Julie Nixon Eisenhower

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Julie Nixon Eisenhower
Nixon Eisenhower in 2010
Born
Julie Nixon

(1948-07-05) July 5, 1948 (age 75)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
EducationSmith College
OccupationAuthor
Spouse
​
(m. 1968)​
Children3, including Jennie
Parents

Julie Nixon Eisenhower (born July 5, 1948) is an American author who is the younger daughter of former U.S. president Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat Nixon. Her husband, David, is the grandson of former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie Eisenhower.

Born in

Congressman, Julie and her older sister, Tricia Nixon Cox, grew up in the public eye. Her father was elected U.S. Senator from California when she was two and Vice President of the United States when she was four. Her 1968 marriage to David Eisenhower was seen as a union between two of the most prominent political families in the United States
.

Throughout the

Nixon administration (1969 to 1974), Julie worked as the assistant managing editor of The Saturday Evening Post while holding the unofficial title of "First Daughter". She was widely noted as one of her father's most vocal and active defenders and was named one of the "Ten Most Admired Women in America" for four years of the 1970s by readers of Good Housekeeping magazine. After her father resigned from the presidency in 1974, she wrote a biography of her mother, the New York Times best-seller Pat Nixon: The Untold Story. She continues to engage in works that support her parents' legacies and is on the board of directors of the Richard Nixon Foundation
.

She is the mother of two daughters, Jennie Eisenhower and Melanie Catherine Eisenhower, and a son, Alex Eisenhower.

Early life and education

Julie Nixon, then aged 4, with Republican 1952 presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower at Washington National Airport as she is held by her father, Eisenhower's vice presidential running mate, in September 1952, two months before the 1952 presidential election

Julie Nixon was born at

cocker spaniel named Checkers, who figured prominently in one of her father's most famous speeches
, given during his 1952 campaign for Vice President of the United States.

While her father was vice president, she attended the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., along with her sister Tricia. After her father lost the presidential election of 1960 to John F. Kennedy, Julie felt "battered" by the results and felt that the votes had "been stolen".[1]

After her father lost his presidential bid in 1960 the family returned to California, where her father ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1962. The Nixons moved to New York Cotu after the gubernatorial race, and Julie attended Smith College after her graduation from the Chapin School.[5] She received a master's degree in education from Catholic University of America in 1971. When she was at Smith, David Eisenhower, the grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, attended Amherst College nearby. Julie and David were both invited to address the Hadley Republican Women's Club. The club learned that the two were only seven miles apart, and invited them to be featured speakers.[6] They discussed the invitations and both chose to decline, but would come in contact again when David visited Julie with his roommate from Amherst and took her and a friend out for ice cream. David reflected: "I was broke, my roommate forgot his wallet. The girls paid."[7]

Marriage

Julie and David Eisenhower, both age 23, in April 1971
Julie and David Eisenhower fishing in Key Biscayne, Florida, in May 1971

She began to date David Eisenhower in the fall of 1966 when both were freshmen at Smith College and Amherst College, respectively. They became engaged a year later. [8] Both Julie and David have said that Mamie Eisenhower played a major part in their relationship.[9][10] In 1966 during the funeral for Raymond Pitcairn, a friend of the Nixons, Julie mentioned to Mamie that she would be attending Smith College. Mamie told her of David's plans to go to Amherst College, and soon started trying to get David to call on her.[11]

In 1966, Julie Nixon was presented as a

high society at the International Debutante Ball at Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. David Eisenhower was her civilian escort at the International Debutante Ball.[12]

Julie and David married on December 22, 1968, after her father was elected president in the 1968 presidential election, but before he took office. The couple decided they did not want the publicity of a White House wedding.[13] The Reverend Norman Vincent Peale officiated in the non-denominational rite at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.

The couple left

Jennie Elizabeth (born August 15, 1978), [15]
Alexander Richard (b. 1980), and Melanie Catherine Eisenhower (b. 1984).

First daughter

Julie with her father in the Oval Office in December 1971
Julie and her mother, First Lady Pat Nixon, with former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower in January 1973

During the United States presidential election of 1968, when her father was the Republican nominee, Julie began to feel that she was not active enough in her father's campaign and worried over what she believed was Hubert Humphrey's popularity at Smith College, which she was attending at the time.[16] She took an active role in his campaign, and shook hands for hours while greeting people. Despite not liking the publicity and hating to answer "personal questions", she did anything she could to help her father.[17]

While her father served as President (1969–1974), Julie became active at the

John F. Kennedy, Jr., when they visited the White House in 1971. The sisters took the young Kennedys on a tour of their former residence, which included going to their old bedrooms and to the Oval Office.[18]

In 1971, when David was assigned to the Mayport, Florida-based USS Albany, they moved to the Jacksonville beach community of Atlantic Beach, Florida. She had been hired to teach third grade at Atlantic Beach Elementary School beginning that fall, but she had to quit when she broke her toe just before classes were to start. The Eisenhowers continued to live in Atlantic Beach until 1973, even hosting the President and the First Lady at their beachfront garage apartment on Beach Avenue.[19]

From 1973 to 1975, she served as Assistant Managing Editor of the

Saturday Evening Post
and helped establish a book division for Curtis Publishing Co., its parent corporation. It was during this time that Julie wrote the book Eye On Nixon, full of photographs of her father's first administration.

After the news of the

Watergate hearings began, she [Julie] has become her father's... First Lady in practice if not in fact."[20]

Taking on the "role of trying to explain her father to the world",

East Garden of the White House. She announced that the President planned "... to take this constitutionally down to the wire."[20] Just before noon on August 9, 1974, Julie stood behind her father while he gave his goodbye speech to the White House staff. She later said it was the hardest moment for him.[20]

Life after the White House

Eisenhower served as Chair of the White House Fellows program in the George W. Bush administration, pictured here with the 2003 class in Annapolis, Maryland
Robert M. Gates
in February 2010

Julie and David settled in

President's Commission on White House Fellowships, a program fostering leadership in the nation's most exceptional young adults.[23]

Along with her sister and father, she was with her mother when she died of

Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. Ten months later, she was by her father's bedside with her sister when he died.[25] Julie attended the funeral on April 27, 1994.[26] Her father's death left her and her sister with his diary entries, binders and tapes among other things.[27]

She has expressed distaste in a few adaptations of presidencies, and labeled them as giving young viewers a "twisted sense of history".[28] This extended to Oliver Stone's film Nixon, an adaptation of her father's presidency.[29][30] Walt Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, wrote a letter to Julie and her sister saying that Stone had "committed a grave disservice to your family, to the Presidency, and to American history".[31]

On April 14, 1999, the U.S. Department of Defense moved to prevent her from making an appearance to testify during a legal battle over whether the federal government would pay her father's estate millions designated for the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in compensation for papers and tapes seized when he resigned.[32]

In 2001, she expressed interest in exhuming the body of Checkers, a dog attributed to her father's career when he campaigned for vice president that died in 1964. Her desire was to move the remains to the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.[33]

Julie Nixon Eisenhower spoke at Southern Arkansas University in September 2013 (top) and signed copies of her books for students (below).

She and her sister got into a legal battle over an estimated "as-high-as" $19 million, left by Bebe Rebozo for the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation. As opposed to Tricia's wish for the money to be controlled by a group affiliated with their family, Julie wanted it to be controlled by the library's board.[34] On the relationship strain the two were experiencing during the dispute, Julie said "I think it is very sad"[35] and stated, "It's very heartbreaking because I love my sister very much".[36] Ultimately, the lawsuit was settled to the satisfaction of both sides.[37]

One of Eisenhower's fondest wishes was for the Nixon Library to join the

system of Presidential Libraries
:

It's not right, struggling for the money. My father should be in the system. As long as he's on the outside, historians will continue to look at him, I feel, in a more negative light. There is always going to be negativity, but he has to be part of the continuum of presidents.[35]

Due in large part to Julie Eisenhower's advocacy, the Nixon Library became part of the National Archives and Records Administration system in July 2007.[38]

In spite of her family's history of supporting Republicans, Julie donated $2,300 to Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary race against Hillary Clinton.[39][40] She supported Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican nominee against President Obama, and Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.[41]

On March 16, 2012, she and her sister arrived in Yorba Linda, California, to celebrate what would have been their mother's 100th birthday.[42] On November 23, 2013, Eisenhower and her husband opened a holiday exhibit for the Nixon Library, which remained there until January 5, 2014.[43]

References

  1. ^ a b "Julie Nixon Eisenhower Remembers Her Mother and Former First Lady Pat on the Centennial of Her Birth". April 8, 2012. Archived from the original on November 26, 2013.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. ^ Pat Nixon A&E Biography
  3. ^ Frank, pp. 286-287.
  4. ^ Frank, p. 76.
  5. ^ "The Day - Google News Archive Search".
  6. ^ Wead, p. 261.
  7. ^ Gibbs, p. 253.
  8. U.S. News
    .
  9. ^ "Gloria Greer with Julie Nixon Eisenhower". February 2, 2002.
  10. ^ "An Evening with David and Julie Eisenhower". January 26, 2012.
  11. ^ Eisenhower, p. 210.
  12. ^ Yazigi, Monique (January 1997). "The Debutante Returns, With Pearls and Plans". The New York Times. Retrieved December 30, 2017.
  13. ISBN 9781416576051
    .
  14. ^ Frank, p 344.
  15. IMDb
  16. ^ "My College Diary by Julie Nixon Eisenhower".
  17. The Norwalk Hour
    . March 4, 1968.
  18. ISBN 978-0451178381
    .
  19. ^ Kerr, Jessie-Lynne (June 26, 2002). "Nixon daughter fondly recalls First Coast". The Florida Times-Union.
  20. ^ a b c d David, Lester and Thomas Y. Crowell. The Lonely Lady of San Clemente. New York, 1978. p. 172-174.
  21. ^ Marton, p. 193.
  22. PA State Archives
    .
  23. ^ "Commissioner Service Dates".
  24. ^ "EX-FIRST LADY PAT NIXON DIES OF LUNG CANCER AT 81". The Buffalo News. June 22, 1993. Archived from the original on June 10, 2014.
  25. ^ "Nixon Motto: 'The Worst Thing A Politician Can Be Is Dull'". Chicago Tribune. April 24, 1994.
  26. ^ Warshaw, p. 242.
  27. ^ McGraw, Seamus (May 18, 1994). "NIXON DIARIES WILL STAY A FAMILY SECRET". The Record. Archived from the original on June 10, 2014.
  28. ^ "Movies Twist History, Julie Nixon Argues". Chicago Tribune. November 21, 1996.
  29. ^ Wills, Garry (January 10, 1996). "'Nixon' Outrage Proves Truth Hurts". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on June 10, 2014.
  30. ^ "Nixon (1995)". Rotten Tomatoes.
  31. ^ "Nixon's Family, Disney's Daughter Attack Stone's Film". Associated Press. December 20, 1995.
  32. ^ Pasco, Jean O.; Weinstein, Henry (April 15, 1999). "U.S. Moves to Block Testimony in Trial". Los Angeles Times.
  33. ^ "Julie Nixon's Pet Project: Relocating Checkers". Los Angeles Times. June 23, 2001.
  34. ^ Greene, Bob (March 26, 2002). "What Nixon's best friend couldn't buy". Chicago Tribune.
  35. ^ a b Kasindorf, Martin (April 29, 2002). "Family feud stains efforts to burnish Nixon's legacy". USA Today.
  36. ^ Pfeifer, Stuart; Goldman, John J.; Willon, Phil (March 2, 2002). "Views Emerge in Rift Between Nixon Sisters". Los Angeles Times.
  37. ^ Sterngold, James (August 9, 2002). "Nixon's daughters end rift over gift". San Francisco Chronicle.
  38. ^ "Library History". nixonlibrary.gov. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved April 14, 2016.
  39. ^ "Nixon’s Daughter Talks Watergate, Electing Woman To White House During Pittsburgh Visit", CBS Pittsburgh, September 13, 2014.
  40. ^ AP. "Nixon's daughter gives to Obama", ABC News, April 22, 2008. Accessed April 22, 2008.
  41. ^ "Search Results: Eisenhower, Julie". OpenSecrets.
  42. ^ Movroydis, Jonathan (March 16, 2002). "Julie and Tricia Nixon Celebrate First Lady's 100th Birthday". Richard Nixon Foundation. Archived from the original on October 12, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2013.
  43. Orange County Register
    . November 23, 2013.
General sources

External links

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