Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301100103
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HARRY ROSENTHAL Associated Press
DATELINE: WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J. LENGTH: Medium
AT 80, NIXON LOOKING TO FUTURE
On his 80th birthday Saturday, Richard Nixon confided that this was a day he had been dreading, except when he considered the alternative."The secret to a long life," he said in the manner of every old-timer, is "never look back, look forward. You've got to have something to live for, otherwise you cease to live. And who wants to live when you have nothing to live for."
Except for his walk, which has slowed, the former president looks well and says he feels terrific nearly two decades after the Watergate scandal forced his resignation in 1974.
His regimen, unvarying, is to walk three miles a day - two miles before daybreak and a mile at night. He watches his waistline - calls his diet austere - and remains trim.
"When you've reached this advanced age it's natural to say `What does anybody do after 80?' As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to continue to be active in my own way . . . as long as I'm mentally competent to do it. You've got to watch yourself very carefully," Nixon told The Associated Press.
Nixon works on his writings at home - seven of his nine books have been best-sellers - and spends time at his office, two minutes from his condominium in Park Ridge. The office, comfortable but spartan by White House standards, contains a small bust of Churchill, a winter scene painted by Dwight Eisenhower, and a needlepoint of his former dog, King Timahoe, standing in a pond on the south lawn of the White House. The work was done by daughter Julie.
Away from work he reads, watches sports on television and one prime-time program, "Murder She Wrote."
He and wife Pat spent his birthday, as they do all major occasions, with family - David and Julie Eisenhower and their three children up from Pennsylvania, and Tricia and Ed Cox and their son, from New York City. The highlight of the day was a birthday play written, produced and acted by the grandchildren.
"It's really true," Nixon told a reporter who overheard him telling President Bush he dreaded turning 80. "I've dreaded this day.
"It's not a day to celebrate, it's probably a day we are going to commiserate about," he said. "When you get to that age, you generally think that there's nothing more to do, that there's really nothing more to live for. My advice to people on such a day comes from Satchel Paige, probably the greatest baseball player in history.
"He said the secret of his longevity was `never look back, somebody may be gaining on you.' My view is `never look back, always look to the future because if you look to the future you may live to enjoy it. Look back and you die.' "
Nixon turned down a number of potential parties, one from the "February Group," which is composed mostly of the staff he had in his 5 1/2 years in the White House.