Demystifying the Mysterious Mrs Nixon: A First Lady Revealed
Bob Bostock, who curated the Pat Nixon Centennial exhibit at the Nixon Library, interviews Heath Hardage Lee about her new book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington's Most Private First Lady.
Although First Lady Pat Nixon was voted “Most Admired Woman in the World” in 1972 and made Gallup Poll’s top ten list of most admired women fourteen times, in America’s collective consciousness, she has long been perceived as enigmatic. The media often portrayed Mrs. Nixon as elusive and mysterious. The real Pat Nixon, however, bore little resemblance to the woman so often described in the press. Pat married California lawyer and future President Richard Nixon in June of 1940, becoming a wife, mother, and her husband’s trusted political partner in short order. As the couple rose to prominence, Pat became Second Lady from 1953-1961 and then First Lady from 1969-1974, forging her own graceful path between the protocols of the strait-laced mid-century and the bra-burning Sixties and Seventies.
Mrs. Nixon was progressive on women’s issues, favoring the Equal Rights Amendment and backing a targeted effort led by Staff Assistant to the President, Barbara Hackman Franklin to get more women into mid to high level government jobs. Pat also strongly supported nominating a woman for the Supreme Court and supported a woman’s right to choose. The widely traveled Mrs. Nixon was globally influential, often acting as a solo diplomat on the Nixon administration’s behalf. There was nothing Pat Nixon enjoyed more than working one-on-one directly with ordinary human beings, especially with women, children, and those in need. Lee will discuss the life and times of this remarkable First Lady: an empathetic, adventurous, self-made woman who wanted no power or influence, but who connected warmly with both ordinary Americans and people from different cultures she encountered world-wide.
Please join us at 7 PM EDT on Thursday, September 5 at 7:00 pm EDT: View on Facebook or on YouTube.
Heath Hardage Lee is an award-winning historian, biographer and curator who specializes in women’s history. Heath’s narrative nonfiction book entitled The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home from Vietnam was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2019. Heath’s museum exhibition entitled The League of Wives: Vietnam POW MIA Advocates & Allies about Vietnam POW MIA wives premiered at the Dole Institute of Politics in May of 2017 and travelled to venues all over the United States through 2023. The League of Wives is currently being developed as a television series. Heath also writes about women’s history and politics for publications such as Time, The Hill, The Atlantic and White House History Quarterly. She currently serves on the Board of FLARE the First Ladies Association for Research and Education. Heath’s new book The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: Washington’s Most Private First Lady is the first commercial biography of First Lady Pat Nixon in almost 40 years.
Bob Bostock is a consultant to the Richard Nixon Foundation. He has written and curated or co-curated numerous special and permanent exhibits for the Nixon Library, including the Pat Nixon Centennial exhibit, President Nixon’s centennial exhibit, and exhibits on the Cold War, the 50th anniversary of the return of the POWs from North Vietnam, the Nixon environmental record, the importance of Title IX, and the Middle East, among others.
He worked with former President Nixon from 1989-1994, providing research and writing assistance to the former president’s office. In 1990, he wrote much of the text for the new Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace. Working with the former president, he wrote the library’s original Watergate exhibit.
Bostock has spent much of his career speechwriting for senior public and private leaders, including Governor Christine Todd Whitman, and two Congressman and one Senator from New Jersey. He is the co-author of Governor Whitman’s New York Times 2005 bestseller, “It’s My Party Too.”