page_title: Pat Nixon
section_title: Watergate
hierarchical_section_title: Pat Nixon / First Lady of the United States, 1969–1974 / Watergate
caption_attribution_description: English: Gerald and Betty Ford escort Richard and Pat Nixon from the White House to a waiting helicopter on August 9, 1974, following Nixon's resignation from the presidency.Français&#160;: Le nouveau président Gerald Ford et son épouse Betty Ford accompagnent l'ancien président américain Richard Nixon et son épouse Pat Nixon, après son discours de démission (1974).
context_page_description: Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon, also commonly known as Patricia Nixon, was an American educator and the wife of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. During her more than 30 years in public life, she served as both the Second and First Lady of the United States.
  Born in Ely, Nevada, she grew up with her two brothers in what is now Cerritos, California, graduating from high school in 1929. She attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Dubbed the "Nixon team," Richard and Pat Nixon campaigned together in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. Pat Nixon did much to add substance to the role of the Vice President's wife, insisting on visiting schools, orphanages, hospitals, and village markets as she undertook many missions of goodwill across the world.
context_section_description: At the time the Watergate scandal broke to the media, Nixon "barely noticed" the reports of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Later, when asked by the press about Watergate, she replied curtly, "I know only what I read in the newspapers." In 1974, when a reporter asked "Is the press the cause of the president's problems?", she shot back, "What problems?" Privately, she felt that the power of her husband's staff was increasing, and President Nixon was becoming more removed from what was occurring in the administration.
  Pat Nixon did not know of the secret tape recordings her husband had made. Julie Nixon Eisenhower stated that the First Lady would have ordered the tapes destroyed immediately, had she known of their existence. Once she did learn of the tapes, she vigorously opposed making them public, and compared them to "private love letters—for one person alone". Believing in her husband's innocence, she also encouraged him not to resign and instead fight all the impeachment charges that were eventually leveled against him. She said to her friend Helene Drown, "Dick has done so much for the country. Why is this happening?"
  After President Nixon told his family he would resign the office of the presidency, she replied "But why?" She contacted White House curator Clement Conger to cancel any further development of a new official china pattern from the Lenox China Company, and began supervising the packing of the family's personal belongings. On August 7, 1974, the family met in the solarium of the White House for their last dinner. Pat sat on the edge of a couch and held her chin high, a sign of tension to her husband. When the president walked in, she threw her arms around him, kissed him, and said, "We're all very proud of you, Daddy." Later Pat Nixon said of the photographs taken that evening, "Our hearts were breaking and there we are smiling."
  On the morning of August 9 in the East Room, Nixon gave a televised 20-minute farewell speech to the White House staff, during which time he read from Theodore Roosevelt's biography and praised his own parents. The First Lady could hardly contain her tears; she was most upset about the cameras, because they recorded her anguish, as they had during the 1960 election defeat. The Nixons walked onto the Executive Mansion's South Lawn with Vice President Gerald Ford and Betty Ford. The outgoing president departed from the White House on Marine One. As the family walked towards the helicopter, Pat, with one arm around her husband's waist and one around Betty's, said to Betty "You'll see many of these red carpets, and you'll get so you hate 'em." The helicopter transported them to Andrews Air Force Base; from there they flew to California.
  Pat Nixon later told her daughter Julie, "Watergate is the only crisis that ever got me down ... And I know I will never live to see the vindication."
caption: The Fords escort the Nixons as they depart the White House on Nixon's final day as president, August 9, 1974.
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