Five years ago this week (August 9) President Richard Nixon left the White House in disgrace (right), and Citizen Nixon began his exile in San Clemente a sick and stricken man left to his golf, his trappings and his multimillion-dollar memoirs. Since then he has inched steadily back from Elba West. Now, with a book on U.S. foreign policy due next year and a move to Manhattan as early as next month, his associates are heralding an altogether New Nixon. "He's so busy," marvels a family friend, "you wouldn't think he was an ex-President."
Nixon's impending move—he's bought a $750,000, nine-room penthouse at 72nd Street and Madison—reportedly signals his readiness for a higher political profile. "He wants very much to be more active, to say things about the world situation," reports a former ally. Nixon still occasionally dines with cronies like Bebe Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp—even Watergater H. R. Haldeman recently dropped by—but callers say he is, at 66, visibly changed. "He is at peace," Helen Drown, a friend of Pat's for 40 years, observed lately. That opinion is seconded by another recent visitor: "His features are softer. He doesn't have that harsh look he had when he was President."
For her part, Pat Nixon, 67, has all but recovered from her 1976 stroke—and is described as "absolutely delighted" about leaving Casa Pacifica. "New York is a great place for a private life," daughter Julie once said, and friends relate that it was always Pat's favorite home. The chance to stroll among East Side art galleries, shops and restaurants—and live near both of her young grandchildren—will be renewing.
Nixon's own motives for the move (aside from boredom with life at San Clemente) reportedly include a desire to get involved in the 1980 campaign—though not for purely partisan reasons. "You'd think he would gloat to see Carter in so much trouble," says a Washington associate, "but he doesn't." Rather, the consensus is that Nixon is looking for a voice—and, however improbably, for forgiveness. "He's an enormously strong man," says one old loyalist, who adds wishfully: "I think he's on the road to vindication."
The Coxes are guarded
Until the final months of the Nixon administration Eddie Cox, 32, and wife Tricia, 33, stayed as far away as they could get from the Watergate scandal. Since then they have rallied behind Dick and Pat in times of crisis, but the Coxes have been less visible than the other Nixons—and less visibly Nixons.
That may soon change. The Coxes own a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's tony East 70s—walking distance from the new Nixon digs. The private life they have cherished could well disappear when Ed's famous in-laws start calling. While Trish (as he calls her) decorates their co-op and tends to 5-month-old Christopher, Ed sweats out his future with a blue-chip Wall Street law firm. An associate since 1973, he is two years away from either admittance into partnership or a parting of the ways.
The Coxes are hardly sheltered in Manhattan—he takes the squalid IRT subway to work each morning at 8, and she walks Christopher down Fifth Avenue—but they studiously shun celebrity. They entertain quietly and like to escape to the seclusion of his parents' house in Long Island's exclusive Hamptons. Notes one observer: "They are both so recognizable they tend to keep to themselves." Cox is consequently less than happy, friends claim, about the Nixons' return. "Ed was a rising star," another pal says bluntly, "who got connected with the devil. He's trying to disassociate himself."
The Eisenhowers follow
"Everyone has a tragedy in their lives," Julie Nixon Eisenhower once said. "What was unusual about ours was that it was in the public eye." Julie always played Cordelia to her father's Lear—his defender in a hostile time—and she hasn't changed. The Eisenhowers, both 31, who live in a nearby beach cottage, are the most frequent guests at Casa Pacifica. David is finishing his biography of grandfather Ike, and Julie combines mothering 11-month-old Jennie with writing a book about Pat. When the Nixons move east, so will they, possibly to Pennsylvania, where David may join a law firm—or begin a biography of Nixon. He shares Julie's bias. Watergate is all explainable, he insists, "if you accept the premise that Mr. Nixon is basically a decent man."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
