Richard Nixon
A Duke-trained lawyer and two-term vice president who opened relations with China, created the EPA, and resigned the presidency in 1974.
Biography
Nixon was raised in a Quaker family in southern California that ran a grocery store; he turned down a place at Harvard for lack of money and stayed at Whittier College, then took a scholarship to the new law school at Duke. He practised law in Whittier, served in the Navy in the Pacific, and won a House seat in 1946.
A national figure by 1950 for his role in the Alger Hiss case, he was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years, lost the 1960 presidential election to Kennedy and the 1962 California governor’s race, and returned to win the presidency in 1968 and re-election in 1972 by one of the largest electoral margins on record.
His presidency covered the end of the Bretton Woods gold convertibility and a period of wage and price controls, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and OSHA, the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, the opening to China, the Apollo Moon landings, the end of the draft, the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, the first oil shock, and the Watergate break-in and cover-up. He resigned on 9 August 1974, the only president to do so.
Education
- Whittier High School, California, Graduated (1930)
- Whittier College, A.B. in history (1934)
- Duke University School of Law, LL.B. (1937)
Military service
United States Navy, 1942–1946; lieutenant commander; served with the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command.
Offices held before the presidency
- United States Representative from California, 1947–1950
- United States Senator from California, 1950–1953
- Vice President of the United States, 1953–1961