Video: 'President Nixon's Farewell to the White House Staff'
(Friday, August 9, 1974, 9:32 a.m. EDT; during the Watergate scandal) — U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, his face wet with tears, bade an emotional farewell to the remnants of his broken administration today, urging its members to be proud of their record in government and warning them against bitterness, self-pity, and revenge.
“Always remember, others may hate you,” he told members of his Cabinet and staff in a final gathering at the White House, “but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them—and then you destroy yourself.”
Video: 'Richard Nixon thanks his staff in his last speech before leaving office'
Shortly thereafter, for the last time as President of the United States, he strode up the ramp of the plane that had taken him to the capitals of the world and was flown home to California, where his career in American politics began nearly thirty years ago.
Nixon’s day began in the mist and rain of a humid Washington morning when Manolo Sanchez, his longtime valet, laid out the clothes he would wear during the final hours of his tenure as President.
He had determined that he would leave the city as President, and after saying goodbye to the White House servants, he and Mrs. Nixon, their two daughters, and son-in-law went downstairs to the spacious East Room, where the men and women who had worked for him were waiting for his farewell remarks.
Video: 'Richard Nixon delivers his farewell address to Administration staffers, August 9, 1974'
“You are here to say goodbye to us,” he began, “and we don’t have a good word for it in English. The best is au revoir. We will see you again.”
Then, with his family standing behind him, Nixon began to speak of many things—of the White House itself, the faithfulness and loyalty of his subordinates there, of his parents, and of the vagaries of human existence.
“This house has a great heart,” he said, “and that heart comes from those who serve.”
Video: 'Richard Nixon leaves the White House for the last time as president'
He expressed his pride in the Cabinet he had appointed and the staff he had named, conceding that “we have done some things wrong in this administration, and the top man always takes the responsibility—and I have never ducked it.”
He continued: “But I want to say one thing: We can be proud of it—five and a half years—no man or woman came into this administration and left it with more of this world’s goods than when he came in.”
While he spoke, Nixon’s eyes brimmed with tears that glistened in the glare of the television lights. Although he occasionally smiled, his remarks were tinted with the sadness his friends say now plagues him.
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The ornate room, crowded with those who had watched the Watergate scandals grow from a small group of “plumbers” commissioned by Nixon to find and stop leaks to the media, was quiet except for a scraping chair or two and scattered coughing.
Unlike his quiet, controlled demeanor in his television appearance last night, when he announced to the nation that he would resign, Nixon was animated in his last White House appearance, moving energetically behind the wooden lectern, gesturing, and nodding to punctuate his remarks.
The lightest moment in his speech came when he told the audience that he would like to compensate them monetarily for their services.
Video: 'Richard Nixon departs from Washington for the last time as president'
“I only wish that I were a wealthy man,” he said. “At the present time, I have got to find a way to pay my taxes.”
There was laughter in the East Room, and some of the quiet but heavy tension was temporarily relieved.
He was calm as he remembered his father, “my old man,” but as he reminisced, his voice grew thick and approached the breaking point.
“I think they would have called him sort of a little man,” he said. “Common man—but he didn’t consider himself that way…. He was a great man because he said his job, and every job, counts up to the hilt, regardless of what happens.”
His mother, he said, was a saint about whom no books would ever be written.
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Then, Mr. Cox, his son-in-law, stepped over and handed him an open book. Nixon pulled a pair of glasses from his coat pocket, put them on, and began to read from President Theodore Roosevelt’s diary. The passage he cited was written after the death of Roosevelt’s first wife, an event that, according to the diary, “took the light from my life forever.”
“But,” said Nixon, “he went on, and he not only became President, but as an ex-president he served his country—always in the arena: tempestuous, strong, sometimes wrong, sometimes right, but he was a man.”
At the end of his remarks, he paused and began his farewell:
“And so, we leave with high hopes, in good spirit and with deep humility, and with very much gratefulness in our hearts.
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“And I can only say to each and every one of you, we come from many faiths, we pray perhaps to different gods, but really the same God in a sense, but I wish to say to each and every one of you, not only will we always remember you, not only will we always be grateful to you, but always you will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers.”
As they had when he entered the room a quarter-hour before, the audience stood and applauded. Nixon and his family stepped down from the curved platform and walked outside to the South Lawn, where Vice President and Mrs. Ford and another crowd of well-wishers were waiting.
At the end of a scarlet carpet and a corridor of honor guards from the military services, an olive-drab helicopter stood waiting for the last ride from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base and the big, silver-and-blue plane he had dubbed the Spirit of ’76.
Julie Eisenhower kissed her father. Her husband David Eisenhower and Mr. Ford kissed Mrs. Nixon. Mrs. Ford kissed Mr. Nixon, and at the last moment, the President reached out for the Vice President’s hand, shook it warmly, and then touched Mr. Ford’s elbow with his left hand, like a coach sending in a substitute.
Nixon mounted the steps to the helicopter, turned and jerked a wave, and then lifted his arms in the familiar “victory” gesture and then boarded at 9:57 a.m. EDT.
Several hundred people were at the airport outside Washington to see the President depart. He made no comments there but once again waved and smiled from the ramp just before disappearing inside.
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The engines whined, then screamed, and then roared as the plane turned on the tarmac and began moving slowly away from the waving group along the wire fence.
On board with Mr. and Mrs. Nixon were Mr. and Mrs. Edward Cox and Ronald L. Ziegler, the press secretary and Presidential adviser.
The jet wheeled onto the runway, paused momentarily, and then began its takeoff roll toward the west at 10:16 a.m.
It was 11:35 a.m. when President Nixon’s letter of resignation was delivered to the office of Secretary of State Kissinger. This is what it said:
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“Dear Mr. Secretary: I hereby resign the office of President of the United States. Sincerely, Richard Nixon.”
Soon after Nixon’s departure, while the giant jet was soaring high above the heartland of the country, Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the nation’s President.
Despite that new status, 5,000 people greeted Nixon’s arrival in his native state at El Toro Marine Base. They cheered and applauded when, with his wife, Pat, standing nearby, Nixon stepped to a waiting microphone, squinted into the brilliant midday heat, and said, “We’re home.”
After a few more remarks, a helicopter whisked the former President, Mrs. Nixon, their daughter Tricia, and her husband Edward F. Cox, to La Casa Pacifica, the sprawling seaside villa near San Clemente.
