Will Sellers: Saint Hannah and her sinner son
The summer of 1974 in Washington DC was a political bullfight; there was one bull, but a host of matadors, picadors, and spectators galore just waiting to watch President Richard Nixon in his last gasps of political power. Congressional hearings, articles of impeachment, and an administration completely insular and unstable were all coming to a simultaneous head. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger metaphorically described this as the highest pinnacles of success descending into the deepest valleys of distress. Over the course of the prior few years, President Nixon had won the largest landslide election victory to that point in history, successfully concluded American involvement in Vietnam, and achieved the monumental foreign policy objectives of detente with the USSR, stability in the Middle East, and rapprochement with China. But in August 1974, all these achievements were forgotten, and with an atmosphere of political intrigue thick with smiling hatred, the bull in the ring faced the final cut. Almost everyone had deserted him as key members of his staff faced indictment, trials, and prison. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled he had to provide tape-recorded conversations to prosecutors, the House Judiciary Committee passed the first article of impeachment for obstruction of justice, and a group of key legislators informed him that he didn’t have the votes in the Senate to avoid removal from office. Nixon even called Alabama Governor George Wallace to enlist his support, but Wallace refused to intervene on his behalf with members of the Alabama congressional delegation and other Boll Weevil Democrats. After the call with Wallace, Nixon turned to Chief of Staff Alexander Haig and said, “Well, Al, there goes the presidency.” And so the true “man in the arena” faced the final curtain all alone. The day before, on national television, Nixon announced his intention to resign, and now, on the morning of August 9, in an impromptu moment, Nixon addressed the White House staff for the last time as president. In what has been described as rambling, unprepared, and certainly unscripted remarks, Nixon, perhaps for the only time, opened his soul and summed up his life’s work. These off-the-cuff remarks were recorded, and for history’s sake, transcribed for all of see. In the midst of a rambling apology, Nixon reflected on his youth and his parents and then, out of the blue and with no context, said: “Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother – my mother was a saint. And, I think of her, two boys dying of tuberculosis, nursing four others in order that she could take care of my older brother for three years in Arizona and seeing each of them die, and when they died, it was like one of her own. Yes, she will have no books written about her. But she was a saint.” An old saying, perhaps, said to comfort women of a different age and justify their sacrifices states: “The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world.” So, Nixon’s mother, Hannah Milhous, at least for five-and-a-half years, ruled the world. No book has ever been written about her, but the life of Hannah Nixon and the impact she had on her son and his consequential role in American politics and international affairs is worth consideration. Hannah Milhous was born in 1885 in Butlerville, Indiana, into a devout Quaker family of farmers. She was one of nine children; seven girls and two boys. Her father, Franklin, was an orchardist, who, seeing brighter days ahead, moved his entire family to California in 1897 to establish a tree nursery and orange grove with other Quakers in Whittier, California. While a “birthright” Quaker, Hannah’s branch of the faith expressed itself in a more evangelical bent, and at the age of 18, she had a religious experience that made her very devout and committed. Hannah was intelligent, and after completing high school, she attended Whittier College, where, by all accounts, she made good grades and was on the path to becoming a teacher. No stranger to hard work, she helped her mother with various household tasks, assisted with her father’s farm, and stayed up late each night studying. Her life would be forever changed when, at a Quaker Valentine’s Day party, she met Frank Nixon. They feel in love and married four months later. Hannah’s family never really approved of Frank and thought she had married beneath her. The fact that she married before finishing college was also a sore spot with Hannah’s family, who never seemed to warm up to Frank. But Hannah truly loved her husband, and, having completed her sophomore year of college, seemed ready to start her own family. Within a year of their marriage, Harold Nixon was born, followed by Richard in 1913. She had five sons in all, named after the early English kings; Richard, for the Richard the Lion-Hearted. By all accounts, Frank was uncouth, argumentative, and a tough father. Upon his marriage to Hannah, he converted to the Quaker faith but never truly left his Methodist roots. Hannah was the complete opposite – quiet and inclined to see both sides of an issue. She was also compassionate, and one area of disagreement with Frank was Hannah’s willingness to help the destitute. Frank wanted someone to work before receiving assistance, but Hannah would never turn away a tramp from the door and ran the household like a charitable operation. Even when the family had enough money to employ a “hired girl,” Hannah insisted that the servant eat with them at the table. Hannah was religious and committed to her faith, but she was also had a deep sense of privacy and was not a show-off when it came to piety. At night, she went into her closet to say her prayers. As was true of most Quakers, neither she nor Frank smoked, drank, or cursed, and she expected that her children would accept these same restraints. Hannah’s influence was so
