Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 1.

GANNON: This is the first in a series of several tapings, which will extend over several months and several hours with President Nixon. In the subsequent sessions, we'll talk about some of the domestic and foreign leaders that he's known and get his insights into their lives and careers. In this first session, we will begin at the beginning with his early life and political career. To begin at the beginning, do you have a first conscious memory?

NIXON: Well, curiously enough, my first memory is of running. I recall that when I was about three or three-and-a-half years of age that my mother was 00:01:00driving a horse and buggy, a very fast horse. She was carrying my younger brother, who was then one, Don, on her lap, and a neighbor girl, who was about twelve, was holding me. The buggy turned a corner and the horse took off and the neighbor girl dropped me. I fell out of the buggy. I got a crease in my scalp, and I jumped up afterwards, and I was running, running, trying to catch up, because I was afraid to be left behind. Incidentally, I had a wound from that for many years thereafter. I wasn't able to part my hair on the left due to the fact that I had about fifteen stitches down that scalp.

GANNON: Didn't you--in the 1946 campaign, didn't you--weren't you going to mention that in a--in a biography and didn't your press secretary suggest that you not?

NIXON: Oh, yes, the suggestion was made that, "Oh, you can't tell them that you got hit in the head by a carriage or wheel, because they'll think that that's why there's something wrong with your head." And so I haven't told that story too often lately.

GANNON: Didn't--actually, that did work against Wayne Morse, didn't it?

NIXON: Yes, Joe McCarthy in--I thought--one of his attacks that I thought was out of line--they weren't all out of line but this one certainly was--he said, "The trouble with Wayne Morse is that he got kicked in the head by a horse sometime," and that was why he was a little nutty.

GANNON: Your--in your memoirs, you wrote about your parents that whoever said that opposites attract was describing the two of them. We have some photographs of your mother here. The first one, I think, was taken as a girl in Indiana and the next one is a group portrait, very characteristic of the times, taken in 00:03:00Whittier, when she was a teenager, and the last one, I think, is also of her at that same time. It's remarkable how much she looks like Julie, I think, in these pictures.

NIXON: Yes, she does.

GANNON: Do--what do you think of--what characteristics do you think of when you think of your mother in that period, in the early years?

NIXON: Well, I have said that she was quite a remarkable woman, and I guess most of us say that about our mothers and really feel it, and each of them is, each in a different way. But I think in her case those characteristics that stand out, among many, are, first, great strength, great kindness. She had a soft manner about her in her speech and the way she acted. I never recall the time when she raised her voice in anger about anything, but she could be very, 00:04:00very convincing in speaking very, very softly about something with which she disapproved. And in addition to that, she had a great capacity for love which extended far beyond her husband, whom she loved dearly, her children, for whom she would do anything. She--that capacity for love seemed to emanate to everybody, to her sisters, to those she cared for when my brother was sick, and all of this made her develop characteristics that some friends used to say--they used to tell me, you know, "Hannah," which was her name, "is a Quaker saint."

GANNON: Did--I think you wrote somewhere that were she alive today that she wouldn't support the strong law and order ethic that underlies a lot of contemporary politics.

NIXON: She had too much compassion to do that. That's true. As a matter of fact, I recall an incident at the time that we had the grocery store, and we were working there and one of our customers, whose children were good friends of mine in school and of Don's, my brother's, she found had been shoplifting. And under the circumstances the sheriff came by, and she mentioned it to him, and he said, "Well, you'll have to report this." And she says, "I won't do it, because it will be terrible for her and for her children." So one day when the lady came in and what she picked up, incidentally, was so small--it was just a kleptomaniac problem, because they weren't poor, not by the standards of those days. She had a pound of butter and a little--a--and some eggs and some cheese 00:06:00and she had slipped it into the bag and she took it out and had it--checked it through. My mother followed her out of the car and she said, "I wonder if you would like to pay me for those things?" The woman burst into tears and said, "Please don't tell my husband. He would kill me and it will ruin the boys." And my mother said, "Don't be concerned." She says, "How much do you think you've taken?" And the woman estimated about seventy-five dollars' worth. She says, "I'll pay you back." And for the next year she paid her back at five dollars a month until it was all paid. The boys never heard about it. Her husband didn't hear about it, and, of course, she didn't continue to come in the store. But that was the way my mother would do it. She would never enforce the law if some other way you could work the thing out.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, gentlemen. Could we fix the mike cable just for a 00:07:00second? Keep rolling tape. Go ahead and fix that mike. That's perfect. If it'll hold, that's perfect. Okay, Frank, we'll come up to camera two and keep right on going.

GANNON: Your mother was a very community-minded woman, but she was also intensely private, even, I think, in her praying.

NIXON: Oh, she certainly was. She never believed in wearing religion on her sleeve. We went to church a great deal, I must say, and she insisted on that, as did my father. I recall, for example, we used to go to Sunday school and church in the morning on Sunday, and Christian Endeavor at church in the evening, and then even go to prayer meeting sometimes in the middle of the week. But, on the other hand, when it came to praying, first, we always had silent grace at table, except on occasion she would have each of the boys repeat a verse so that she could be sure that we were learning our verses. And when she prayed, she would often go, as the Bible indicates you should, into the closet and close the door. 00:09:00She never prayed publicly.

GANNON: Your father--many of the people who remember him think of his most prominent characteristic as his temper, and I gather that even in the store you had to sort of insulate him from the customers.

NIXON: Well, he was argumentative. He was combative. He was competitive. He--he was a character. There's no question about that, the very opposite of my mother in that respect. And she often had to soothe ruffled feathers of customers who came in because my father would pick arguments with them. He loved to talk about politics, or anything, for that matter. And she sometimes, when people would come into the store that he was having a running argument with, one or the others of us would rush up to wait on that customer to assure my dad didn't get to them. And that's the way we handled him. But, on the other hand, don't get the wrong idea about him as a real man. He, too, was remarkable in his way. You 00:10:00know, he--my mother understood him. My mother was quite well educated for those times. She was proficient in Greek and in Latin and in German. She also knew something about the piano, helped me a bit in that respect. She had been to college for two years and then got married before finishing. My father only went through the sixth grade.

GANNON: We have a photograph here of him, taken, I think, shortly after he moved to Whittier. He'd had a lot of interesting jobs before that, hadn't he?

NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, he went only to the sixth grade not because he was dumb, but because his mother died of tuberculosis when he was about eight or nine years old. And from then on he was shunted from family to family, and he worked in every kind of a job. He worked as a streetcar motorman in Columbus, Ohio. He worked in the wheat fields in Colorado. He worked in the oil fields. He was a excellent carpenter. As a matter of fact, he built the house that I was 00:11:00born in. He was the greatest fireplace maker that Yorba Linda or anybody ever had. He used to make fireplaces for all the people when they were building fireplaces in their houses. And then, of course he was one who was always ahead of the times. He bought the first tractor in Yorba Linda, and then he contracted out to all the others to do work with tractors when others were still using horses. He was one who bought the first--built the first service station and store between Whittier and La Habra when people--other people didn't see that this was a real money-maker. So, as I say, we--I think that the boys, all of us,