Pat Nixon: A Loyal Wife Resurfaces : Family: The former First Lady making a rare public appearance today to see her husband receive the tribute she believes is long overdue.

YORBA LINDA —  While former President Richard Nixon has spent much of the last 16 years rebuilding his tarnished reputation, his wife Pat has led an almost Garboesque existence.

One of the most enduring images of Watergate is of Pat Nixon standing ramrod straight, jaws clenched, shortly after her husband resigned the presidency amid scandal.

Today, the 78-year-old former First Lady emerges publicly for the first time in years. And while ill health has left her frail, by many accounts the loyal wife is pleased that her husband is being honored like a returning hero with the dedication of his library and restored birthplace.

“This is a great tribute to her husband,” said Helene Drown of Rolling Hills Estates, who has known Thelma (Pat) Nixon since they were both teachers in Whittier. “She has this great loyalty and love for her husband, and for her this is worth making all the effort.

“She’s just thrilled to pieces about this,” Drown said.

The entire Nixon family will be here for the ceremonies, including daughters Julie Nixon Eisenhower, her husband David and their three children, and Tricia Nixon Cox, her husband Edward and their son Christopher.

Neither Pat Nixon nor her daughters consented to requests for interviews this week.

“Mrs. Nixon doesn’t usually choose to answer questions from the press and I don’t think that has changed,” said one Nixon aide who did not want to be identified. “She is very family oriented. Life revolves around her children and grandchildren. She had many years of being exposed to the public, and I guess now she wants her privacy.”

When she and her husband left Washington, waving sadly to their staff from a helicopter that lifted them from the White House lawn for the last time, it seemed that Pat Nixon also left behind her public mask. She and the President went into a sort of exile in San Clemente for three years, seeing only a few friends.

And the public has seen little of her since.

“She has gone to great lengths to avoid any kind of publicity, for example wearing wigs to go shopping,” said historian Stephen Ambrose, who is writing a biography of Nixon.

“She had some horrible experiences right after the resignation and before her stroke,” he said. In one incident, Ambrose said, the former First Lady was spat upon at a south Orange County supermarket shortly after the resignation.

“That pretty much would discourage anybody from going out in public,” he said.

While she doesn’t relish the public eye anymore, the library dedication is different, he said.

“This is a political event going on this week. Pat doesn’t like politics--the lies, the exaggerations,” he said. “They’re all going to be there this week. It’s not really her cup of tea, but she’s loyal and she knows how much this means to Dick.

“This is obviously a very special occasion,” he said. “You can’t measure the impact of this.”

Just after the resignation, there was public speculation that Pat Nixon had gone into a deep depression as the criticism of her husband mounted. Then, when Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward published his book “The Final Days” in 1976, the former First Lady suffered a stroke. She suffered another series of strokes later.

“It isn’t her health that keeps her at home,” said Patricia Reilly Hitt, a national co-chairperson of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign who lives in Corona del Mar.

“She went along (while her husband was President) and she was a good sport and did everything she needed to, and now she doesn’t need to be like that,” she said. “She’s a private person and always has been. She was also a wonderful support to him.”

Was she driven to privacy by the hurt she suffered from the Watergate scandal?

“You’ll find any wife whose husband is maligned is hurt,” Hitt said. “If you feel that the criticism is unjust, and an overreaction and to a large extent much greater than deserved, then you’re going to be extra hurt and I imagine angry too. Pat is a human being, a very warm, loving, human being.

“It’s something you learn to live with, but I’m sure all of them are delighted about the library,” she said, adding that the dedication is a kind of vindication of the Nixon name.

“I think he’s being vindicated every day . . . That’s got to make Pat feel good, and the the girls too, because it was tough on them,” she said.

In the last decade and a half, the few reports of how Pat Nixon has fared have come mostly from her younger daughter, Julie. In 1986, Julie Eisenhower wrote “Pat Nixon: The Untold Story,” a loving valentine to a mother who had persevered in the face of what the family perceived as undeserved criticism of the man they loved most.

In the book, Julie Eisenhower recounted what her mother said about Watergate: “Watergate is the only crisis that ever got me down. And I know I will never live to see the vindication.”

Her friends say she spends much of her time gardening, long a passion, and with her children and grandchildren.

Three years ago, at a First Ladies Lecture Series in Washington, Julie said: “Mother looks wonderful--she doesn’t have a limp or anything. She suffers from emphysema, so she doesn’t go out too much. But she does go to lunches and dinners and baby-sits the grandchildren.”

She has also remained loyal to old friends.

A college roommate from USC, Mrs. J. Curtis Counts of Los Angeles, said Pat Nixon called her a few weeks ago after sending her an invitation to the library dedication.

“She’s a little frail, but she recovered very well from the stroke,” she said. “There’s no visible evidence that she ever had it.

“She doesn’t go to many functions anymore. I guess she doesn’t feel like getting into the scene anymore,” she said. “But she was real excited about this. She was so happy that they finally got the library project going. I think she just would be so pleased to have him (Richard Nixon) on the upbeat again, and that people would clamor to see him and to wish him luck and all that sort of thing.”

Pat Nixon, say some of her friends, is looking forward to the dedication as she would a family holiday reunion.

“Everybody is very, very happy about it,” said Anne Cox, Tricia Cox’s mother-in-law, who was staying with friends in Newport Beach to attend the celebrations. “I’m just thrilled to be here. I just think it’s a wonderful occasion for the entire Nixon family.”