What the Watergate Hearings Meant to Me

During the first half of 1973 the Watergate hearings began and were broadcast on television. At that time I was married to my college boyfriend and all I wanted to do was hide. The marriage was falling apart but neither Mark nor I wanted to face what was happening to us. We were living in Hartford, Connecticut where Mark had just earned his Masters degree in theology; he finished his classes and thesis a semester early and was working full time. This was a great chance for me to quit my job and play at being a housewife...and hide.

My hatred of Nixon and his gang of lowlifes was unending and horribly painful. I felt that Nixon was taking everything away from the American people that made being a citizen here worthwhile. I detested especially Haldemann, chief of staff at the White House. When I saw his ugly hatchet face on television my nerves would sizzle.

I did not know, nor did I realize until decades later, that I was projecting all of my feelings about my life and my choices onto Richard Nixon, Rose Mary Woods (Nixon's secretary, who made me want to gag), little Julie Nixon, one of the First Daughters, Plastic Pat Nixon (who I did not feel sorry for even though, when I saw her try to smile, she looked pathetic), and Richard Agnew, one of the most sickening of them all. Then when little Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower I thought I would explode with hatred and misery. I remember my mother looking at a picture of Julie in her wedding gown and admiring her--and I gave my mother a look so black that I'm surprised she survived it.

Then came the Watergate hearings and I sat, mesmerized, for hours, watching the Good Guys come to the rescue. That's how it looked to me, anyway. Sam Ervin from some southern state, every so often letting loose a country witticism, was my favorite member of the panel of questioners.

We all know how it ended; and it wasn't very long after the hearings were over that my marriage came apart too. A few painful truths had to be faced eventually, and the Watergate scandal kept my mind, for a few weeks, concentrated elsewhere.