page_title: Pat Nixon
section_title: Life in the White House
hierarchical_section_title: Pat Nixon / First Lady of the United States, 1969–1974 / Life in the White House
caption_attribution_description: First Lady Pat Nixon addresses delegates at the 1972 Republican National Convention, Miami, Florida. Behind her are Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and Governor Ronald Reagan of California. Pat Nixon was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a party convention, and the first Republican First Lady to do so.
context_page_description: Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon, also commonly known as Patricia Nixon, was an American educator and the wife of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. During her more than 30 years in public life, she served as both the Second and First Lady of the United States.
  Born in Ely, Nevada, she grew up with her two brothers in what is now Cerritos, California, graduating from high school in 1929. She attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Dubbed the "Nixon team," Richard and Pat Nixon campaigned together in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. Pat Nixon did much to add substance to the role of the Vice President's wife, insisting on visiting schools, orphanages, hospitals, and village markets as she undertook many missions of goodwill across the world.
context_section_description: After her husband was elected president in 1968, Pat Nixon met with the outgoing First Lady Lady Bird Johnson and toured the private quarters of the White House on December 12.  She eventually asked Sarah Jackson Doyle, an interior decorator who had worked for the Nixons since 1965 and who decorated the family's 10-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York with French and English antiques, to serve as a design consultant. She hired Clement Conger from the State Department to be the Executive Mansion's new curator, replacing James Ketchum, who had been hired by Jacqueline Kennedy.
  Pat Nixon developed and led a coordinated effort to improve the authenticity of the White House as an historic residence and museum. She added more than 600 paintings, antiques and furnishings to the Executive Mansion and its collections, the largest number of acquisitions by any administration; this greatly, and dramatically, expanded upon Jacqueline Kennedy's more publicized efforts. She created the Map Room and renovated the China room, and refurbished nine other rooms, including the Red Room, Blue Room and Green Room. She worked with engineers to develop an exterior lighting system for the entire White House, literally making it glow a soft white. She ordered the American flag atop the White House flown day and night, even when the president was not in residence.
  She ordered pamphlets describing the rooms of the house for tourists so they could understand everything, and had them translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Russian for foreigners. She had ramps installed for the handicapped and physically disabled. She instructed the police who served as tour guides to attend sessions at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library (to learn how tours were guided "in a real museum"), and arranged for them to wear less menacing uniforms, with their guns hidden underneath. The tour guides were to speak slowly to deaf groups, to help those who lip-read, and Pat ordered that the blind be able to touch the antiques.
  The First Lady had long been irritated by the perception that the White House and access to the President and First Lady were exclusively for the wealthy and famous; she routinely came down from the family quarters to greet tourists, shake hands, sign autographs, and pose for photos. Her daughter Julie Eisenhower reflected, "she invited so many groups to the White House to give them recognition, not famous ones, but little-known organizations..."
  She invited former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her children Caroline and John Jr. to dine with her family and view the White House's official portraits of her and her husband, the late President Kennedy. It was the first time that the three Kennedys had returned to the White House since the president's assassination eight years earlier. Pat had ordered the visit to be kept secret from the media until after the trip's conclusion in an attempt to maintain privacy for the Kennedys. She also invited President Kennedy's mother Rose Kennedy to see her son's official portrait.
  She opened the White House for evening tours so that the public could see the interior design work that had been implemented. The tours that were conducted in December displayed the White House's Christmas decor. In addition, she instituted a series of performances by artists at the White House in varied American traditions, from opera to bluegrass; among the guests were The Carpenters in 1972. These events were described as ranging from "creative to indifferent, to downright embarrassing". When they entered the White House in 1969, the Nixons began inviting families to non-denominational Sunday church services in the East Room of the White House. She also oversaw the White House wedding of her daughter, Tricia, to Edward Ridley Finch Cox in 1971.
  In October 1969, she announced her appointment of Constance Stuart as her staff director and press secretary. To the White House residence staff, the Nixons were perceived as more stiff and formal than other first families, but nonetheless kind.
  She spoke out in favor of women ru
caption: Pat addresses the 1972 Republican National Convention. She was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a party convention, and the first Republican First Lady to do so.
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