Pat Nixon - Death and Funeral

Death and Funeral

Pat Nixon died at her New Jersey home at 5:45 am on June 22, 1993, the day after her 53rd wedding anniversary. She was 81. Her daughters and husband were by her side.

The funeral service for Pat Nixon took place in the grounds of the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California on June 26, 1993. Speakers at the ceremony, including California Governor Pete Wilson, Kansas senator Bob Dole, and the Reverend Dr. Billy Graham, eulogized the former First Lady. In addition to her husband and immediate family, former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and their wives, Nancy and Betty, were also in attendance. Lady Bird Johnson was unable to attend because she was in the hospital recovering from a stroke, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did not attend either. President Nixon sobbed openly, profusely, and at times uncontrollably during the ceremony. A rare display of emotion from the former president, Helen McCain Smith said that she had never seen him more distraught.

Pat Nixon's tombstone gives her name as "Patricia Nixon", the name by which she was popularly known. Former President Nixon survived her by 10 months, dying on April 22, 1994. Her epitaph reads:

In 1994, the Pat Nixon Park was established in Cerritos, California. The site where her girlhood home stood is on the property. The Cerritos City Council voted in April 1996 to erect a statue of the former first lady, one of the few statues created in the image of a first lady.

Pat has been portrayed by Joan Allen in the 1995 film Nixon, Patty McCormack in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon and Nicole Sullivan in the 2009 film Black Dynamite. She was sung by soprano Carolann Page in the 1987 opera Nixon in China.