Word: whittier
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...often invoked his Midwestern heritage. His mother, Hannah Milhous, was an Indiana Quaker whose family, celebrated in Jessamyn West's novel The Friendly Persuasion, moved to Whittier, Calif., at the turn of the century. His father, Francis Anthony Nixon, was an Ohio Methodist with only six years of formal education who left his job as a trolley-car operator in Columbus and drifted to Southern California in search of warmer weather. After Frank married Hannah in 1908, he was barely able to scrape by as a citrus-fruit farmer, grocer and gas-station owner. A neighbor described Frank Nixon...
Richard, one of five sons (two died at early ages), grew up in a hardscrabble, contentious atmosphere. He was a gifted student who finished second in his class at the Quaker Whittier College and a less gifted football player who regularly warmed the bench. In later years, he was to recall his coach's advice: "You must get angry, terribly angry about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not on his victorious opponent or his teammates." Nixon learned only half the lesson, and all his life took...
...Duke Law School, where he earned the nickname "Gloomy Gus" for his cautious, pessimistic, Depression-bred outlook, Nixon finished third in his class. Unable to land work with a major New York law firm (he also tried the FBI), he returned to practice in Whittier, where he met Thelma Catherine ("Pat") Ryan, who taught shorthand and typing at the local high school. They were married after a two-year courtship and set up housekeeping in an apartment over a garage...
...working in Whittier, Calif., when she met Nixon, who sought a role in an amateur play just to meet the pretty new teacher. He proposed the first night he saw her, but she kept him waiting for two years before finally consenting, at the age of 28, to become Mrs. Richard Nixon. Once the vows were taken, she totally subordinated herself to his life and his ambitions, serving as wife, mother and uncomplaining companion on political platforms round the globe. "The only thing I could do was help him," she later said, "but it was not a life I would...
Some 26 Quaker meetings have endorsed a letter deploring the "collapse of moral leadership in the Executive Branch" and urging members of Congress to cleanse the Government. T. Eugene Coffin, pastor of the East Whittier Friends Church, where Nixon is on the membership roll, has refused to say anything critical of the President, but he is said to be a distraught man. Father John McLaughlin, the Jesuit who is a White House adviser, is still trying to straighten things out with some members of his faith for his defense of the language and thoughts found on the tapes...