Former First Lady Pat Nixon, 81, an intensely private woman whose marriage to Richard M. Nixon forced her to live in a national spotlight for more than 40 years, died yesterday of lung cancer at her home in Park Ridge, N.J.
Mrs. Nixon, with her calm smile and quiet presence, had been in the nation's eye since 1952, when her family appeared in the first national election to be covered extensively by television.
Richard Nixon, in his legendary "Checkers" speech that year, defended his political integrity while pointing out that his young wife wore "a respectable Republican cloth coat" rather than a mink, and that one gift he had accepted, and was not giving back, was a dog -- a cocker spaniel named Checkers. He said his two daughters, Tricia and Julie, loved the dog.
On TV, the nation saw the attractive, admirable and supportive young wife, two picture-perfect daughters and even a lovable dog. Voters besieged Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican presidential nominee, to keep Nixon on the ticket.
After the election, a nation watched Mrs. Nixon keep a home, raise those two attractive and personable daughters and attend to the social duties of a vice president's wife. If she was not glamorous, she was obviously a cheery and private woman, most comfortable in her role as homemaker. An example of how well she guarded her privacy was that she kept the fact that she smoked hidden from public view.
She also traveled with her husband, including a 1958 South American tour in which their car was stoned during a bloody riot. Before the car was attacked, one demonstrator had grabbed Mrs. Nixon by the hand and shouted in her face. Mrs. Nixon bravely continued to smile and remained composed as an aide helped her into the car. Both the Nixons were hailed for their courage and aplomb.
As First Lady from 1969 to 1974, she had one gloriously happy moment that the nation shared: Her daughter Tricia was married in the White House to Edward Cox. Her younger daughter, Julie, had married David Eisenhower, a grandson of the general and president, in New York in 1968.
Mrs. Nixon typified the ideal political wife of a bygone era. As far as the public was to know, she had no agenda, no deeply held beliefs, no interests or even any ideas, beyond the conviction that her husband was the perfect man for whatever job he was campaigning for at that moment.
During Nixon's early races, Mrs. Nixon's routines seldom varied. She gave teas and worked answering phones and stuffing envelopes. She also traveled with her husband as he barnstormed. She smiled and gazed raptly at him on the podium as he gave endless speeches, most of which she had heard many times before. She was poised and unwilted from morning to night. But she never spoke and never took the spotlight from her husband.
She continued in this way during his vice presidential races in 1952 and 1956, and during his presidential races in 1960, 1968 and 1972, as well as during his unsuccessful run for California governor in 1962. She was said to have relished the 1972 campaign, as it represented the last she would have to endure.
The Nixon presidency was a devisive time, short on joy. Mrs. Nixon quietly stood by her husband throughout it with immense dignity and style. While the nation was split, first by the Vietnam War and then by Watergate, Mrs. Nixon remained above the passions of the time, exhibiting calm, quietly loyal toward her husband and his work.
She seemed graceful, but seldom animated, in public. Books about the Nixons since 1974 usually point out that Mrs. Nixon did not like politics, desperately wanted to live a more normal life and at one point had gotten her husband to agree to leave politics in 1956.
She remained at his side, an increasingly dignified and stoic figure during the death throes of his presidency in 1974.
In 1972, Nixon campaign workers had been caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel campaign offices of the Democratic National Committee. A series of lies and coverups followed, working their way to the Oval Office itself. Finally, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach the president of the United States, and the president announced he was resigning from office.
On the day of his resignation, Aug. 9, 1974, before leaving the White House, President Nixon spoke one last time to the nation, and Mrs. Nixon was seen in the only public display of emotion she ever allowed herself. She wept as her husband spoke.
Nixon, later recalling his wife on that day, wrote, "She was wearing dark glasses to hide the signs of two sleepless nights of preparations and the tears that Julie said had finally come that morning. I knew how much courage she needed to carry her through the days and nights of preparations for this abrupt departure.
"Now she would not receive any of the praise she deserved. There would be no round of farewell parties by congressional wives, no testimonials, no tributes. She had been a dignified, compassionate first lady. She had given so much to the nation and so much to the world. Now she would have to share my exile. She deserved so much more."
Upon learning of her death, President Clinton said, "I think the American people really appreciated the dignity with which she served as First Lady."
Former president Ronald Reagan issued a statement calling her "a true unsung hero of the Nixon administration," who had "served as a pillar of great strength during a time of turmoil."
Former president Gerald R. Ford said that Mrs. Nixon "exemplified the finest of qualities and was an outstanding example of a First Lady, mother and wife."
After leaving the White House, her health slowly failed. In 1976, she had a major stroke that paralyzed her left side. The former president linked the stroke to her having read "The Final Days," an account of the end of the Nixon presidency that was written by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
"Mrs. Nixon read it, and her stroke came three days later," he said. "This doesn't indicate that that caused the stroke . . . but it sure didn't help."
She made a slow recovery. In 1983, she had a second stroke. After that came hospital stays for asthmatic bronchitis, bronchial pneumonia and other lung infections. In 1987, a small cancerous tumor was removed from her mouth. Mrs. Nixon also had emphysema.
She was born Thelma Catherine Ryan on March 16, 1912, in a mining shack in the tiny copper town of Ely, Nev. Her father, Will Ryan, was a rangy dreamer who had roamed the world before eventually giving up such romantic pursuits as whaling and prospecting to become a poor farmer. Her mother, the former Kate Halberstadt, who was a widow with two children when she married Ryan, had been born in Hesse, Germany.
Mrs. Nixon grew up in the dusty town of Artesia, Calif., where the family eked out a living growing produce for the Los Angeles market about 20 miles away. The Ryan family of six lived in a two-bedroom home, with everyone working on the land or in the home. The future First Lady worked in the fields and helped out with the cooking and washing. Will Ryan, by all accounts, was cantankerous, and Kate Ryan something of a recluse.
By 1930, both of Mrs. Nixon's parents were dead. She changed her name to Thelma Patricia Ryan and worked to keep "her family" together. She scrubbed floors at the local bank while keeping house for her brothers, who were in college. Mrs. Nixon did all this while pursuing her own education at Fullerton Junior College.
"I thought everything started with education," she once recalled.
She later went to New York, where she did secretarial work and then was a hospital X-ray technician. She also traveled for the first time in her life. By the mid-1930s, she was back in California, again helping her brothers keep house, while she studied at the University of Southern California. She had a scholarship and worked on campus.
She also had become, by all accounts, an immensely attractive and vivacious redhead. She signed with RKO and MGM as an extra at $6.50 a day. She even got to speak a line in the 1935 film "Becky Sharp," but it ended up on the cutting-room floor.
In 1937, she graduated with honors from the University of Southern California. She now had the credentials needed to teach what were then called high school "commercial" courses, including typing, bookkeeping and stenography. She immediately took a post at Whittier High School and also became active in amateur dramatics.
About that time, a new Whittier lawyer joined the same acting group. He had been told that in the theater he could get his name before the public and let people see what a personable and intelligent young man he was.
It was just like the movies; it started at a play rehearsal when they met. The future president later wrote, "I found I could not take my eyes away from her. For me it was love at first sight."
Not so for Pat Ryan. Both later recalled how Nixon gave her a ride home and asked her for a date. She refused. At the next rehearsal, he picked her up and took her home again, and again asked for a date. Again she declined.
Nixon is said to have pointed a finger at her and said, "Someday, I'm going to marry you." This is said to have caused the future First Lady to break out in laughter. They married on June 21, 1940.
While her husband served in the Navy during World War II, Mrs. Nixon continued her teaching career and also worked in a bank and later as a government economist.
