Nixon

1967 · réf. 151890 — 1967. Original typed letter signed by the thirty-seventh First Lady of the United States Pat Nixon. Duodecimo one page typed on "Mrs. Richard Nixon" letterhead addressed to Loretta Stuart. The letter reads in full "Dear Loretta Stuart: All of us were distressed to hear that you have had a set-back on your road to complete recovery. You will be in our thoughts and prayers! Tricia is a senior in college this year and Julie is a sophomore -- so your little girls are now grown. Time has flown since the days when you gave them the pretty hair styles and permanents. Louise Johnson wrote from London to say that she hoped to visit here during the Christmas season. I know she will be looking for you solve the problems she seems to find with hairdressers abroad. I haven't seen her since a year ago -- so am looking forward to her visit. With affection Pat." In near fine condition with spotting and light toning. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope stamp dated 11 Nov 1967. Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon 1912–1993 was the thirty-seventh First Lady of the United States serving alongside her husband President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1974 and one of the most quietly resilient and extensively traveled First Ladies in the history of the office. Born in Ely Nevada to Irish immigrant parents she grew up in considerable hardship losing both parents before she was eighteen and working her way through the University of Southern California where she graduated cum laude in 1937 with a degree in merchandising. She met Richard Nixon in a Whittier California amateur theater production in 1938; he proposed on their first meeting and she married him in 1940 after two years of patient courtship. As First Lady she undertook an ambitious program of White House restoration and historical preservation acquiring significant works of American decorative art for the executive mansion and opening the White House grounds and gardens to the public for the first time. An instinctive and gifted diplomat in her own right she accompanied the President on his historic 1972 trip to China and his visits to the Soviet Union and eight Latin American countries becoming at the time of her death the most widely traveled First Lady in American history. The Watergate scandal and her husband's resignation in August 1974 — the only presidential resignation in American history — exacted a devastating personal toll and she suffered a stroke in 1976 from which she never fully recovered. Described by those who knew her as possessed of genuine warmth steely self-discipline and a private depth of feeling she rarely permitted the public to see Pat Nixon remains one of the more poignant and underexamined figures in the modern American presidency. unknown