Today, or really tomorrow, marks the twenty eight anniversary of Richard Millhouse Nixon’s resignation as President of the United States. For some of us the event marks a milestone in our lives and in the life of the nation as important as President Kennedy’s assassination, the moon landing, and the catastrophe of last September in NYC and Washington, D.C. and western Pennsylvania. I can’t help but wonder how many fellow Dopers remember the event and what they were doing at the time.
To start off, I was attending an Army short course at the University of Virginia. I phoned my wife to see if she had heard the news. The reaction among my classmates, most of whom were Regular Army types was fairly subdued. It was more a matter of relief that it was over than any thing else. Of course we were young lawyers in green suits and most of us had been in Vietnam and many personally knew some of the “Plumbers,” and had followed the whole sad episode closely. Among the UVa students, the whole thing seemed more like an excuse to run up and down the streets and drink beer than any thing else.
I was a 10 year old kid in second grade. Earlier that year my parents got divorced and my Grampa died. The Nixon thing, though I was well aware of it, barely registered a blip.
Haj
I was working nights in Evansville, Indiana. For a couple of days, people had been saying that Nixon would resign that day. Because I worked nights, I slept during the day, but kept waking up all day long to flip on the TV to see if anything had happened.
By the way, I bought a TV that summer just so I could watch the impeachment hearings.
I was 8 years old, living in NY and vacationing with my parents in California. The day he resigned, I was at my Uncle’s house. Him and my Aunt had me sit in front of the tv and watch it, explaining that this was something that was important and rare and I should watch. Although I really didn’t grasp what was going on, later in life I still think it was a nice gesture. They wanted me to witness history and I did.
I dunno. Probably playing with Fisher-Price people. Too bad I was 28 at the time.
I had just got off a plane from Europe at Kennedy Airport and some guy turns to me at the baggage claim and asked, “Did you hear, Nixon resigned!” (I had been overseas for six years).
I had missed the intimate coverage of the whole Watergate thing, so it sort of floored me. I mean when I left the U.S., Presidents didn’t resign.
I was 2 years old, and had just caught my first fish. My father was running up to the house shouting “sublight just caught a fish” and my mother was running down to the lake shouting “Nixon just resigned!”
I was more interested in the fish.
I was listening to it on the radio in my parents’ livingroom, and taping it on a reel-to-reel recorder. It was one of the best moments in my life.
Let’s see, early August 1974?
I had grown all of my internal organs, and really just settled in for a few solid months of growth. I still had to more than triple my size, and grow hair and get my eyes to open and get in the habit of moving around a lot. I still had plenty of room, but it got really cramped after a little while. In short, I was pretty busy and didn’t have much of an idea what was going on in the world.
I was six, and probably outside riding my Big Wheel. I didn’t even know it was happening. Which is odd, because I remember Ford’s swearing in ceremony like it was yesterday.
I was born almost exactly 10 years after he resigned, but my mother likes to tell the story of how she was in college up in New Hampshire, and she didn’t have a TV set in her dorm. Luckily, her best friend was a townie, and she ended up watching it at her friend’s parents’ house with 10 other people, with “Joy to the World” being played on the record machine.
Grandparents made us watch it because it was historical. I, at the age of nine, couldn’t see what the big deal was. I wanted to go play outside. All these years later, I can claim I watched it; but that’s about all the direct impact it had on me personally.
13 years old, at summer camp, somewhere south of Massilon, Ohio. No TVs around, so the news came over somebody’s car radio and was passed around by word-of-mouth.
As it was 1974, all the counselors were pot-smoking hippies, and we were all happy and smiling together and giving high fives.
Little did we know that somewhere in gray stone buildings there were Republicans scheming to GET THEIR OWN BACK when they caught a Democratic president catching a blowjob, 24 years down the road.
in 1974, blowjobs were thought of as GOOD things.
My parents talked about it at length at home, I followed it as closely as an eleven year old could on the TV and in the papers and my teacher talked about it quite a bit at school.
There was only one other self-proclaimed “Democrat” in my sixth grade class. We were pretty smug from Nixon’s resignation on until the end of the Carter administration. Then we hit that twelve year dry spot.
Not to take anything away from the gravity of this situation, but because the whole process was rather long and drawn out and it’s conclusion was far from unpredictable, I think the vividness of this memory pales in comparison to:
JFK assasination
RFK assasination
MLK assasination
I was 12 at the time. I watched the speech, and listened to Ford’s speech on the radio the next day at camp. My aunt and uncle in New York bought and saved a New York Times from that day; I had it in my posession for many years after.
What’s really strange is that I have his entire resignation speech on tape. On a cassette tape like from an old tape recorder. My dad recorded it off of the TV - he just put the tape recorder in front of the TV and taped the audio. And I still have it. And I don’t know why.
I was 19, married (!), and getting ready to go to my job as a store clerk. The announcement came just before I left. I went outside, and it was like the world had been deserted. There was nobody on the streets or in the mall. I told my co-worker Nixon had resigned, and she was in shock “He did?”
I was ten, and listening to it on the radio, wonder why everyone was so insistant that I listened to it. “Who cares about history, I’m bored” was my main thought at the time.
Probably craping myself as I was only one at the time.