Letter #78 – A Young Conservative in the Age of Nixon

in Featured Letters from Yorba Linda by Jeffrey Volk — July 25, 2010 at 12:22 am | 0 comments

When the Frost/Nixon interviews were turned into a major motion picture, my 23 year old daughter and her friends noticed – for the first time – some letters and autographs that I had received in my youth from President Nixon which remain framed in my library. They asked me questions about President Nixon and the circumstances under which I received these letters that still retain their pale green patina, White House address, and the embossed Presidential seal signifying the personal stationary of the President of the United States.

As an adult, these letters remain unique in their content and remarkable given the recipient. I would be interested in learning from presidential scholars the number of high school seniors and college newspaper writers who ever received personal letters from a President of the United States who they did not know and came from a family with absolutely no political connections.

Part of the answer to that challenge is that I received several such letters as a high school senior in New York in 1969 and, later, as a student editorial writer at Georgetown University. How this happened is a story that I have been asked to write as my adult children and historians contemplate the complex legacy of Richard Nixon.

Forty-one years is a very long time. It is an average lifespan in many parts of the developing world. But my memory of those times remains vivid because of the unprecedented era in which we were living. There was a war in Vietnam where Americans were dying with no end in sight or exit strategy; rioting in the streets of our major cities as people fought for their civil rights; tumult in our major universities as students eligible for a dreaded draft call violently protested for an end to the war; a riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; the recent assassinations of a young President, his brother, and the cherished founding leader of the civil rights movement; and the challenges of a nuclear holocaust made real by a recent confrontation over missiles in Cuba.

It was not, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, morning in America.

Like many people of my generation, I heard the call to political activism with the caveat that I was a conservative and a strong supporter of our military soldiers who, in many instances, were serving in an Army as draftees and fighting a war that no one seemed to want. During the summers of my high school years, along with hundreds of other young Americans, I participated in high school forums in Washington to tour the nation’s capitol and attend a model United Nations.

I graduated from high school in 1970. In the fall of my senior year, I organized a small group of friends to march in support of our soldiers in Vietnam and of the President’s policies that successfully ended United States participation in the war. The whole event lasted about thirty minutes in White Plains, New York. I guess that a lot of other students were not out organizing events like this one, so we got some publicity in the local newspapers in Westchester County.

About a month later, my mother opened the mail at home and found a letter addressed to her 17 year old son on pale green stationary.

“Dear Jeff”, President Nixon wrote, “I was very pleased to note your recent activities to organize support for my efforts to bring the Vietnam conflict to an end.”

How this information ever got to the President was something I would learn about later. However, I never figured out how the White House found my home address.

The letter goes on to thank me for “your work” to bring the country closer to the President’s goal of ending the war.

I was astonished. My parents did not know what to make of it. I was interested in going to college in Washington and am convinced that a copy of this letter stapled to my application to attend Georgetown University helped gain my admission. How does one ever say thank you for something so gracious? I hope in writing about this personal communication so many years later that I have finally found the forum in which to extend those thanks.

I am leaving it to the Presidential scholars to tell us how many other high school seniors ever received a letter like this one but, in my case, it was not the last time.

So there is more to tell and, thus, a larger challenge for our scholars.

When I arrived at Georgetown as a freshman, a friend told me that the White House was looking for some free help and asked if I was interested. I said yes and was introduced to a fellow Hoya, Pat Buchanan, and his aide – Mort Allin – who asked if I could help them on a part time basis to put together the President’s Daily News Summary.

In learning about this news summary, I solved the question on how President Nixon had learned of my high school political activities.

Through my sophomore year in college, I would come by the Old Executive Office building in between classes to help cut, paste, and Xerox the President’s news summary in Mort Allin’s office. I did this along with a variety of other young interns and volunteers.

That was pretty much the sum total of my career at the White House where I have never returned. However, it was not the end of the letters that I received from President Nixon.

At Georgetown, I continued my interest in writing and became an editor for the Georgetown Voice where I wrote numerous columns on the political issues of the day. Because of my conservative views, these columns inspired controversy. To my surprise, I found out that someone else was reading these articles who was neither a Hoya nor a student.

I never asked but always presumed that either Mort or Pat put some of my college newspaper columns into the President’s news summary. In February 1973, I went to my mailbox at Georgetown and found another pale green letter.

“Dear Mr. Volk”, President Nixon wrote, “This is just a note to say that I recently enjoyed the opportunity to read your column “History Will Be Kind to U.S. War Effort” which appeared in the Georgetown Voice.” Finding my address was easier this time because the letter was addressed to me at Georgetown and the mailman must have figured out my box number.

I am not sure if it was this letter or another one that I received in March 1974 that we ran as a “letter to the editor” in the Voice but regardless it created a lot of controversy. The letter in March 1974 pretty much summed up everything that I have just described and was the last letter that I received from President Nixon.

“Dear Jeff” the President wrote, “It is surprising, I must admit when I sometimes find the Georgetown Voice mentioned in the news summary. In this instance, it was a pleasant experience to read your column of March 5 arguing forcefully in my behalf. I thought your piece offered an important perspective to the readers – and was a courageous statement in these very impassioned times.”

I treasure these letters and marvel at how unique I believe them to be. But there is still one other story that I do want to tell. Some years after resigning the Presidency, President Nixon moved to New York. He met my dad who worked for the GSA (General Services Administration) and was helping to arrange the President’s new office. My Dad told the President how proud he was of me and told him about my experiences in Mort Allin’s office.

The President asked for my address and a few weeks later I received in the mail a copy of his memoirs autographed to “Jeffrey Volk with best wishes for the years ahead.” This time I was not surprised.

President Nixon was a complex and nuanced individual. By the time he resigned office, the United States had begun to talk to China, started the nuclear arms process that ended our nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, successfully exited the war in Vietnam, ended the draft, and gave eighteen year-olds the right to vote. In Washington today, Nixon’s legacy lives on in the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA, and the National Cancer Institute.

The White House tapes, Watergate, and impeachment hearings are critical parts of that legacy and should not be forgotten or glossed over. They diminished the Presidency and for those who admire President Nixon, present the ultimate conundrum.

However, President Nixon’s legacy is as complex as the man and the difficult times in which he was chosen to lead the country. The accomplishments of the Nixon Administration are remarkable because of the brevity of his tenure, the complex issues that tore at the fabric of American society, and the politicized environment that accompanied RN’s election as President. I believe my letters demonstrate an important part of that complex personality through his kindness and interest in a young American.

Jeffrey Volk is a private investor and lives in New York City with his wife and family.