Lecture Date: March 13, 2025
The Jubilation by Silver Companies Lecture
In America’s collective consciousness, Pat Nixon has long been perceived as enigmatic. She was voted “Most Admired Woman in the World” in 1972 and made Gallup Poll’s top ten list of most admired women fourteen times. She survived the turmoil of the Watergate scandal with her popularity and dignity intact. The real Pat Nixon, however, bore little resemblance to the woman so often described as elusive, mysterious and “plastic” in the press. Pat married Richard Nixon in June 1940. As the couple rose to prominence, Pat became Second Lady from 1953-1961 and then First Lady from 1969-1974, forging her own graceful path between the protocols of the strait-laced mid-century and the bra-burning Sixties and Seventies.
In The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon, Heath Hardage Lee presents readers with the essential nature of this First Lady, an empathetic, adventurous, self-made woman who wanted no power or influence, but who connected warmly with both ordinary Americans and people from different cultures she encountered world-wide.
Speaker: Heath Hardage Lee
Heath Hardage Lee comes from a museum education, historic preservation, and writing background. She holds a B.A. in History with Honors from Davidson College, and an M.A. in French Language and Literature from the University of Virginia.
Lee has worked at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina and as a consultant for southern house museums such as Stratford Hall and Menokin Plantation. She is currently the Coordinator of the History Series for Salisbury House & Gardens, a 1920’s house museum in Des Moines, Iowa. Lee and husband Chris have two children, Anne Alston Lee and James Hawkins Lee. While living in the Midwest, she has found that she loves the Iowa State Fair, the Butter Cow, and corn. True to her Southern roots, she still loves North Carolina BBQ, (the vinegar kind,) Virginia ham (very salty), and Sally Belle’s cupcakes (caramel).
Lee has written for numerous magazines, newspapers and blogs. Her first book, Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause, a biography of Confederate First Lady Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis, was published in 2014 by Potomac Press, a division of the University of Nebraska Press.