A birthday celebration, the arrival of important records and some good old fashioned revisionism: yep, busy days are ahead at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda. (Which is where you'll also find the creepy bust above.)
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The private Dick boosters at the Richard Nixon Foundation join forces with the U.S. government's Nixon Presidential Library and Museum to present their inaugural “Richard Nixon Legacy Forum” on Friday. Besides a discussion on “Domestic Policy Initiatives of the Nixon Years: Bringing Innovation and Progress to the American People,” the 1:30-3:30 p.m. event in the library's faux White House East Room serves as a 20th anniversary celebration of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace.
My, how time flies when you're making future generations forget all about enemies lists!
The day after the forum, Saturday, would have been Nixon's 97th birthday. To celebrate that, admission is free all day. The president and Pat Nixon's daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox, is scheduled to lay a wreath at her daddy's final resting place at 1 p.m. Tricia's husband (and Ike's grandson), Edward F. Cox, then gives the “Annual Legacy Lecture” at 1:30 p.m. Perhaps he'll let it slip that he was recently elected chairman of the Republican Party of New York. He and Mike Schroeder can compare notes!
Remembering the legacy of Orange County's favorite disgraced son continues as presidential documents and audio-visual materials the National Archives have kept in College Park, Maryland, since the end of Nixon's presidency (to prevent you-know-who from destroying them) make their way to the heavily fortified, temperature controlled structure just off the library's main entrance in Yorba Linda.
On-site reference services on the Nixon presidential textual collection in College Park will be suspended on Feb. 19 to prepare the boxes for delivery to Orange County. Those materials will be ready for viewing in Yorba Linda as early in 2010 as possible, probably late May or early June, according to federal library officials.
Access to the audio-visual collection in College Park will be suspended in August 2010 to prepare the materials for shipment later in the year.
None of this will effect getting to the vast materials that are already stored and maintained in Yorba Linda, where efforts are also ongoing to have all of the president's open (and controversial) tapes available online at nixonlibrary.gov. Questions about the move or reference closures are handled via email at ni***@na**.gov.
Speaking of world-changing documents, those who would like to print out the invitation to the Richard Nixon Legacy Forum and madcap 97th birthday bash can do so on the next page.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.