We remember President Richard M. Nixon, who was born on this day in 1913 and died in 1994. Our family was on the way to a baseball game when we heard the news of his death on the radio. You may remember that Mr. Nixon suffered a stroke earlier in the week, and Mrs. Nixon died the year before. He was never the same after she died, or so I hear from those around him.
Cuba, the Castro brothers and Nixon will always be a part of my childhood, from leaving Cuba to growing up in the U.S. In 1959, then VP Nixon met the recently appointed Prime Minister Fidel Castro in Washington, DC. It did not take VP Nixon long to figure out the Cuban visitor.
This is an account of the visit from Andrew Glass:
During his stay, Castro placed a wreath on George Washington’s grave, toured the Bronx Zoo, ate hot dogs and hamburgers at Yankee Stadium and generally made a big media splash. Wherever he went, the 33-year-old bearded Cuban leader invariably wore his trademark rumpled green fatigues.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower snubbed him, although the Cuban leader did meet with Vice President Richard Nixon and acting Secretary of State Christian Herter. Nixon later said he came away from the meeting with the conclusion that Castro was “either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline — my guess is the former.” On the other hand, after meeting with Castro, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson called him “the first democrat of Latin America.”
With all due respect to late Secretary Acheson, it was VP Nixon who got it right that day.
In 1968, Mr. Nixon was elected president and then re-elected in 1972. As we know, he resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal. On the subject of Cuba, Nixon was right. I think that The Bay of Pigs would have turned out differently with Mr. Nixon in The Oval Office.