Reminiscing the Real Pat Nixon

Former East Wing staff share the ‘kindness and love’ of the first lady who was, for decades, overshadowed by the Watergate scandal.

Former First Lady Pat Nixon staffers (from left) Susie Dolibois, Debby Sloan, and Penny Adams reunite at the National First Ladies Library & Museum in Canton, Ohio, last month to support author Heath Hardage Lee and her new biography The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady. The women in the East Wing were credited by Lee for helping her piece together a fuller historic legacy of Pat Nixon’s White House tenure. (Credit: Jennifer Taylor/East Wing Magazine)

On a gray and snowy, late November morning in downtown Canton, Ohio, three women, two accompanied by their husbands, enter the historic, 1841-built Victorian home of former First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley. It’s a mini-reunion of sorts. This being one of just a handful of times the women had seen each other over the years since they worked together in service to another former first lady—Pat Nixon.

The wonderstruck looks on their faces as they take in the ornate, preserved home during a privat…