These Nixon Fans Make Their Feelings Perfectly Clear

“Now, be very careful on these stairs,” Roland Bigonger was saying. “Maury Stans took a pratfall here.”

We were on our way up the narrow wood staircase leading to the loft where Richard Milhous Nixon slept as a child, except on those hot summer nights when it got so stuffy that he and his brother would sleep in a shack underneath the water tower. The summer house, they used to call it.

“Look at this; look in here,” Bigonger says, pointing at a fading piece of paper taped to a rafter in the attic. “This says when they fumigated, before the foundation had the house. . . . And, see, look at this--this is the original wood.”

Yes, indeed, these are exciting days for Yorba Linda Councilman Roland E. Bigonger, 62 years old, the city’s first attorney, first mayor, one of six founding members of the Nixon Birthplace Foundation and undoubtedly one of the nation’s most devoted fans of Richard M. Nixon.

As we stood in the attic of the farmhouse where Nixon was born--”the single most important asset that the community has”--Bigonger’s 21-year dream, steadfast and proud, was coming to life all around us.

Downstairs, painters were dabbing at window sills in the hopes of completing restoration work by Jan. 6, Nixon’s 77th birthday and, not coincidentally, a city holiday. Outside, scores of construction workers were toiling to finish the Nixon library complex by June 21, 1990, the 50th wedding anniversary of Richard and Pat Nixon.

And, Bigonger pointed out, just a stone’s throw from the very room where Nixon was born stands the same pepper tree from which he had swung as a boy. On the other side of the house is the site of young Richard’s swims in the Anaheim Union Canal, which has since been filled in with concrete--and which, at that very moment, was being jogged on by a nice-looking couple.

“We are the only state that has the birthplace of a president, west of the Rockies, where he was actually born at home,” Bigonger says. “We had to have this developed and made into a historical site.”

Yorba Linda, with only a smattering of minor exceptions really not worth mentioning, never had a doubt.

Oh, sure, a good part of the rest of the county may have had a few more qualms now and then--even San Clemente, remember that? Wonder what they’re saying in San Clemente now. Why just the other day, Richard Nixon was at the White House telling George Bush a thing or two about China. As it should be.

“Yorba Linda was always very proud of a man who rose from humble beginnings to the highest office in the land,” Bigonger says. “We are certainly not ostriches who wish to stick our heads in the sand. Certainly there was concern here that something must have happened to cause all the investigations. Boy, I remember it was on TV every day, in the newspapers. You really couldn’t help but hear it . . . .

“I remember I was interviewed when he resigned. There was just a lot of concern and sympathy for him and his family. I personally felt he was a victim of circumstances. But I didn’t sense any condemnation, not here in Yorba Linda.”

And years later, even the threat of more traffic has failed to dampen the city’s enthusiasm for being home to the $25-million library honoring the only American president to resign from office.

During a series of public meetings that lasted more than six months, not a soul showed up to protest the project, which is on the corner of Eureka Avenue and Yorba Linda Boulevard, directly across from the sign advertising psychic readings. (Nixon, incidentally, is a Capricorn.)

Such accommodation with the Nixon legacy just seems to fit in Yorba Linda, which gave its first official recognition to Vice President Nixon in 1958, in the form of a plaque.

In 1967 came the city seal, featuring Nixon’s birthplace, and don’t forget the Richard M. Nixon park (now just a sliver of grass with a flagpole next to Mimi’s restaurant), the Richard M. Nixon school (demolished for lack of enrollment) and the Richard M. Nixon freeway (officially stripped of that title by the state legislature). Now there’s talk of a new city flag that might show the library and the birthplace.

Adding to the spirit is Edith Eichler, a former neighbor of the Nixons who nonetheless concedes that she is not thrilled to be living next door to the library.

“But the community likes it here, so I’ll get along with it,” she says. “And the construction people are very nice.”

Mrs. Eichler, who is 95 years old, was especially fond of Hannah Nixon, Richard’s mother, who with her own mother was a charter member of the city’s Woman’s Club. She remembers Richard too.

“He was an active little boy and very studious,” she says. “They said that at school, during recess, he preferred to read a book. He was no troublemaker.”

Another neighbor, Fay Young, who at 94 calls himself the city’s oldest male resident, says that although he’s no Nixon devotee--he’s a Democrat, after all--”I respect him, and gee whiz, Yorba Linda is going all out for him and you can’t back off from that.”

(Mr. Young adds, for the record, that he hasn’t yet formed an opinion on Watergate.)

“You can’t deny history,” is what Roland Bigonger says about it all. “The man was born here, and he did rise to the highest office in the land.”

Not that Bigonger is offering any excuses. It just that, with an outsider, you’re never quite sure about where they stand on the President.

“You still have a lot of die-hards out there who don’t wish to accept him,” Bigonger acknowledges.

As we walked the grounds of Roland Bigonger’s dream, he told me a story about Hurless Barton, Yorba Linda auto dealer, second cousin to Richard M. Nixon, and, with Bigonger, one of the founding members of the Birthplace Foundation.

“Hurless Barton was one of the finest gentlemen that I’ve ever known,” Bigonger said, pausing a little at the memory. “I remember he was 85 years old and he used to come out here to trim these trees himself.

“One time, two months before he died, he took my hand, and he said: ‘Roland, you’re one of the youngest ones here. You’ve got to make this happen.’ So, you know, I feel pretty good about all this.”