Beyond Peace (2 page)

Governor
State of California

Richard Nixon has a beautiful family, and he was devoted to them. Anyone who ever saw them together knew his beloved Pat and his girls, Tricia and Julie, were everything to him. He was so proud of them, of his sons-in-law, Edward and David, and his grandchildren. But he also had a much larger extended family. A family of those who worked for him and with him, and I was and am very lucky to be a part of that family.

I was one of the many young men and women in whom he inspired the same fierce loyalty that he gave to us. From the first, I was struck by the quality of his personal generosity. When we met in 1962, he had already debated Khrushchev and President Kennedy, he'd already run for president, he had been a major political figure on the world stage. But still he had time to talk to and to help an eager, young advance man who could offer him little but energy and enthusiasm.

Then in the Fall of 1965, when I was 32, he honored me by asking me to come to work with him on his potential bid for the presidency in 1968. But he had heard from Bob Finch and Herb Klein that I was thinking about running for office myself. I told him it was true, and he grinned. He grinned and he said in that deep rich voice of his, “Is it a good district? Can you win?” And then he said, “Because if you can, then Pete, you've got to try or you'll never forgive yourself.” I was just another young lawyer trying to find his way in the world, and he was a former vice president preparing a bid for the highest office in the land. And yet that day, he was as concerned with my future as he was with his own.

Time and again, not just with me, but with many others, he was always there, willing to share his insight and his experience, and no American in this century had more of either to share.

It's hard to imagine a world without Richard Nixon. For half a century he played a leading role in shaping the events that have shaped our lives. It's not just that he served for three decades in high office, it's not just that he garnered more votes than any candidate in American history; it was because his intellect, his insight and his indomitable will could not be ignored. He moved on the world stage, he voiced bold ideas and he left global footprints.

But for all his world grasp and mastery of global strategy, it was right here in this small house in this little town in Orange County that Richard Nixon learned and never forgot the values that shaped him and helped him shape our world. He learned the value of hard work. He learned that to make important change you must take risks. And he learned the Quaker virtue that if you were born with a good mind and good health, you were obliged to help others, to give back to your community.

But he had something more, much more. When most people think of Richard Nixon, they think of his towering intellect, the incisive quality of his mind. Well, I will always remember him for another quality. It's the quality that great fighters have. They call it heart. Heart is what let Richard Nixon climb back into the ring time and again when almost anyone else would have thrown in the towel.

It was his heart that taught us the great lesson of Richard Nixon's life to never ever give up. To him, it was no disgrace to fight and be beaten. The only disgrace was to quit, and he never did. Like this golden state that bred and shaped him, he knew adversity was a challenge to overcome. He loved returning to California, and he shared California's optimism. And as he saw the state he loved facing the harshest economic times since the Great Depression, his message to us was, “Keep walking, keep working and keep fighting, and you'll come back better than before.” The world will remember Richard Nixon rightly as a fighter of iron will, but the greatness of a man can sometimes be best measured by the times and the reasons that he chooses not to fight.

After the 1960 election many urged Richard Nixon to contest one of the closest and most controversial elections in American history. But Richard Nixon said no, he would not go to court. He refused to fight, and he urged others not to on his behalf. He would relinquish the prize that was his life's ambition. Why? For a simple, but these days remarkable, reason. It was because he so loved his country that he refused to risk it being torn apart by the constitutional crisis that might ensue.

Forgive my parochial pride, but in the modest home just a few feet from this stand was bred a grocer's son and a great American, with deep love for his country, with limitless courage, and above all with the faith and the brimming spirit and energy that creates only a handful of great leaders from among the tens of millions of their fellow citizens. Dick Nixon's heart shaped by
the grit and mores of this small town never left California, and now we return it to the soil that bred him.

He ended his own eulogy to Everett Dirkson with a favorite quotation from the poet Sophocles, “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.” And in Richard Nixon's evening, his light burned bright with hope and wise prescriptions for America and for the world. Today, as we take him to rest, as we seek to measure the greatness of the man in his legacy, it is clear how truly splendid Richard Nixon's day has been.

President Nixon opened his memoirs with a simple sentence: “I was born in a house my father built.” Today we can look back at this little house and still imagine a young boy sitting by the window of the attic he shared with his three brothers, looking out to the world he could then himself only imagine. From those humble roots, as from so many humble beginnings in this country, grew the force of a driving dream, a dream that led to the remarkable journey that ends here today, where it all began; beside the same tiny home mail-ordered from back East, near this towering oak tree, which back then was a mere seedling.

President Nixon's journey across the American landscape mirrored that of his entire nation in this remarkable century. His life was bound up with the striving of our whole people, with our crises and our triumphs.

When he became president, he took on challenges here at home on matters from cancer research to environmental protection, putting the power of the federal government where Republicans and Democrats had neglected to put it in the past, and foreign policy. He came to the presidency at a time in our history when Americans were tempted to say we had had enough of the world. Instead, he knew we had to reach out to old friends and old enemies alike. He would not allow America to quit the world.

Remarkably, he wrote nine of his ten books after he left the presidency, working his way back into the arena he so loved by writing and thinking and engaging us in his dialogue. For the past year, even in the final weeks of his life, he gave me his wise counsel, especially with regard to Russia. One thing in particular left a profound impression on me. Though this man was in his 9th decade, he had an incredibly sharp and vigorous and rigorous mind. As a public man, he always seemed to believe the greatest sin was remaining passive in the face of challenges, and he never stopped living by that creed. He gave of himself with intelligence and energy and devotion to duty, and his entire country owes him a debt of gratitude for that service.

Oh, yes, he knew great controversy amid defeat as well as victory. He made mistakes, and they, like his accomplishments, are a part of his life and record. But the enduring lesson of Richard Nixon is that he never gave up being part of the action and passion
of his times. He said many times that unless a person has a goal, a new mountain to climb, his spirit will die. Well, based on our last phone conversation and the letter he wrote me just a month ago, I can say that his spirit was very much alive to the very end.

This is a great tribute to him, to his wonderful wife, Pat, to his children and to his grandchildren whose love he so depended on and whose love he returned in full measure. Today is a day for his family, his friends and his nation to remember President Nixon's life in totality. To them, let us say may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.

May we heed his call to maintain the will and the wisdom to build on America's greatest gift: it's freedom. To lead a world full of difficulty to the just and lasting peace he dreamed of.

As it is written in the words of a hymn I heard in my church last Sunday, “Grant that I may realize that the trifling of life creates differences, but that in the higher things we are all one.” In the twilight of his life, President Nixon knew that lesson well. It is, I feel, certainly a fate he would want us all to keep.

And so, on behalf of all four former presidents who are here — President Ford, President Carter, President Reagan, President Bush — and on behalf of a grateful nation, we bid farewell to Richard Milhous Nixon.

Closing Remarks

The great king of ancient Israel, David, said on the death of Saul, who had been a bitter enemy, “Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel.”

Today we remember that with the death of Richard Nixon, a great man has fallen. We have heard that the world has lost a great citizen and America has lost a great statesman. And those of us that knew him have lost a personal friend.

You know, few events touch the heart of every American as profoundly as the death of a president, for the president is our leader. And every American feels that he knows him in a very special way, because he hears his voice so often, sees him on television, reads about him in the press. And so we all mourn his loss and feel that our world is a bit lonelier without him. But to you who were close to him, this grief is an added pain, because you wept when he wept and you laughed when he laughed.

And here amidst these familiar surroundings under these California skies, his earthly life has come full circle. It was here that Richard Nixon was born and reared; that his life was molded. But the scripture teaches that there's a time to be born, a time to live and a time to die.

Richard Nixon's time to die came last Friday evening. Since 1990, he had had a brilliant young cardiologist as his doctor by the name of Jeffrey Bora, and last Tuesday, the day after the president suffered his stroke, the doctor came by the New York Hospital to examine him. He was partially paralyzed and could not speak, but he was still alert. And as the doctor talked, the president reached out and grabbed his arm with an unusual strength. Then as the doctor turned to leave, something made him turn around and look back to the bed where Richard Nixon was lying, and just at that moment the president waved and gave his trademark thumbs-up signal and smiled. That took determination, which he had, and we've heard about already today. It was an example of fighting on and never giving up that Jeffrey Bora will never forget.

Now, President Nixon's great voice, his warm, intelligent eyes, his generous smile are missed as we gather here again, just 10 months after we were here when his beloved Pat went to heaven.

A few months ago he was asked on a television interview, “How would you like to be remembered?” He thought a moment, and then replied, “I'd like to be remembered as one who made a difference,” and he did make a difference in our world, as we've heard so eloquently this afternoon.

There's an old saying that a tree is best measured when it's laid down. The great events of his life have already been widely recounted by the news media this week, and it's not my purpose to restate what others have already said so eloquently, including those who have spoken so movingly here today.

I think most of us have been staggered by the many things that he accomplished during his life. His public service kept him at the center of the events that have shaped our destiny. This week
Time
magazine says that “by sheer endurance he rebuilt his standing as the most important figure of the post war era.

During his years of public service, Richard Nixon was on center stage during our generation. He had a great respect for the office of the president. I never heard him one time criticize a living president who was in the office at that time. There's an old Indian saying, “Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.”

However, there was another side to him that's more personal, more intimate, more human that we've heard referred to several times today, and that was his family, his neighbors and his friends, who are gathered here today. It was a side that many people did not see, for Richard Nixon was a private person in some ways. And then some people thought there was a shyness about him. Others sometimes found him hard to get to know. There were hundreds of little things he did for ordinary people that no one would have ever known about. He always had a compassion for people who were hurting. No one could ever understand Richard Nixon unless they understood the family from which he came, the Quaker church that he attended, Whittier College where he studied, and the land and the people in this area where you're sitting today. His roots were deep in this part of California.

But there's still another side to him that was his strong and growing faith in God. He never wore his religious faith on his sleeve, but was rather reticent to speak about it in public. He could have had more reasons than most for not attending church while he occupied the White House when there were so many demonstrations and threats going on. But he wanted to set an example, and he decided to have services most Sundays in the
White House, a small congregation, and clergymen from various denominations.

And I remember before one of the first services that President Nixon had at the White House, Ruth and I and two of our friends were in the private quarters with him. I'll never forget the President sitting down on the spur of the moment at an old battered Steinway that they had there playing the old hymn, “He will hold me fast for my Savior loves me so; he will hold me fast.”

John Donne said that there's a democracy about death. It comes equally to us all and makes us all equal when it comes. And I think today every one of us ought to be thinking about our own time to die, because we, too, are going to die, and we're going to have to face almighty God with the life that we lived here. There comes a time when we have to realize that life is short and in the end the only thing that really counts is not how others see us here, but how God sees us and what the record books of heaven have to say. For the believer who has been to the cross, death is no frightful leap into the dark, but is an entrance into a glorious new life. I believe that Richard Nixon right now is with Pat again, because I believe that in heaven we will know each other.