Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 23, 1994 TAG: 9404260112
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
A spokesman said Nixon, the nation's 37th president, was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m. at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where he had been taken by ambulance Monday from his home in Park Ridge, N.J. His daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox were at his bedside. His wife, Pat, died last June of lung cancer.
President Clinton made the formal announcement Friday night that Nixon had died . ``I was deeply grateful to President Nixon for his wise counsel on many occasions'' over the past year, Clinton said from the Rose Garden.
``He experienced his fair share of adversity,'' Clinton said.He hailed Nixon's contributions in reaching out to adversary nations such as China and the Soviet Union.
Clinton said he had spoken to Nixon's daughters and that he understood that Nixon's funeral would be in California. Clinton said he would attend.
``Our relationship continued to be warm and constructive'' during the period of Clinton's presidency, he said, noting that he had spoken with Nixon recently in connection with Nixon's trip to Moscow.
``He went out of his way to give me his best advice,'' Clinton said.
Clinton said the Nixon family ``know that the best wishes of all Americans are with them during their moment of sorrow.''
Nixon ``gave of himself with devotion,'' and ``his country owes him a debt,'' Clinton said.
In the last years before his death, the former president - demonstrating a resiliency that characterized his political life - had reappeared from his shadowy, self-imposed, post-Watergate exile. Through his writings, his visits to Moscow and his private conversations with world leaders, he succeeded in elevating himself from the political depths to a selective pantheon of statesmen.
Yet of all the men who have occupied the White House before and since, Nixon's place in history is perhaps the most ambiguous, and he stirs the most divergent of sentiments.
His name will forever be linked to what the White House dismissed as the ``third-rate'' burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex - a brief episode on the night of June 17, 1972, that ultimately produced his downfall.
But Nixon's political career was remarkable for its breadth and depth. It began with a highly controversial run for Congress in 1946, when he took full advantage of fervid anti-Communist sentiment, and spanned 11/2 terms in the White House.
He was an extraordinarily deft politician and perhaps the most resilient political figure of the modern era, displaying an almost uncanny ability to rebound from near-disaster.
by CNB