And hugh hewitt, the president of the Nixon Foundation who youll hear from in a few moments. We have many distinguished guests here today. Many former officials from the nixon and other administrations and staff and friends of the Nixon Foundation, and were honored to have you here tonight. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Patricia Nixon becoming the first lady of the United States. Under her leadership, the white house collection added over 600 paintings and furnishing elements to the white house collection which is the most of any presidency. The significance of this will be discussed in tonights program, but its very important to us here at the White House Historical association as a core part of our mission which was inspired, as most of you, or all of you know, by first Lady Jacqueline kennedy, to be the private nonpartisan private partner to the white house for conservation, preservation, restoration of those beautiful state homes in the white house for the acquisition of items for the Permanent Collection at the white house as well, and for our education programs. Programs like this where we teach and tell the stories of the white house and its wonderful history going back to 1792 when George Washington selected the site across the street where the white house is today and hired the young irish architect james hoban. To commemorate the occasion of mrs. Nixons 50th anniversearars first lady, the White House Historical association has also undertaken an Additional Partnership with the richard Nixon Foundation. And this is where we have created a digital exhibit highlighting mrs. Nixons efforts to restore the blue room in 1972 to the original french empire style. Photographs, documents and video footage of her refurbishment project provide greater insight into her accomplishments as first lady and highlight her commitment to enhancing the white house collections for future generations. This digital exhibit can be found on our website starting today at white house history. Org and soon will be available on the Nixon Foundation website which is nixonfoundation. Org. Tonight marks the third of four episodes in our quarterly programs for 2019 moderated by ann compton. Our Fourth Program takes place october 29th with former white house executive pastry chef roland messenier along with jennifer pickens, another author. They have two new books that will be out at that time and well celebrate and jennifer walks in right on cue here. Shell be joining us on october the 29th. And ann will have another program with chef and jennifer. Tonight everyone in this room and those watching by cspan and Facebook Live are in for a real treat. Ann compton, no secret to say, is one of my very favorite people in washington or anywhere. Her role as a former reporter and white house correspondent, as well as her being the first woman assigned to cover the white house for Network Television is known to everyone in this room. What may not be known or as well known is the extensive contributions that ann continues to make to organizations and missions such as ours, the Miller Center at the university of virginia and many others. Ann, i think its also very fitting to acknowledge this particular week with tomorrow being the 18th anniversary of 9 11, your unique place in American History on that tragic day as you were the only broadcast reporter on air force one with president bush that entire day to report on behalf of the press to the American People. So thank you for your career, but particularly acknowledging that special moment in history that we will acknowledge tomorrow. [ applause ] we have three other distinguished guests on our panel tonight. Anita mcbride who serves on our board of directors at the White House Historical association and in addition to being on our board of directors, she chairs the education committee, which is our david m. Rubenstein National Center for white house history, and she chairs our president ial sites Summit Committee where every two years, we convene about 200 president ial sites from across the country and it will happen again in september of 2020 in dallas, texas. She is the executive in residence at the for congressional and president ial studies at american university. Anita is a leading authority on the role and history of first ladies. She, herself, has worked for four president s and was chief of staff to first lady laura bush. We have Patricia Matson with us, who was a speechwriter and press assistant for Patricia Nixon and continued in the office of the first lady for betty ford. Shes had an extremely distinguished career, including many years in senior roles at Capital Cities abc. And our dear friend Betty Monkman who worked for more than 30 years in the office of the curator at the white house, retiring as chief curator. Betty is a great colleague for us here at the association. She has worked with us and continues to work with us on many projects. She authored our book on major our major Decorative Arts in the white house book which is available in our book shop. Shes a consultant to our white house history quarterly, which is our quarterly scholarly magazine that were very proud of. And betty is a master of knowledge regarding the white house collection. So we have a wonderful panel for you to hear from tonight. But before ann comes up and our panelists, id like to introduce hugh hewitt representing our partner, the richard Nixon Foundation. Hugh is president of the Nixon Foundation and has been teaching constitutional law at chaplin College Law School since 1995. You will recognize him as a frequent guest on many, many Tv News Networks and programs. He has written extensively for the new york times, the wall street journal and the los angeles times. Youll also be very familiar with him as the host of the nationally syndicated radio program. He served for nearly six years in the Reagan Administration and a variety of posts including assistant counsel to the white house and special assistant to attorneys general. Following hughs remarks and a brief video presentation, our panelists will join us here for tonights program. Those of you on this side of the room, no worries. This podium is going to be removed so youll have a clear shot of our panelists. And i cant end without a little bit of selfpromotion. Our shop is open until 8 30 tonight. Its right at the top of the ramp from the door where you came in. And everybody here will get a 10 discount on anything that you would like to take home with you tonight. You can finish your Christmas Shopping right here tonight. So thank you very much. Hugh, welcome. [ applause ] thank you, stewart, and welcome to all of you on behalf of the Nixon Foundation which i became the president of only in july. And what a great first event celebrating mrs. Nixon to be a part of. I want to get out of the way of the experts and get them up here in a hurry. We all know the definitive biography was written by julie nixon eisenhower. As of this friday, it will be available on audiobook read by her daughter and mrs. Nixons granddaughter, jenny nixon eisenhower. I think youll enjoy listening to if you did not already enjoy reading or want to read again the definitive book about mrs. Nixon. I was very, very lucky, 41 years ago, to be asked by David Eisenhower to graduate from college and drive across the country to san clementy and go to work for him. And after three or four months, i went to work at Casa Pacifica for president nixon at the old western white house. From their days serving the president. In their retirement, there were not a lot of people around, but i got to know mrs. Nixon in her retirement. And in a very unusual way. 22 years old. Dont know anyone in california. Thanksgiving rolls around and mrs. Nixon invites me to dinner at thanksgiving. That was the first of many invitations at their three homes post presidency. But it was that first dinner when im 22 years old and really dont know what im doing and im surrounded by the president of the United States, former president , former first lady, and their children. And she was the most incredibly gracious person to me. A youngster who really had no idea what they were doing. Clueless as to manners with the absolute expert in protocol. It was only five years later when my wife and i moved back to washington, d. C. , to go to work for president reagan, and my wifes grandmother was living in the dresden on connecticut avenue. And helen smith lived in the dresden. I got to know helen very well because we took over grandmothers apartment during the summers when she, as all right thinking people, left town. Helen would explain that my graciousness, that i had experienced from mrs. Nixon, was not unique to me. She was, in fact, gracious to every Single Person that she ever met. In every capacity, young and small. She traveled the world relentlessly beginning in 1953 as the second lady, setting a pattern for the second lady which was unique. When she became first lady, she was the first, first lady to not only visit africa and south africa, but the first lady, first time to go to china and to the ussr. And at every step she always insisted on seeing people, school, children, orphanages because she wanted to get out of the diplomatic protocol and talk to people. And it was there she again exhibited on behalf of america the same kindness i experienced firsthand. Well, wasnt she an amazing first lady in so many ways . And i want to start with patty matson who i covered when i arrived at the white house at the beginning of the ford administration. Patti, you had already been hired as a speechwriter and Deputy Press Secretary for pat nixon. And you told me once that she she had a keen eye for what was appropriate. And she was very much shaped by that by her growing up, how hard she worked. That work ethic. Its one of the things that i think is so important about her. She i had been in television, in politics. Ive known a lot of people who work hard, but this this one takes the cake. She really was she was in full bore. And the first thing i noticed, really my first day on the job, can you all hear me back there . When you sent something up to her that needed her input overnight, literally, it was on your desk the next morning before you got in. It didnt matter if there had been a state dinner the night before. She had a job. She treated it as such. The daytoday handling of constituents was so important to her. It was one of the first things she said to me in our job interview. That she considered people to be her project. She didnt want a pet cause . Yes. And that just wasnt her. She wanted to, on a day in, day out basis make life better for people who came to visit the white house, people who really wanted to connect with their government. I used to watch her stand in some of these receiving lines, and she was never one of these people who shakes hands and kind of pushes the people through. You know what i mean . You can see her looking directly at the person in front of her. And meeting of minds and taking time to shake our hand and sometimes say a few words. And she had all the energy in the world to do that because she understood how much it meant to people to have someone that cared about them in government in washington. And she felt it very strongly. And it also went and spoke to how she liked all of us to make sure that requests got filled very quickly. To make sure that mail was returned very quickly. She had a real feeling for being able to connect with people. And it was quite a gift, and she used it for the presidency. It was a very rare gift, and i was fortunate enough to see it, which was marvelous. She had been in the public eye for so long before she actually arrived at the white house. Why do you think that reputation of being kind of timid, even in the video, she seemed amused that people thought she was shy. She didnt seem that way to you. You know, she had a reserve. And i found that very attractive. She was a very elegant woman. And she was of an era, the best part of an era. And we dont see so much of that anymore. She was not one that was going to i guess the going thing now is to unload yourself and to confide with america on whatever is going through your mind. And a little bit of that goes a long way, if you dont mind me saying so. She was appropriate always. And she just had an innate ability to be that way. It was wonderful to behold. Betty, let me ask you because you were present for all of this period of time. First of all, thank you for all youve done for the white house. Thank you. As curator and the Lasting Legacy that you have helped create there. We think about first ladies, the more traditional role of worrying about the house and home, but she felt strongly about doing more with the white house, including opening some of those doors. Very much. In fact, i think the film mentioned her tours for the blind and the deaf which julie was very instrumental in participating in as well. But she was the first first lady to open the grounds for garden tours in the spring and the fall. And those have continued to the present time. And the christmas hancandleligh tours in the evening. The public could come in and see the house during the holidays all lighted up and beautifully decorated. And another legacy that endures today is the lighting of the exterior of the house. Right. She had gotten a lot of inquiries from people talking about how the house was so dark when they brought tourists by the house in the evenings. And, too, when she and the president would come in on the helicopter, they couldnt even see the house. It was so dark. So very early using inaugural funds from the first inauguration, she worked very closely with the National Park service in having the engineers design and plan and implement the lighting of the house. And that is the legacy that endures today. The idea that she brought in more works of art than any other first lady has ever, how did that moment in history happen . Well, i think it happened when she and president nixon had gone to the state department to the diplomatic reception rooms there in 1969 and had seen how beautiful those rooms were. And a year later, in the early 1970, she called the curator at the state department and asked if he would be willing to come over and be the curator of the white house. And he had a job at the state department. He worked in the Protocol Office as well as in the diplomatic reception rooms. But mrs. Nixon invited him to the white house, and they walked through all the rooms from the third floor down to the ground floor through the private quarters and the state rooms, and he thought about it for a few days and decided to accept it. And she was a very strong supporter of this program. The rooms had been last refurbished in the early 60s in the kennedy administration. But there had been tremendous visitation, tremendous receptions and a lot of crowds in the 60s. And things really needed to take shape. And klem was an ambitious person who knew how to raise funds and appeal to donors. And mrs. Nixon would often write letters to donors and have receptions and teas for people that were potential donors or museums that might lend objects, such as the Dolly Madison portrait by gill bert stewart that belonged to the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine arts which was hung in 1971. And then finally was purchased by the association here for the collection. But she was a big supporter. In fact, she did go up to philadelphia to the Pennsylvania Academy to thank them for lending that painting, and she put herself out a great deal and worked very closely. She came very attached to a consulting architect who worked with mr. Conger on many of the projects and became very good friends with him and his family. I, too, second what patti says about her graciousness. We were not directly a part of her white house staff, but i do remember once she invited her staff to go out on the yacht, the sequia and included her staff. We got a chair that belonged to the blue room suite and it was mrs. Nixons birthday. And we invited her to our office to show her the chair and had a little Birthday Celebration with her friend mrs. Drown was there and some of the butlers and the household staff came in. And theres a wonderful photograph of her looking at something about, youre not quite 49 or Something Like that on the placard. But she was a very strong supporter. As patti said, had a lot of energy and was extremely gracious to people visiting the white house and to people who would contribute in some way to the collections. Anita, you have worked over a period of several president s. And youve got to see threads today that were begun by pat nixon. Oh, sure. Absolutely. First of all, i have to say, its an honor to be here with the two of these wonderful women who had the opportunity. One, i wish i always had. The one first lady i would love to have sat to have dinner with is pat nixon because of her impact, her love of the house, her incredible privilege that she felt to be a steward of the white house. And anybody that works in the white house knows the impact or sees the impact. You read about the impact. You see it on the walls of