all the things, you know, there's a lot to take in there when you're talking about Richard Nixon.

But this is a book about Pat Nixon, and this is a "Remember Them" about Pat Nixon and the first really of its kind, the book that Heath wrote, she took a lot of time to research her and to put it all down so we have a more clear understanding of who Pat Nixon was and why she mattered.

Volunteerism was something really important to her.

She volunteered and made that a priority with the Red Cross, with Girl Scouts of America, and various other big organizations.

And she didn't like to consider herself a feminist and most people didn't call her that, but she was really passionate about women's rights.

So those are a few topics that we cover with Heath.

- And by the way, she advocated for the first woman to be on the Supreme Court, and Heath talks about that as well.

A couple things that struck me about this interview.

So Pat Nixon was one of President Nixon's, who was elected to Congress, the House of Representatives 1946, United States Senate 1950, 1952 becomes the vice presidential candidate for Dwight Eisenhower, and then runs for president 1960, loses to John F. Kennedy.

Eight years later, president 1968 gets elected.

Why is this relevant?

For most of that time, Pat Nixon was Richard Nixon's closest and most trusted political advisor.

As he got into the presidency, things changed.

And what you hear from the author of this book is that there are some folks in the White House who were very much involved in the Watergate scandal who pushed Pat Nixon as a first lady aside and did not want her advising her talking to the president.

It's a fascinating dynamic because she was ridiculed, she was labeled by those who didn't know her in a very negative way.

And Heath, Heath Hardage Lee, the author of this book, "The Life and Times of Washington's Most Private First Lady, Mysterious Mrs.

Nixon," she debunks a lot of those myths about her.

Last comments, Jacqui?

- Yeah, and you know, I love to throw out some fun facts sometimes about the folks that we remember on our series.

One of them is that her name at birth was Thelma and she was born the day before St.

Patrick's Day.

And Pat was a nickname that started when she was a child and just went with her the rest of her life.

So I thought that was a fun fact about her.

- That is a fun fact, and also one I didn't know.

I can always count on Jacqui to show me something I didn't know.

This is Pat Nixon.

We talked to the author of this great book, Heath tells us all about the mysterious and very misunderstood first lady, Pat Nixon.

Check it out.

(bright music) We are honored to be joined by the author of this compelling book called "The Mysterious Mrs.

Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington's Most Private First Lady."

We're joined by Heath Hardage Lee.

Heath, so good to have you with us.

- Oh, thank you for having me.

- You got it, I said to you right before we started this interview that I thought I knew, as a student of presidential history, I thought I knew who Pat Nixon was, and did not until I read your book.

Who was Pat Nixon, and why was she so misunderstood?

- Yes, we were having an interesting little brief conversation about that.

She was not who Americans think she was.

I believe the media labeled her things like mysterious, aloof.

One author called her America's political Greta Garbo.

- How about Plastic Pat?

- Oh, and of course there is Plastic Pat, then of course Woodward and Bernstein labeled her someone who had an alcohol problem who was reclusive.

I spent about four years digging on all of this interviewing just scores of people inside, outside the Nixon White House.

And I found that almost none of these things were true.

And the big things, the Plastic Pat, reclusive, aloof, alcohol problem, none of those are correct, but it is part of sort of the Nixon mythology, I think particularly surrounding Watergate, it unfortunately sort of tainted Pat's reputation.

So I've been glad to be able to correct some of these incorrect notions.

- Let's go through some of this.

As a kid growing up during the time of Watergate and interested in politics, presidential history, when I think of '73, '74, Watergate, and I think about Richard Nixon, and finally he resigns in the famous video of him getting on that helicopter ready to leave and waving goodbye to the country as he left in disgrace of the Watergate scandal.

But that's Richard Nixon, Dick Nixon.

What was going on during Watergate for Pat Nixon?

- Yes, so Pat Nixon, and that is one of the goals of the book too, I'm glad you've refocused, is to focus on her, to focus on what Pat was doing, thinking, saying during that long political career that Richard Nixon had.

So during Watergate, she is really minimized, sidelined, pushed out of the way by the two men known as the Germans, Erlichman- - Is that Ehrlichman and Halderman?

- Yes, that- They pushed, what do you mean, how did they do that?

- Well, they minimized because of course, for viewers who don't know, we have the East Wing and the West Wing in the White House.

So the East Wing is the first lady's side of the house, the West Wing is the president's.

So Halderman and Erlichman are in the West Wing and they're the president's closest aids and advisors.

So Pat had been one of her husband's closest advisors and sounding boards for many years until around 1960 when these guys show up and they gradually push her to the side, minimize her.

And I believe her husband really isn't listening to her, isn't following her wise counsel like he was before.

And she was so much a part of his meteoric rise in politics.

But I think 1960, after that election where he loses to John F. Kennedy, then I think things take a different turn because Pat is not as involved as his advisor and sounding board.

She's seen as old fashioned, as you know, as old, you know, this is in her 50s.

Just, I think there are very sexist elements too.

She's a woman.

What could she know that would be valuable?

Even though she had spent her entire life in politics.

- And help building his career, he gets elected to the United States Senate 1950, is it?

- Yeah, he's in the Senate in '50, House of Representatives before in '46.

Then vice president.

- He actually came in with John F. Kennedy, who was elected as a very young member of Congress from Massachusetts, and then goes from the House to the Senate in 1952, becomes vice president under Dwight Eisenhower for eight years, correct?

- Correct, yes.

- And then 1960 happens, he believes he should win the presidency.

He loses to Kennedy.

Up until that point, Pat Nixon was a key, maybe the key political advisor to her husband, fair?

- Totally fair.

That's completely true.

It was the Pat and Dick team, and that is how everyone referred to them.

And then we take that detour later with a different team.

The new Nixon team, as you might recall in the book, the old Nixon team, not Pat, they're all kind of moved to the side for these new young Turks who are very television-oriented.

So an interesting sort of turn with technology also.

- Let me ask you this, and I'll go back to earlier, Pat Nixon, because she comes from California, she was a West Coast girl, graduated from USC, right?

- Right, yes.

- 1937, I'm just reading the notes from the book.

- Yes, great, that's right.

- But what's really interesting to me is, and I'm curious and I'll get off Watergate in a second, do you believe, based on your research, Heath, that Pat Nixon was trying to tell President Nixon that it was wrong?

- No, I don't believe that.

I think she was trying to tell him along with other staff that he was surrounded by some of the wrong people.

So I think it was more a matter of she wasn't comfortable with some of these people who were surrounding him, who were advising him.

But she did not know enough.

And particularly towards the end, she didn't know what was going on.

She was so out of the loop with this, - Hold on one second.

She didn't know about the burglary.

She didn't know about the coverup, she knew about the burglary because it was in the news, Washington Post, Woodward and Bernstein, but she didn't know about the coverup.

She didn't know about those around the president, basically.

And then also the tapes that they were missing minutes on the tapes, which revealed what was really going on.

She didn't know that intricate detail, right, Heath?

- No, she did not know that.

All she really knew towards the end is what she was reading in the papers.

Now on the tape though, you bring up the tapes, of course she does know about the tapes finally, and when they come out and the smoking gun tape, et cetera, she says, "Burn the tapes, you should burn the tapes.

These are like love letters.

They never should be out there.

They should not be there for public consumption."

So she weighs in just a couple of times, but she's very disassociated from the scandal.

- Okay, by the way, when we talk about the tapes, there are recordings of in the Oval Office, and those recordings brought Nixon down, and it was only the Justice Department at the time, I think it was Judge Sirica who insisted that those tapes be revealed.

It's so interesting as we talk about this in 2025 about the role of the justice department, the role of transparency, et cetera, et cetera.

That's another story.

Can we go back?

Pat Nixon as a mom to Julie and Tricia, how the heck is she raising these two young girls, their daughters in the White House and in this white hot, political, under the microscope life, how's she doing that?

- Oh my gosh.

I think this is one of the great stresses in her life, and not just when they're in the White House, you know, let's go back to 1946 even, 1946 on, when they really enter politics in a big way as a couple, she's constantly torn between her desire to be a mother, to be home with Julie and Tricia, to be a good wife also.

But that is really her number one thing she wants to do.

But she also wants 100% to support her husband in whatever he chooses to do.

And at first, she is also very interested in politics and winning in campaigns, but she soon finds out, as I say often, that politicians are weasels.

Imagine that.

And she begins to sort of recoil from that.

And particularly by 1960, she has seen enough to know what a dirty business politics can be.

- Heath, but what struck me, and I know there's video of this and we're jumping around, so we're not doing this in chronological order and I know our great production team on the back end's gonna show this video, their personal relationship, the personal relationship between Pat Nixon and Richard Nixon.

When she passed, he was distraught.

- Yes, that tape, wow.

- They had a real, personal, deep relationship, not a political for show relationship.

Please talk about that, Heath.

- Yes, this is one of the great mythologies is that, you know, they were estranged, they had this terrible marriage, that is not at all the case.

One thing that's in the book that no one had seen before is new letters, love letters from World War II when he was in the Pacific in a combat zone.

He was in the Navy fighting there.

She was working for the Office of Price Administration San Francisco.

And the letters between them are just amazing.

He's totally smitten with her, and if you go back, even the courting letters also, I mean he is so smitten with Pat, he drives her to dates with other men.

She's like, "Well you can do that," and he does it.

You're just like, wow, she's very tough on him.

She makes him work hard for that.

And they fall in love and I think they are a very close couple.

They have a lot in common and a lot of things they love to do together.

Politics is sort of what I call the mistress in some ways that comes in and at times separates them.

It's a little up and down based on the political what is going on, and also his workload.

I mean, he's gone all the time.

I'm sure this happens to political couples in DC now, just like it did then.

It's a very hard life when you are there overnight, as we see people doing all the time trying to get things done.

It goes up and down I think sometimes based on what's going on.

But they're very tight couple and a very tight family.

You could not find a closer family with the two girls.

They're a very tight unit.

And we can talk later about the end or talk now.

- Go ahead, and the end was in New Jersey.

Were they in Bergen County?

- They were, well, so first, they were in Parkridge.

- Parkridge.

- And then, or I'm sorry, first Saddle River, then Parkridge.

- Okay, so they settle in New Jersey, in northern New Jersey, why?

- Well, they went to New Jersey because they were in New York City before near Trisha and Ed Cox, her daughter and son-in-law.

But they were recognized all the time.

That was hard.

And then also they were, Pat was having a lot of trouble going up and down stairs and getting around New York.

She wasn't as mobile and they wanted a place where their grandchildren could come and play and have a wonderful time.

So they did eventually end up in New Jersey, and that's where they lived out the last years of their life.

- Let me ask you this, the politics was the mistress as you say, but was she a quote unquote feminist?

Because in the book, it does talk about her advocacy for women, but she did not, as I understand it, consider herself a feminist.

Explain that distinction please.

- Right, absolutely.

This confuses people a lot, and I've done a couple of books working with women like Mrs.

Nixon.

So she was very pro-women, and if you remember, her DNA is western, she's a frontier kind of gal.

Her son-in-law, David Eisenhower, says she's an Annie Oakley type personality.

She is not molded by the image-makers, which kind of set the tone for me for the whole book.

So she's very western, very do it yourself.

She has that frontier ethos of not needing help, but she is not a feminist in the second wave sense.

If you study politics in that era too, communism, it was associated with feminism and the left.

And as many of us who have studied Richard Nixon know, he is the ultimate in terms of, you know, Alger Hiss, the anti-communism sort of- - He was right there, Joe McCarthy during that time, Alger Hiss, who, look up Alger Hiss.

There are a whole range of things that Nixon did that were so obsessively anti-red, anti-communist, and feminism was tied to communism.

But she was an advocate for women.

- Oh yes, I mean she was, as I say in the book, not a feminist, but pro-women, meaning that a woman could do anything, including being president, including being on the Supreme Court, which she pushed very hard for women on the court.

She fully supported the ERA as well as them woman's- - Equal Rights Amendment.

- So yeah, she was very, also on abortion, said women should be able to control their own bodies, which I think- - She did say that.

- She did.

She was the first first lady to say the word abortion publicly and say women should have that right to make their own decisions.

- But she hated the cameras.

- Yes, she hated- - Because?

- Well I think, you know, I think if you were to go back and look at her camera experiences, now other than the surprising fact, she was a bit player in Hollywood in the late '30s, which I talk about in the book.

She was actually in "Ben Hur," which is a movie some people might still know about.

So she did that.

She did not like that.

She did not like the spotlight.

But think about what she went through with the Checkers speech being her first- - Oh my gosh, can you quickly explain Checker?

Checkers the dog?

- Well, Checkers the dog, he was very cute.

A cute cocker spaniel.

But the Checker speech, or as the Nixon people call it, the fund crisis, 1952 when Nixon is... Eisenhower's considering him running as VP.

And there are accusations that Nixon has a slush fund and he decides to go on television and address this and lay their finances bare, he and Pat's finances.

And Mrs.

Nixon is on camera with him at his request.

He says, "I can't do this to her" right before the taping.

And she says "You can and you have to for our daughter's sake."

And she is right there with him.

So think if that was your first television experience, you would probably never wanna do it again, though it is a triumph- Darryl Zanuck- - That's how he saved his vice presidential nomination.

- Totally, that was, it resonated with Americans post-war in a huge way.

- And what did that have to do with the dog?

They accused him of using the slush fund to purchase the dog.

And I think Nixon talked about Checkers the dog and its connection to the daughters, right?

Very personal and emotional.

- Well Checkers had been given as a gift from a well wisher.

And he said, "Here's our finances.

We don't have much, but we have one gift we're keeping.

It's Checkers, and we're keeping the dog," because it was a girl's dog, it was an innocent gift from an admirer, they had not used money, and this was all proven to be just a total smear, you know, by his opponents, it was not- - A smear in politics?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

- Amazing, in politics?

Really?

I know.

- Wait, I'm sorry for jumping in.

We have a few minutes left, I wanna do this.

Alcoholism, Woodward and Bernstein stuff, Washington Post talk about, she was not an alcoholic.

- She was not an alcoholic.

And there are a couple of reasons this came up.

One, people conflate Betty Ford and Pat Nixon.

So, okay, there's that.

But the real reason this came up is thanks to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their book, "The Final Days."

In that book, they say that Mrs.

Nixon had alcohol problems, was reclusive, you know, was stumbling around the White House with the tumbler of bourbon.

Now I actually interviewed Mr.

Woodward about this.

He could not give me a name, he could not give any support for this.

- What about sources?

- After how many years, I mean, 50 years.

He could not give me one piece of evidence.

Whereas I have talked to, you know, 80 different people about this inside, outside the White House.

People who worked for them, people who were friends and not friends.

Not one person ever saw this.

No one on staff saw this.

Alex Butterfield, who revealed the existence of the tapes, worked for Mrs.

Nixon and he was her liaison with the West Wing and he said, "This is ridiculous.

This is not true."

So I think it's part of the Watergate mythology, it fit their narrative, but there's no evidence for that.

- Before I let you go, and first of all, thank you so much.

Get the book, "The Mysterious Mrs.

Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington's Most Private First Lady."

You see the book over my left shoulder.

Before I let you go, Pat Nixon should be remembered how?

Minute left, go ahead.

- Pat Nixon to me, her two greatest legacies, aside from her two daughters, Tricia and Julie, would be her wonderful skillful practice of international diplomacy, which you can read about in the book, China, Russia, Peru, Africa, amazing at helping seal the deal for her husband.

And the second greatest legacy in my mind, and I think after years of research, this is very easy to prove, is what she did for women behind the scenes.

We've talked about some of this, but we also haven't talked about her huge public advocacy for getting a woman on the Supreme Court.

So this was a big deal.

It did not happen during the Nixon administration.

But thanks to Pat's pushing, she and President Nixon planted the seeds, I think, for gender and race equality on the court.

And you can read more about that in the book.

- Heath Hardage Lee, a terrific author, a terrific book as we honor, we remember Pat Nixon.

Heath, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you for having me.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato on behalf of Jacqui Tricarico and our entire team at "Remember Them One on One," we thank you for watching, we'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

NJM Insurance Group.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

The New Jersey Education Association.

United Airlines.

Kean University.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

And by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey Globe.

And by BestofNJ.com.

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