Pat Nixon Statue

Thelma Catherine Ryan was born to humble beginnings on March 16, 1912 in Ely, Nevada. The daughter of William Ryan, a miner of Irish ancestry, and his German-born wife, Katarina Halberstadt Bender Ryan, she received the nickname “Pat” from her father because of the close proximity of her birthday to St. Patrick’s Day. Shortly after her birth, she and her family moved to southern California, settling in an area of Artesia that is now part of Cerritos. There, her father struggled to support his family as a truck farmer. When Ryan was thirteen, her mother died of cancer, compelling her to assume all of the household duties. Only five years later, Ryan lost her father. 

A high school graduate and orphan at eighteen, she pursued a college education, enrolling at Fullerton Junior College. To pay her expenses, Ryan worked as a janitor at a local bank. After a year, she took time off and drove elderly family friends to New York City. Upon arriving in the Big Apple, Ryan decided to stay. During her two-year-long residence, she worked as a secretary and then later as an X-ray technician. After returning to California, Ryan resumed her collegiate studies at the University of Southern California, where she majored in merchandising. After years of hard work in the classroom and laboring at part-time jobs both on and off-campus, she graduated with honors in 1937. 

Ryan then accepted a teaching position at a high school in Whittier. While living and working there, she met a young lawyer named Richard Nixon. On June 21, 1940, the couple wed at the Mission Inn in Riverside. They ultimately had two children, Tricia (born 1946) and Julie (born 1948). At the time of their nuptials, the world was engulfed in yet another war, and shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States officially entered it. While America was at war, Pat Nixon worked as an economist in the Office of Price Administration. Her husband served in the U.S. Navy. 

Following the conflict, Richard Nixon launched what would become a lengthy career in politics, filled with extraordinary highs and devastating lows. Through it all, Pat Nixon stood by her husband’s side. In 1946, Richard Nixon won a seat in Congress as a Republican representing California’s Twelfth Congressional District. Four years later, he became one of the state’s two U.S. senators. From 1953 to 1961, Richard Nixon served as Vice President of the United States and Pat Nixon as Second Lady of the United States. After her husband lost the 1960 U.S. presidential election and the California gubernatorial race two years later, it seemed as if his political career was over. Richard Nixon, however, mounted one of the greatest comebacks in American political history, eventually winning the 1968 U.S. presidential election. As First Lady of the United States, Pat Nixon encouraged volunteerism and added hundreds of antiques and paintings to the White House Collection. Shortly after her husband won reelection in 1972, the Watergate scandal broke. With impeachment looming, Richard Nixon resigned from office in August 1974. 

The Nixons then retired to southern California and later to New Jersey. A smoker most of her adult life, Pat Nixon died of lung cancer at her Park Ridge, New Jersey home on June 22, 1993 at the age of eight-one. She was buried at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California. Her husband followed her in death ten months later. 

In April 1996, the Cerritos City Council voted to erect a statue of Pat Nixon in Pat Nixon Park, the former site of her childhood home. The municipal governing body then commissioned New York sculptor Ivan Schwartz to complete the project. Dedicated on March 1, 1997, the life-size bronze sculpture depicts her smiling, with her hands behind her back, looking into the distance. Carrying a price tag of roughly $85,000, it is one of the first life-sized, full-body statues of a First Lady of the United States. 

Black, Allida Mae. The First Ladies of the United States of America. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2009.

Caroli, Betty Boyd. "Pat Nixon." Encyclopædia Britannica. Web. 11 May 2021 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pat-Nixon>.

"Pat Nixon Statue." cerritos.us. City of Cerritos. Web. 11 May 2021 <http://www.cerritos.us/VISITORS/art_in_public_places/fact_sheets/pat_nixon.php>.

"Statue of Pat Nixon to be Unveiled Today." Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1997 <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-01-me-33744-story.html>.