Where the tide turned for Richard Nixon
In 1969, the sleepy surfing town of San Clemente suddenly found itself launched into the suck and swirl of global politics
San Clemente, a seaside town where rows of white stucco houses with orange roofs meet the blue waters of the Pacific, offers visitors the illusion of strolling through a tiny Spanish town. Once unknown to outsiders, the town was suddenly thrust onto the world stage in the summer of 1969 when new president Richard Nixon purchased an oceanfront residence here.
A self-made man who rose to the pinnacle of power, Nixon was born in a small town about 60 kilometres from San Clemente. As a young man, he went on a date at a nearby beach with a woman named Pat. She later became his wife.
Fred Divel, a 63-year-old former Nixon campaign staff member who helped find the residence, said: “Nixon really envied the retreat that the Kennedy family had – Hyannis Point. It was a private estate, and Kennedy could really relax there, away from [the] public. That’s why he [Nixon] liked it at Casa Pacifica [his home] and San Clemente.
It was that sort of place.”
The quiet coastal town instantly changed after Nixon bought the house. At the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement, gangs of protesters gathered in the town. Secret Service agents and reporters from all over the world roamed the streets, and Nixon’s residence, built on a 10-hectare estate, became known as the “Western White House.”
Nixon invited world leaders to his San Clemente pad, including Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1972. They discussed the Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement, which both nations signed shortly thereafter.
Nixon’s daughter gave up her room for Brezhnev to sleep in, surrounded by floral wallpaper.
“I think it was a diplomatic tactic for Nixon to invite [Brezhnev] to his home,” says Jimmy Byron, 20, of the Richard Nixon Foundation. “Casa Pacifica did play a diplomatic role – home to many major international agreements.”
Several times a year, Nixon stayed for periods of a week to a month. He travelled to Casa Pacifica by helicopter after landing at a nearby US Marine Corps base on a presidential plane. Special orders were given to local police to retrieve a black briefcase first in the event that Nixon’s helicopter were to crash. The briefcase contained a code to order the launch of nuclear weapons.
Looking back on those days, former city police chief Albert Ehlow, 75, said, “I remember sitting in my car watching the choppers come over and just praying that they didn’t crash.”
Nixon sometimes ventured into town to shop for items such as tools and sweets. When locals asked him for an autograph, he obliged with a smile, according to Ehlow. “Before Nixon, we were just a stop on the way to San Diego,” Ehlow said. “He put San Clemente on the map.
“We liked him, we liked the way he was running the country.”
The Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign in disgrace from the presidency on August 9, 1974. Soon after he returned to San Clemente and was greeted by a sign that read, “Welcome Home, Mr President!”
Nixon told locals he was proud to be a Californian and glad to be back home.
Peace has now returned to the town which served as a stage for global diplomacy for five years, and the beach in front of Nixon’s house has become a popular surfing spot. In 1980, Nixon sold up and moved to New York.
Nostalgic for the old days, Jorge Olamendi, 65, a Mexican restaurant owner in the neighbourhood, recalls, “He [Nixon] said, ‘I want the world to someday be in peace.’”
After stepping down, Nixon devoted himself to writing his memoirs and books on diplomacy in his seaside study. Even after falling from the apex of power, the former president still had an oceanfront view from which to observe the world.
Tricky times
Born in California in 1913, after serving as a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and as a vice president, Nixon became the 37th US president in 1969.
In 1972, he became the first US president to visit China. Although he scored a series of diplomatic successes, including the withdrawal of US forces from South Vietnam, he was forced to resign as president on August 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which was triggered by the wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC.
