The Office of First Lady of the United States

Is a wildly underestimated position of power. The First Lady has the unique position to use the power of the White House to focus on enacting change in our country without the daily chart of work the President is tasked with. It is and always has been widely expected for the First Lady of the United States to choose one cause to focus on for the length of their stay in the White House though many of the women in this office in the past have pushed to do many things to enact change in our country.

Pat Nixon was First Lady to our 37th President, Richard Nixon. She was born Thelma Catherine Ryan in 1912 and had a harder life growing up than the other first ladies I’ve researched. Aside from growing up experiencing her teen years during the great depression, her parents also both died when she was young.

Her mother died when she was 13 and her father followed before she graduated high school.

She kept house for her brothers who worked to support the family after their parents died and even picked up side jobs to pay the bills so they would not lose their family farm. Thelma Ryan didn’t care for her name much and when she enrolled herself in Junior college she used a nickname her father had used for her and rechristened herself as Pat Ryan. Eventually her brothers had saved enough to send her away to university where she studied for a degree in Education and Student Training.

Get quality help now

Writer Lyla

Verified

Proficient in: America

5 (876)

“ Have been using her for a while and please believe when I tell you, she never fail. Thanks Writer Lyla you are indeed awesome ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

She graduated with a Bachelors in Merchandising with a certificate to teach at the high school level.  Pat Ryan married Richard Nixon in 1940. She was very dedicated to him and his political career. Their first child, Patricia, was born during Richard’s first congressional campaign and it was said that Pat was back to research and working on the campaign within hours of giving birth.

During campaigns she was an avid participant taking notes and encouraging Richard along the way. She kept many notes from his unsuccessful 1960 campaign for them to reference when he ran again in 1968. Although Pat was an active participant in campaigning, she did not play much of a role in politics during her husband’s administration. Part of this was Richard’s decision to keep her out of the light of the administration due to a problem with what they thought of as bad press and misperception of her by the American people. She won the nickname “Plastic Pat” after a televised speech in 1952 when she kept a smile on at all times. The public viewed her silence and ever present smile as the face of someone void of true emotion or opinions. Pat openly admitted that Richard did not discuss politics with her and that she was unaware of goings on in the White House, she claimed she only knew what she read in the papers.

Admitting to her lack of knowledge of goings on in the White House could not have been any help to her vapid image amongst the American people. Between her open statements of knowing nothing and her public-given nickname, one would assume it was commonly known that Pat Nixon absolutely did not know what went on in White House politics. Yet, she suffered from scandals that went on during her husband’s administration. Pat was not involved in Richard Nixon’s political decisions or political mistakes such as Watergate. She was intentionally left uninformed about Watergate by Richard Nixon himself and ultimately discovered what was going on through media coverage. Unfortunately the American people’s previous perception of her and “guilty by association” was the final rule for Pat in the scandal that ended the Nixon administration. In the end, she met the worst days of the Watergate scandal with dignity saying, “I love my husband. I believe in him, and I am proud of his accomplishments.”

Although to those that knew her well, she was a fun-loving and hardworking person with strong wit. She found during her time as Second Lady that she wanted most to go out into the world and see the people, their needs, and what she could do to help them. She proved as always during her time as Second Lady as well as during her time as First Lady to be a charming representative of the US. When Pat became First Lady she resisted against choosing one cause to focus on but she became known for volunteerism. She had spent time with Richard during his travels abroad as Vice President of the United States and much enjoyed visiting other countries. Volunteerism was an easy umbrella cause for Pat to file all her passions for helping others underneath. Pat Nixon was the most travelled First Lady to date at the time and held that title until the Clinton Administration.

It was apparent through most of Richard Nixon’s political career that Pat had a passion for travelling the world to help those in need. An earthquake in Peru during the summer of 1970 killed thousands and left just as many homeless. Pat left the US almost immediately after hearing the news with donations of clothing, food, and medical supplies to lead a large scale international humanitarian effort. Because of this act, she was the first North American woman to be given The Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun decoration. She also supported women’s rights as an advocate for the ERA and taking a public stance to lobby Richard to appoint more women to the Supreme Court. She later took a tour of Rumania’s legislature during her travels and observed their large percent of female representatives, realizing that women were extremely underrepresented in Congress at home. This only led to further lobbying for female representation in government despite her mixed feelings about the cost of politics to her own personal life.

Eleanor Rosalynn Smith grew up in Georgia enjoying small-town life and playing Varsity Basketball. There, she frequently visited her friend Ruth’s family peanut farm where her future husband (and Ruth’s older brother) worked. James and Rosalynn surely had known each other for some time when he finally asked her on a date. He was 20 at the time and Rosalynn just 17, but he was sure she was the one he would marry. He courted her for some time and proposed in December 1945 only to be turned down. After some consideration she accepted his second proposal two months later and they married in the summer of 1946. At the beginning of their marriage James (Jimmy), Carter was in the Navy. His career dictated their lives for seven years while Rosalynn gave birth to three sons and the family followed him to nine different military bases. Jimmy was out to sea a lot of the time during his enlistment leaving Rosalynn to raise their children.

When Jimmy’s dad died in 1953 they returned home to Plains for the funeral. Upon arrival Jimmy discovered his father had been helping people in need in their community. Jimmy having left the Navy, decided they were staying in Plains without consulting Rosalynn. Rosalynn was not pleased with Jimmy’s decision but she pressed on anyway and became involved in the local public school. She managed the books for the farm without assistance and took the lead in raising their five children. When their involvement in the public school jumped to involvement in legislature, Jimmy decided to run for public office. He ran for the senate in 1962 and campaigned for governor twice before winning the position in 1970.

Rosalynn Carter’s interest in mental health issues began to arise during her time as First Lady of Georgia. Though she assumed all the traditional roles of the Governor’s wife as a good hostess and overseeing the landscaping, her main focus during Jimmy’s Governorship was to rebuild the state’s mental health system.  Having been exposed to developmental disabilities at a young age, she proved herself to be dedicated to the issue and took her passion with her all the way to the White House when she became First Lady of the United States in 1977. As First Lady of the United States Rosalynn Carter kept mental health issues in a national spotlight. She claimed during an interview that when she travelled she visited hospitals and people were always excited to show her their mental health programs and the good they were doing for people in their community.