Richard Nixon: Poker Winnings, the Pumpkin Papers, and Watergate Tapes

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Richard Nixon grew up poor in Yorba Linda and Whittier, California, where his family ran a failing lemon ranch and then a grocery store and gas station. He lost his brothers Arthur and Harold to illness, rose at 4 a.m. to drive to Los Angeles for produce, and turned to debate after a lung scar barred him from football. Rejected by the Franklins at Whittier College, he cofounded the rival Orthogonians, then graduated third in his class from Duke Law on scholarship. He pursued Pat Ryan for two years after meeting her in a community theater production, left his Quaker pacifist upbringing to serve in Navy logistics in the South Pacific, and used poker winnings to fund his 1946 defeat of Jerry Voorhis. The Alger Hiss case and the pumpkin papers made him a national figure.

Dwight Eisenhower chose him as running mate at 39. After losing narrowly to John F. Kennedy in 1960 he declined to contest the result, then lost the 1962 California governor's race and told reporters they would not have Nixon to kick around anymore. Elected president in 1968, he ordered bombing in Cambodia while opening relations with China in 1972 and pursuing détente with the Soviet Union, and he created the EPA and OSHA. The June 17, 1972 Watergate break-in, the cover-up and his own Oval Office taping system led to his resignation on August 9, 1974. Pardoned by Gerald Ford, he wrote nine books and advised later presidents before dying of a stroke in 1994.

• A high school English teacher taught him to converse with an audience rather than shout at it.
• His frozen orange juice company, Citrofrost, went bankrupt after 18 months.
• Even his close friend Bebe Rebozo did not call him by his first name.
• He signed the Endangered Species Act and the lowering of the voting age to 18.
• The burglars' sequential $100 bills were traced to a fund of the Committee to Re-elect the President.