'The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon' Challenges Accounts of the Former First Lady

Author Heath Hardage Lee hopes her exhaustive account of Pat Nixon’s life prompts a reexamination of her legacy.

Pat Nixon stands with open arms at the Republican National Convention in Miami on Aug. 21, 1972, as California Governor Ronald Reagan, Senator Bob Dole, actor Jimmy Stewart and diplomat Anne Armstrong stand nearby. (Credit: Official White House photo, Nixon administration)

There are scant reports of what life was like for former First Lady Pat Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal before her husband, President Richard Nixon, resigned from office 50 years ago this week.

For decades, she has been defined in part by a troubling depiction of her by esteemed journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their 1976 book The Final Days, which examines the final months of Richard Nixon’s presidency. 

It was at the height of the Watergate scandal when then First Lady Pat Nixon returned from a South American goodwill trip in 1973 and, according to The Final Days, was “distraught and even more underweight than usual. She was becoming more and more reclusive, and drinking heavily. On several…