Nixon enjoyed Club activities before ignominious departure from Washington

This Week In National Press Club History

August 8, 1974: President Richard M. Nixon resigns and leaves Washington the following day. Nixon had once said that “the press is the enemy,” but in earlier years, he was often a presence at the National Press Club. As a young senator from California, he sometimes sat in on poker games with reporters at the Club. Photos depict him enjoying himself at the Club as vice president, participating in softball games and playing the piano, with Jack Benny accompanying him on the violin. Just a year before his resignation, he thanked then-Club President Don Larrabee for sending him a National Press Club jacket, which he called “a most welcome and useful gift.”

Mark your calendars for the committee's Sept. 19 panel, “Women Report The Civil War." A distinguished group of scholars and journalists will analyze the war’s most famous women journalists and how their coverage differed from that of the daily and weekly press.

The event will be the second committee activity marking the start of the Civil War and noting the 40th anniversary of the admission of women to the National Press Club.

This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which is dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the Club’s history through displays, panel discussions, events, lectures and the oral history project.

For more information on History & Heritage Committee activities or to join the committee, contact Bill Hickman at [email protected].

Compiled by Elizabeth Smith Brownstein with assistance from Art Weise and Don Larrabee.