Nixon's Secret (7 page)

After her years in New York she seized the opportunity to return to California to attend the University of Southern California with assistance from her brother Tom, with whom she would live after moving to Los Angeles. As one of her many jobs during her time at USC, Pat Ryan worked in the upscale department store Bullock’s during Christmas 1935, during which time she found herself developing a distaste for the pretension of the idle rich.
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This distaste would be reflected equally powerfully in Richard Nixon; an understanding for the value of hard work would be a unifying aspect of their eventual life together.

Nixon fell hopelessly in love with Pat Ryan, only to have her reject him several times before finally agreeing to date him. After two years of dating, Pat agreed to Nixon’s proposal, and they were married on June 21, 1940. After a honeymoon in Mexico, the Nixons would begin their life together still in Whittier. Richard and Pat Nixon would have two children, Tricia (born 1946) and Julie (born 1948).

In January 1942, the Nixons moved to Washington, DC, where Nixon had accepted a job at the Office of Price Administration. During his time in Washington, Nixon was assigned to the tire-rationing division, particularly responsible for replying to correspondence. After four months in Washington, Nixon had grown jaded with the functioning of the OPA and the petty bureaucrats governing it. Nixon wrote of the individuals he was forced to work with at the OPA, saying they “were obsessed with their own power . . . and seemed to delight in kicking other people around.”
38

As a result of his dissolution with civilian service, Nixon decided to apply for a commission in the navy. Nixon offered to serve his country despite the fact that, having been born a Quaker, he could have claimed exemption from the draft (in point of fact he was doubly exempt, as his employment with the federal government provided him an exemption as well). He was inducted into the navy in August 1942. It is an interesting aside that later in life Nixon would admit to having spent the years leading up to the war as an avowed isolationist. “In 1939 I thought Neville Chamberlin was the greatest living man and Winston Churchill a madman,” he said. “It was not until years later that I realized Neville Chamberlain was a good man, but Winston Churchill was right.”
39

Nixon’s years in the navy were enormously important in his development. As with all previous work he had set his mind to, he was enormously successful and was very popular with the troops. In a 1971 interview with reporters, Nixon himself described the importance of his time in the navy stating, “I grew up in the navy, because I had to.”
40
Nixon was, for the first time in his life, exposed to a world much more like that to which most of us are used; prior to the navy he lived in Quaker Yorba Linda, worked feverishly at Duke, and in his months working for the federal government was so consumed by work that he had very little exposure to a world such as the navy. For the first time, Nixon was living in a world where swearing was endemic, drinking not only accepted but expected, and in thousands of other ways immensely different from the conservative Quaker-dominated towns in which he grew up.

At the onset of the war, after completing his initial training and being commissioned a lieutenant (junior grade, or “JG”), Nixon was sent off to Ottumwa, Iowa, to help oversee the construction of an airfield for use in pilot training.
41
After a winter spent in Iowa (perhaps appropriate were the navy planning to send him to the arctic circle, quite a different story when so much of the navy was invested in the South Pacific), Nixon seized the opportunity for deployment overseas and found himself assigned to the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command on the island of New Caledonia.
42

During his time on New Caledonia Nixon and his unit were responsible for preparing manifests and flight plans for C-47 cargo planes, Nixon was responsible for supervising the loading and unloading of supplies and the wounded.
43
However, by the end of 1943 New Caledonia had fallen too far behind the advancing allied forces and Nixon and his unit were pushed forward to the Solomon Islands and the Bougainville airfield that had only fallen to American forces two months before his January 1944 arrival. In his unit’s first month deployed at Bougainville, they endured Japanese attacks for almost thirty nights. Despite being very much out of his element, or perhaps because of it, Nixon thrived during his time in the navy. He won multiple commendations and both the respect and admiration of many of the men with whom he served. Nixon was relaxed, at peace, and, in the eyes of the Department of the Navy, wonderfully efficient. While surely no one at Yorba Linda would have predicted it, Nixon and the navy were a match made in heaven. One junior officer with whom Nixon had served went on to describe his time at Bougainville as follows:

“He had no more rank than most of us, he was our age generally speaking, but he commanded a lot of respect from the guys with whom he came in contact. When things got a bit hectic, he never lost his head. No matter how badly things got fouled up, Dick got his part of the operation straightened out, and he did it without a lot of hullaballoo.”
44

During February 1944, Nixon and his unit moved to Green Island in the wake of a US invasion, and it was here where Nixon’s legend amongst the men truly took hold. It turns out that the frugal Nixon found another outlet for his talent at managing supply and quite possibly put to use some of the talents he developed working for his father’s grocery store. Nixon set up “Nick’s Snack Shack,” the lone hamburger stand of the South Pacific. Along with slinging free ground rounds to hungry flight crews, Nixon also swapped his stock for Australian beer, whiskey, fruit juice, and coffee that he would distribute equally to other officers regardless of their rank. As a fellow officer Ed McCaffrey described Nixon’s skill at obtaining supplies for his operation: “Nick (Nixon) was able to wheedle the supplies for his Snack Shack from other outfits that were better stocked. Some of the stuff was, shall we say, ‘liberated’—but Nick would swap anything. Just a small trade would set in motion a series of bigger trades.”
45

Obtaining better-quality food, and even the occasional booze, for the men was only the beginning of Nixon’s service to his fellow soldiers. During his time on Green Island Nixon set up an informal school for the soldiers and sailors on the island, where he taught lectures on business law. He explained to them how to set up small-business corporations, how to draw up leases, and more. Nixon was particularly proud of the messages he received from the attendees of these “lessons,” informing Nixon of the help they provided to these men in starting their own businesses.

The navy made equals out of Americans from all walks, and this was likely what made Nixon’s time there so special for him. For the duration of the war it didn’t matter whether he had grown up with money or not; it mattered not whether he was a Franklin or an Orthogonian. Nixon, for the duration of his time in the navy, could just be Nixon: the efficient, considerate, intelligent individual he was. Years later, Nixon’s fellow enlisted men would compare him to Mr. Roberts, the beloved fictional naval lieutenant played by Henry Fonda, who time and again put the needs of his men before himself. It was Nixon’s unparalleled hard work and discipline that endeared Nixon to his fellow enlisted men. The chip on his shoulder briefly disappeared, and Nixon’s demons, perhaps for the only time in his life, were left behind.

In the navy, the conservative Nixon of Quaker upbringing who before becoming a seaman did not drink, smoke, or swear, became a card shark and added a gaming expansion to his burger shack. One of the young men deployed alongside Nixon, a Lieutenant James Stewart, recalled instructing Nixon on the playing of poker, during which time Nixon asked Stewart, “Is there any sure way to win at poker?” Stewart’s response to Nixon might have had an oversize impact on Nixon going forward. Stewart’s theory on poker was not to stay in a pot unless he was sure he held a winning hand. It would become readily apparent that Nixon’s skills of observation, ability to hide his emotions, and first-rate brain made him a more than adequate poker player. Although he claimed that his poker playing enthusiasm was overblown, Nixon admitted that he once forfeited the chance to meet famed American aviator Charles Lindberg because of a card game he had promised to host. Nixon ascribed his decision to “the intense loneliness and boredom of the South Pacific,”
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but more than a passion or a hobby to while the time away, poker was a character builder and a source of income for the artless Nixon. One man who served with Nixon said that he would play cards for hours upon hours and “a hundred navy officers will tell you that Nix never lost a cent at poker.”
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In fact, in his time in the service Nixon had managed to stockpile over $10,000 in winnings, which he would use to help finance his political aspirations.
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In perhaps his most famous poker story from his time in the service, he was reportedly able to bluff a lieutenant commander on a $1,500 pot when he was holding but a pair of twos.
49

When he returned stateside, Nixon’s men threw a party on his behalf. In the words of one biographer, during his service in the Pacific, Nixon realized “his ability to understand the working-class perspective, its wants and needs, and its resentments proved invaluable in his subsequent political career.”
50
After the Pacific theater Nixon spent several weeks’ leave in Whittier, giving speeches to various clubs and church groups regarding his wartime experiences, and by all appearances positioning himself to run a future campaign against five-term Congressman Jeremiah “Jerry” Voorhis.

Now a lieutenant commander, Richard Nixon resigned his navy commission effective New Years Day 1946. In the months leading up to his discharge from the navy, he was consciously writing the Republican Party players in Rep. Voorhis’s district, making himself available for the party’s nomination against the incumbent. By all accounts, during the preceding campaign, the party nominated a political lightweight against Voorhis. As such, Nixon’s timing was impeccable. Republicans needed a credible candidate against Voorhis, and Nixon, champion debater and war veteran, was nothing if not credible. Nixon was soon to meet his mentor Murray Chotiner and would begin his climb to the White House.

From the Nixon family homestead in Yorba Linda to his naval service, Nixon had been dogged in his determination to do something memorable despite his modest roots. In California’s twelfth congressional district his determination was realized.

NOTES

1
.     Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 15.

2
.     Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 8.

3
.     Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
, p. 38.

4
.     Roger Morris,
Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politican
, p. 56.

5
.     Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 7.

6
.     Ibid. pp. 7–11.

7
.     Wayne Karol,
Across the Great Divide: Nixon, Clinton, and the War of the Sixties
, p. 22.

8
.     Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 19.

9
.     Ibid.

10
.   Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
, p. 53.

11
.   Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 14.

12
.   Rick Perlstein,
Nixonland
, p. 22.

13
.   Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
, p. 33.

14
.   Ibid. p. 73.

15
.   Ibid. p. 78.

16
.   March Butz,
Yorba Linda: Its History
, p. 153.

17
.   Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon: The Education of a Politician
, p. 46.

18
.   Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 23.

19
.   Ibid. pp. 29–30.

20
.   Ibid. 30.

21
.   Rick Perlstein,
Nixonland
, p. 22.

22
.   Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
, p. 114.

23
.   Ibid. p. 115.

24
.   Ibid. p. 45.

25
.   Ibid. p. 112.

26
.   March Butz,
Yorba Linda: Its History
, p. 154.

27
.   Rick Perlstein,
Nixonland
, p. 23.

28
.   March Butz,
Yorba Linda: Its History
, p. 154.

29
.   Ibid.

30
.   Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 35.

31
.   Ibid.

32
.   Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
, p. 132.

33
.   Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 39.

34
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 33.

35
.   Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 41.

36
.   Ibid. p. 42.

37
.   Ibid.

38
.   Ibid. p. 56.

39
.   Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
, p. 163.

40
.   Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon: The Education of a Politician
, p. 105.

41
.   Ibid. p. 106.

42
.   Ibid. p. 106–107.

43
.   Ibid. p. 108.

44
.   William Costello,
The Facts About Nixon
, p. 31.