For Feuding Nixon Sisters, Finally a Peace With Honor

MIAMI —  For about 16 hours, behind closed doors in a downtown Miami hotel, they argued, haggled and negotiated. There were lawyers, trustees and two daughters of an American president once so alienated from each other they wouldn’t speak.

At one point, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the feuding children of the late Richard Nixon, broke off from the group of more than a dozen others and went off by themselves. “They sat in a room, just the two of them, and resolved it quickly,” a source close to the families said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was done in a day, which shows how little controversy there really was.”

The concrete result was a written two-page agreement that frees up a $20-million bequest to the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda from one of the late president’s closest friends, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. What may be more memorable for most Americans is the end it may bring to the lengthy, bitter and highly publicized rift between the Nixon daughters.

“It was a long story, but in the end, we reached a settlement,” said Robert Landon, a Florida attorney for the library foundation. “Everybody is agreed, and that is good.”

“The daughters resolved this. It was just the two of them,” the source close to the families said.

It remained unclear, however, whether the accord will help achieve one of the library’s key goals: obtaining Nixon’s presidential papers to place on public display. The nine-acre site in Orange County is the only presidential library in the country not to possess the papers of its subject, in this case the 37th president and only chief executive in U.S. history to resign.

Eight years after his death, Nixon remains one of the most controversial figures in modern American history--farsighted statesman to his admirers, unprincipled saboteur of the Constitution to his foes. Twenty-eight years ago today, amid the rising scandal of Watergate, he boarded a helicopter and departed from the White House in disgrace, bringing to a close one of the greatest dramas in this country’s political life.

Shortly after Nixon resigned, Congress decreed that the General Services Administration, the parent agency of the National Archives, should seize all his official papers and recordings to guarantee that Nixon would not destroy them.

The collection is now held in the National Archives annex in College Park, Md. Until his death, Nixon fought bitterly to reclaim his presidential papers, and in 2000 the federal government agreed to pay $18 million to his estate to settle claims that the documents were improperly seized.

Landon and other lawyers said the terms of the agreement finalized around 1:45 a.m. Wednesday were supposed to remain confidential, and they refused to disclose them. Gerald T. Wetherington, a former Florida judge who served as court-appointed mediator, said he also had pledged to remain silent.

Two sources familiar with the agreement, however, said both the library foundation and each of the Nixon sisters are to retain some control over how the money is spent. Since 1996, the sisters have feuded about how the library should be managed, with Cox wanting the Nixon family to make the major decisions and Eisenhower seeking greater power for the professional staff.

In setting up his trust, Rebozo--a former Key Biscayne banker who died in 1998--stipulated that both sisters and another longtime Nixon confidant, Robert H. Abplanalp, approve the expenditure of his bequest to the library. With the sisters unable to agree on who was in charge, trustees of the Rebozo estate balked at releasing the money.

“The trustees felt that until the library and designated individuals were in concert, it was difficult to simply forward funds,” said Abplanalp, 80, who made a fortune as inventor of the leakproof aerosol valve.

Nixon had hoped his daughters would serve as library co-directors. But friends told The Times last spring that Tricia, 56, had been effectively cut out of the important decisions, while younger sister Julie, 53, had allied herself with the library’s executive director, John H. Taylor. A pair of lawsuits filed in Orange County this year pitted the sisters against each other, though the settlement resolves these disputes and the suits will be dismissed, attorneys said.

In the talkathon at Miami’s Hotel Inter-Continental that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday, the sisters reportedly agreed that none of the Rebozo bequest could be spent without the unanimous approval of themselves, Abplanalp and the library’s board of directors.

“There has been a lot of haggling and controversy,” said Abplanalp, who had returned to the Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters of his company, Precision Valve Corp., and spoke to a reporter by telephone. “I’m so glad it’s done. If I were a drinking man, I’d go out and celebrate.”

Conferees said they lunched on sandwiches and skipped a sit-down dinner, gobbling finger foods instead to save time. Abplanalp gave especially high marks to Wetherington for his skill at arbitration and his dogged persistence in search of unanimity. “He’d let us go out to the john--once in a while,” he said. “He was extraordinary.”

Asked how relations are now between the Nixon daughters, Abplanalp replied, “Fine. But I’d rather they tell you.”

The sisters weren’t granting interviews Thursday. But in a brief statement released through the library, they said: “Tricia Nixon Cox and her sister, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, are delighted to announce that Tuesday’s mediation in Miami over Mr. Rebozo’s wonderful bequest was successful and that all parties are pleased with the outcome.”

Before Cox and Eisenhower left Miami, they posed together for a news photographer. Eisenhower put her arm around her older sibling, and they were all smiles.

“It’s going to be a wonderful relationship,” predicted the source close to the families. “This process brought them closer together.”

In January, the library foundation filed lawsuits in Florida and California in an attempt to gain control of the Rebozo gift. In June, a Miami probate judge, Maria Korvick, ordered the sisters, Abplanalp, library representatives and Rebozo trustees into face-to-face mediation. “There is going to be a party, and everybody’s going to come,” Korvick quipped.

Rebozo, who provided Nixon with a Key Biscayne retreat when he was in office, left 65% of his estate to the library. The trust transferred $781,000 in 1999, but nothing since. A check for $1.3 million intended for taxes has been frozen.

Taylor, the library’s executive director, took part in the Miami talks and said the agreement was a milestone for the institution.

“While the library was never dependent upon the income from Mr. Rebozo’s wonderful bequest, it is going to be delightful news indeed that it will now be possible to enhance the foundation’s work on behalf of the Nixon legacy,” he said. Taylor declined to say how the money would be spent, saying the decision was “up to the board.”

The collection at the National Archives includes some 44 million pages of written records, 4,000 hours of White House audiotapes and untold photographic, videotape and film records, Taylor said. There are no current negotiations to bring the immense trove of information to Yorba Linda, but this week’s agreement might buttress the library’s claim.

“The sense of reconciliation and unity cannot help but enhance the picture,” Taylor said.

Also unclear is whether the agreement might have consequences for the library’s executive director himself. Earlier this year, a lawyer for Cox suggested to the board that Taylor be replaced, largely because of his role in the dispute. In a letter, attorney Thomas R. Malcolm said Taylor had stirred up a “media frenzy” by suing over the Rebozo money.

On Thursday, Taylor said he had no intention of leaving: “I serve at the pleasure of the board and the board has given me no indication it wants to make a change.”

Robert F. Ellsworth, a member of the library’s board of directors and Nixon’s ambassador to NATO, said it is too early to know exactly how the library will use the Rebozo gift. “Give us a couple, three weeks to think this through and to design our new approach in the new era of good feeling,” he said.

Ellsworth added that he was glad the disagreement between the late president’s children appeared to be behind them, and called their new concord “a great victory for the Nixon legacy.”

Abplanalp, who was still hoarse from the negotiations, spoke of his late friend with undimmed affection and respect when asked how he assessed that legacy. “I think Richard Nixon was a greatly misunderstood president,” he said. “He was one of the all-time geniuses who ever sat in that office. I don’t think we’d have our present problems if he were still there.”

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Dahlburg reported from Miami, Pfeifer from Orange County.