By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Little did Bob Bostock realize that working a telephone bank in Hackensack during President Richard M. Nixon’s re-election bid in 1972 would lead to a personal and lifelong involvement with the Republican president.
Mr. Bostock, who is a former Township Council member, was a 14-year-old student in 1972 who spent hours on the telephone, urging voters to cast their ballots for President Nixon. He admitted that he “fell in love” with the political process.
Mr. Bostock admired President Nixon and attempted to land a job in the former president’s Bergen County office after he finished graduate school in 1989. But there were no openings, so he took a summer job to tide him over until he could begin work in August for the late U.S. Rep. Dean Gallo.
That summer job lasted until Mr. Bostock received a phone call from President Nixon’s office to ask if he could serve as a fact-checker for “In the Arena,” which was a book that the president was writing. Without hesitation, he quit his summer job and spent six weeks working for President Nixon.
”I got to know President Nixon a little bit. On my last day of work, he called me in for a 20-minute talk. He gave me a copy of the book and he signed it,” Mr. Bostock recalled.
Mr. Bostock thought that would be the end of his contact with President Nixon. But the president’s office called him six months later to write the text for “almost all of the exhibits covering his presidency, starting with the 1968 campaign, through to and including the Watergate exhibit” in the permanent gallery at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., he said.
”Once you were in President Nixon’s orbit, you stayed there,” Mr. Bostock said.
Over the years, he said, President Nixon’s office asked him for help on assorted projects whether it was writing a letter or researching a project. President Nixon died in 1994, but Mr. Bostock continued his involvement with the late president and his legacy through the Richard Nixon Foundation.
For example, Mr. Bostock was the curator for the Pat Nixon Centennial Exhibit last year at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum that told the story of the First Lady’s life and accomplishments. There is very little about Ms. Nixon’s life in the permanent exhibit at the museum, he said.
Earlier this year, Mr. Bostock completed curatorial duties for an exhibit at the Nixon presidential library that celebrates the 100th birthday of the former president. He worked with Frank Gannon, a former Nixon aide, to co-curate the exhibit that opened Jan. 9. It will remain open for the rest of the year.
The Richard Nixon Centennial Exhibit, which was jointly presented by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the National Archives and Records Administration, is divided into several segments that cover the president’s life from his childhood to his political campaigns to his life after leaving office.
”We uncovered things that people don’t really know about President Nixon,” Mr. Bostock said.
For one, the Nixon family was not well-to-do. Frank Nixon built a 900-square-foot house from a kit for his growing family in the small farming town of Yorba Linda. Later, he moved his family to Whittier, where he operated a produce market. Young Richard got up early every morning to help out before going off to school.
While the story of Richard Nixon’s presidency has been recounted, the story of his post-presidential life has not been fully told such as the fact that the former president wrote nine books after leaving office, said Mr. Bostock, who researched the president’s pre- and post-presidential life for the centennial exhibit.
President Nixon’s successors in the Oval Office often relied on him for guidance in foreign affairs, including President Bill Clinton especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993, Mr. Bostock said. Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush relied on President Nixon’s foreign policy expertise, he said.
People did not expect President Clinton and President Nixon to have a good relationship, but President Clinton had respect for his predecessor, Mr. Bostock said. President Nixon wanted to make a difference in the post-Cold War era, and he had the expertise. President Clinton understood that, and often sought President Nixon’s advice, he said.
Of course, an important part of any exhibit is the memorabilia.
Among the memorabilia that Mr. Bostock and Mr. Gannon tracked down and that is on exhibit is the bench on which President Nixon spent much of his college football career while he was a student at Whittier College. He was not a good football player, Mr. Bostock said, adding that “(the bench) tells a great story.”
President Nixon’s first desk which he and his father made, using an old door, some plywood and crates for drawers also is on display. That was the desk he used when he began his law career. Juxtaposed in the exhibit is a reproduction of the desk that he used in the Oval Office.
And there are copies of some of the love letters that President Nixon wrote to Pat Nixon before their marriage. The letters were written while the future president was serving in the Navy during World War II, in the Pacific Theater.
While there are many photographs included in the exhibit, Mr. Bostock said one of his favorite photographs of President Nixon was taken in front of his boyhood home, with Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and their wives.
”It’s a great American story. Here is this tiny wooden house that was built by Frank Nixon, and 70 years later, there are four American presidents standing outside of it,” Mr. Bostock said. One of the four is Frank Nixon’s son.
Comparing this exhibit to previous exhibits, Mr. Bostock said the use of technology, such as videos, has made a difference. He accompanied a group of 9- to 12-year-old children members of the Boys and Girls Club of Yorba Linda through the exhibit. President Nixon was a strong supporter of the organization, he said.
”It was so fun to see the children’s reaction to the videos and the artifacts. It was fun to see how their interest in history was piqued. They loved swiping through the love letters on the Ipad,” Mr. Bostock said.
The exhibit also featured photographs of President Nixon with his grandchildren, and of a young Richard Nixon dressed in a shirt and tie, but barefoot posing with the rest of his second-grade class, Mr. Bostock said. The photographs served to “humanize” the president, he said.
”They let children go to school barefoot (in the 1920s). For the children who toured the exhibit, that made him a real person. There is a cutout photograph of President Nixon when he was 9 years old (and) that is to scale. It made him more human (to visitors),” Mr. Bostock said, noting that sometimes presidents become caricatures of themselves.
The exhibit is an opportunity to present President Nixon’s “whole life in full in a way that visitors to the library may not have seen before,” Mr. Bostock said. He added that “any one part of his life would have been an accomplishment.”
It has been a “huge privilege” to help tell the story of President Nixon, Mr. Bostock said. It is a chance to bring his story to a new generation. Anyone who is under 40 years old has no memory of President Nixon, he said.
”It was such fun to go into the archives. The centennial exhibit on Mrs. Nixon gave us a chance to tell the story about her. The exhibit on President Nixon afforded us the same chance (to tell the story about him),” Mr. Bostock said.
To view the Richard Nixon Centennial Exhibit, visit www.nixon100.org.

