
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 24, 1994                   TAG: 9404240097
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Peter Mathews
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HERE'S A NIXON YOU DIDN'T KNOW

You've heard about Watergate, the Checkers speech, the 5 o'clock shadow that made voters think John F. Kennedy had gotten the best of that 1960 debate. James Rademacher wants to make sure you hear about another side of Richard Nixon:

Nice guy.

Rademacher, now retired and living in Hunting Hills, got to know Nixon during his nine years as president of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

His negotiations with Nixon helped lead to the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which took the service out of the Cabinet and made it an independent agency.

Before the changes, Rademacher said, postmasters general tended to be campaign chairmen, and congressmen found jobs for local postmasters and even rural mail carriers. "It mattered how you carried the precinct, not how you carried the mail."

Now, he said, the people who use the mail pay for the Postal Service, not taxpayers.

As a result of the agreement, postal workers started earning more money. Rademacher recalled that in 1969, they were earning about $6,000 a year at a time when bus drivers earned $10,000 - and in such places as New York City, many postal workers were eligible for welfare benefits.

But Rademacher spreads his Nixon gospel because of something the president did while the letter carriers were on strike against the government. At the height of the dispute, Rademacher's wife, Kathy, had to be rushed to the hospital. Nixon sent his own physician to see how she was doing.

For a guy who "looked like Darth Vader," Rademacher said, it was a remarkable gesture. "How much more humility, compassion and understanding can a guy have?"

by CNB