Richard Nixon's Love Letters Reveal Sensitive Side, Go on Display

By Ivana Kvesic, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Former U.S. President Richard Nixon's love letters to wife Patricia Nixon have been made public and they are offering citizens a glimpse into the sensitive and romantic side of the former leader whose political life was marred by one of the nation's highest profile scandals of all time.

"Every day and every night I want to see and be with you. Yet I have no feeling of selfish ownership or jealousy," Nixon wrote in an undated letter to his future wife.

"Let's go for a long ride Sunday; let's go to the mountains weekends; let's read books in front of fires; most of all; let's really grow together and find the happiness we know is ours," he added.

The letters from the 37th president to Patricia Ryan, who would eventually become Patricia Nixon, where made public last week at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif.

The letters were written during the two-year courtship between Nixon and Ryan and were put on display at the museum as part of a celebration of what would have been the 100th birthday of Mrs. Nixon, who died in 1993 at the age of 81.

The letters are an attempt by the museum to offer citizens a more holistic view of Richard Nixon.

"These letters are fabulous. It's a totally different person from the Watergate tapes that people know. President Nixon started out as an idealistic young man ready to conquer the world and with Patricia Ryan he knew he could do it," Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum supervisor Olivia Anastasiadis told The Associated Press.

Nixon died of a stroke in 1994 at 81. Much of the nation's political elite attended the high-profile funeral, including then-President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former President Gerald Ford.