Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in 1912 in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. As First Lady, Pat Nixon promoted a number of charitable causes, including volunteerism. She oversaw the collection of more than 600 pieces of historic art and furnishings for the White House.
About Pat Nixon in brief
Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in 1912 in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada. 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. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. As First Lady, Pat Nixon promoted a number of charitable causes, including volunteerism. She oversaw the collection of more than 600 pieces of historic art and furnishings for the White House, an acquisition larger than that of any other administration. Her tenure as First Lady ended when, after being re-elected in a landslide victory in 1972, President Nixon resigned two years later amid the Watergate scandal. She and her husband settled in San Clemente, California, and later moved to New Jersey. She suffered two strokes, one in 1976 and another in 1983, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1992. Pat Nixon died in 1993, aged 81. She was the most traveled First Lady in U.S. history, a record unsurpassed until twenty-five years later. She accompanied the President as the first First Lady to visit China and the Soviet Union. She also was the first President’s wife to be officially designated a representative of the United States on her solo trips to Africa and South America, which gained her recognition as ‘Madame Ambassador’ The nickname ‘Pat’ was given to her by her father, because of her birth on the day before Saint Patrick’s Day and her Irish ancestry.
It has been said that few, if any, First Ladies worked as consistently before marrying as did Pat Nixon. Thelma Ryan’s high school yearbook page gives her nickname as ‘Buddy’ and her ambition to run a boarding house. She worked on the family farm and also at a local bank as a janitor and bookkeeper. She majored in merchandising in 1931 at the University of Southern California. A former professor noted that she stood out from the empty-headed, overdressed little sorority girls of that era like a good piece of literature on a shelf of cheap paper. She had a half-sister, Neva Bender, and ahalf-brother, Matthew Bender, from her mother’s first marriage. Her mother, Katherine Halberstadt, was a German immigrant. Her father, William M. Ryan Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish ancestry; her mother had died during a flash flood in South Dakota in 1936. She lived in New York City from 1930 until 1931, working as a secretary and also as radiographer. She married Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the US, in 1940, and they later lived in California, where she had a daughter, Julie, and a son, Terence. She died in New Jersey in 1993. She is survived by her daughter Tricia, a daughter-in-law, and her son Terence Nixon.
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This page is based on the article Pat Nixon published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
