Richard Nixon Wrote Love Notes To His Wife-to-be

Nixon was given a role in the Whittier Community Players' performance of The Dark Tower in January 1938. He was cast there opposite Thelma “Pat” Ryan, a high school teacher. For Nixon alone, it was “a case of love at first sight,” according Nixon, who noted in his memoirs that Pat Ryan repeatedly rejected the young attorney before finally consenting to go out with him. Nixon began wooing her and wrote love notes to her that sounded unusually sentimental. “And when the wind blows, the rains fall, and the sun shines through the clouds (as it is today), he still resolves, as he did then, that nothing so lovely ever occurred to him or anyone else as falling in love with Thee – my dearest heart,” the author said.

Ryan hesitated when Rixon asked her out when their courtship started; they dated for two years before she agreed. On June 21, 1940, they exchanged vows in a simple ceremony. The Nixons began their married lives in Whittier after a honeymoon in Mexico. Tricia (born in 1946) and Julie were their daughters (born 1948).