| Birth: | Mar. 16, 1912
Ely
Nevada | | Death: | Jun. 22, 1993 | 
Presidential First Lady. The wife of US President Richard Milhouse Nixon, after her birth in Nevada and the family move to Cerritos, California, very little remains of historic significances to mark her ordinary life prior to meeting and marriage to Richard Nixon. A modest home where she spent her girlhood was burned by vandals in 1978 and only a planter filled with rose bushes encompassing the foundation remains in what today is the Pat Nixon Park. A life-size, full-body statue was erected in 1996. During World War II, she worked as a government economist while her husband served in the United States Navy. When Richard Nixon entered politics and was elected to Congress in 1946, her life of silent suffering with dignity began with his long and turbulent career. Upon taking up residency in the White House, she remained in the background performing her duties as expected from a first lady of the land. A gracious hostess, she used her position to encourage volunteer service while inviting hundreds of families to nondenominational Sunday services in the White house. She shared her husband's historical foreign journeys. She met the troubled days of Watergate with dignity. She said simply, "I believe in my husband and am proud of his accomplishments". Her end came a few months before the death of Richard, just after her 43rd wedding anniversary at age eighty one. A heavy smoker, she died surrounded by her family, from lung cancer at their Park Ridge, New Jersey home. Her body was taken to the Nixon Birthplace and Library/Museum for burial. In a elaborate service conducted by Reverend Billy Graham, televised nationally, she was buried adjacent the small house where her husband was born, the plot now called the First Lady's Garden. (bio by: Donald Greyfield (inactive))
Family links:
Parents:
William Martin Ryan (1866 - 1930)
Katherine Halberstadt Ryan (1879 - 1926)
Spouse:
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913 - 1994)*
*Calculated relationship
Cause of death: Cancer
Search Amazon for Pat Nixon | | | Burial:
Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace
Yorba Linda
Orange County
California, USA
Plot: First Lady's Garden |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jan 01, 2001
Find A Grave Memorial# 1281 |
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(4.6 after 315 votes)
