Still More Pain for the Nixons

Even before escaping into seclusion at San Clemente nearly two years ago, Pat Nixon surprised a group of reporters by conceding that her life was not a bed of roses. "I don't tell all," she said. In fact, during Richard Nixon's tumultuous career, she endured her private agonies with unfailing public dignity. Thus when she suddenly felt weak as she sat reading on a patio one afternoon last week, it was typical of Pat that she complained to no one. She simply went to bed early.

The next morning it was apparent that something was seriously wrong with the former First Lady, who is 64. Her husband was the first to notice her problem when he found her in the kitchen trying with difficulty to open a jar of coffee. She also had trouble moving her left arm and left leg. The left side of her face was partially paralyzed, which caused her words to slur. When these symptoms became evident, she was rushed by ambulance to Long Beach Memorial Hospital, 36 miles up the coast from San Clemente. Riding with her were her husband and her daughter Julie, who, with her husband, David Eisenhower, had spent the holiday weekend visiting the Nixons.

After intensive examinations, doctors concluded that Pat had suffered a stroke in the right parietal area of the brain. She was considered in serious but not critical condition. Although she was placed in an intensive care unit, she remained conscious and coherent. Nevertheless, she was expected to be hospitalized for at least ten days. Nixon's personal physician, Dr. John Lundgren, and Neurologist Jack M. Mosier said the stroke had been caused by a small hemorrhage or clot in the right cerebral cortex. Unless the effects of the stroke spread, Pat Nixon was expected to recover, but it remained uncertain whether she would be able to walk normally again.

Since Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974, Pat has left San Clemente only occasionally: a few shopping trips to nearby Newport Beach and Los Angeles; infrequent dinners with Dick at local restaurants; one public appearance, alone, at ceremonies naming a public grade school after her; a visit to China with her husband; a theater outing in New York with Daughter Tricia Cox (who, on learning of her mother's stroke, headed at once for California).

At San Clemente Pat's main preoccupation has been tending two vegetable gardens on the estate. She takes particular pride in her corn, beans and tomatoes.

In public Pat Nixon projected a stiff, almost plastic image--one that served well to conceal her inner anguish. Intimates say it also obscured a warmth and liveliness enjoyed only by those who knew her offstage. Yet her ordeal was obviously great as her husband, in the twilight of his presidency, lied to the public--and apparently even to his family--about the Watergate cover-up and was forced out of office. Most humiliating in more recent days was the Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein description of a cold Nixon marriage, her consideration of divorce in 1962, her seeking solace in drink during those Final Days in the White House. Her feelings about such reports have not been revealed. "She always keeps her hurts and disappointments to herself," explains one of her closest friends. "She isn't what you'd call a confider." Whatever she did feel through her husband's many crises, she has remained loyally at his side.

Disbarred. Just as Pat was hospitalized, a court across the country dealt the Nixons another blow. Pronouncing formal judgment for the first time on her husband's conduct in office, an appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court disbarred the former President from legal practice in that state. In a 4-to-l opinion, the tribunal found that Nixon had: 1) obstructed justice by impeding an FBI investigation into the Watergate burglary-bugging; 2) interfered with Daniel Ellsberg's legal defense against charges arising from his publication of the Pentagon Papers; 3) attempted to obstruct a Justice Department investigation into the burglary of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding; 4) concealed evidence of unlawful activities by his White House and campaign staffs; and 5) approved hush-money payments to Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt.

Nixon had tried to resign voluntarily from the New York bar, as he had done successfully in California and from Supreme Court practice. He did not contest the charges, which were brought by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

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