Pat Nixon biography

Synopsis

Profile

Nicknamed “Pat” because of her birth on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, Thelma Catherine Ryan was the daughter of William Ryan, a miner and farmer, and Katarina Halberstadt Bender Ryan, a German-born widow and mother of two boys. Soon after Pat was born the family moved to Artesia, California, where William attempted to eke out a living at truck farming. The family's economic situation worsened following her mother's death, from cancer, in 1926; her father died of lung disease in 1930.

An orphan at 18, Pat worked at a bank to put herself through a year at Fullerton Junior College. In 1932 she was paid to drive an elderly couple from California to New York City, where she lived for two years, working as a secretary and as a hospital X-ray technician. Returning to California, she supplemented her savings with a variety of jobs and enrolled as a merchandising major at the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree with honours in 1937.

She taught business courses at Whittier High School, where she joined an amateur theatre group and met a fellow thespian, lawyer Richard Nixon. The couple married on June 21, 1940, at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California. While her husband served in the U.S. Navy (1942–46), she worked at a bank and later at the Office of Price Administration in San Francisco.

In 1946 Pat participated in her husband's successful run for Congress by doing research on his opponent and writing and distributing campaign literature. After the birth of their two daughters, Tricia in 1946 and Julie in 1948, she tried to separate the family's political and personal lives and preserve some privacy for her children.

Pat's attitude toward politics changed in the 1952 election, when her husband, the vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket, was forced to defend himself from charges that he had kept a secret slush fund for campaign expenses. In his nationally televised “Checkers” speech, Richard bared the family finances and spoke admiringly of Pat, noting that she did not own a fur coat but only a “respectable Republican cloth coat.” Although the speech caused an outpouring of support for Richard and turned Pat's name into a household word, it soured her on politics.

Extremely active as the vice president's wife (1953–61), Pat made many official appearances