The Health of the First Ladies: Medical Histories from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama (23 page)

With hindsight and with the medical knowledge accumulated over one hundred years, the verbal disability of Mrs. Taft is classified as apraxia of speech. It defines a disorder involving difficulty of articulation despite having intact language skills and muscular function. It occurs in about 11 percent of stroke cases and is usually minor. In the most severe cases, as in this first lady’s, all linguistic motor function can be lost and must be relearned. Today’s recommended treatment involves frequent one-on-one therapy with a specialist, using repetition of words or phrases. That was the therapy of her doctors and her family a century ago, and it was successful.
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On May 13, 1911, President and Mrs. Taft were in New York City, where the president delivered a speech at the New York Academy of Political Sciences. Two years after her initial attack Mrs. Taft’s speech had improved to only a slight undetectable speech impediment. Nellie left the dinner early but collapsed at her husband’s brother’s home, where they were staying. Horace Taft immediately summoned his family physician, Dr. E.M. Evans. The doctor diagnosed a “nervous attack” that was mild in comparison to her earlier episode. Daughter Helen wrote: “She isn’t able to articulate clearly or find the words. The doctor seems to think that the attack is similar to the first one but much less severe.” The president continued to characterize it as a “nervous attack,” as did the contemporaneous
New York Times
report.
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Five days after her collapse, Nellie Taft was well enough to return by train to Washington, D.C. Once ensconced in the White House, her condition improved. The president offered Horace reassurance: “There is nothing except the tongue which interferes with distinct enunciation, but which is improving with use from week to week. We have induced Nellie to stay in bed, so that she does not come down stairs at all, and while she resents this treatment, I think she realizes the necessity for care.” The
New York Times
on May 20, 1911, under its headline “Mrs. Taft Will Rest,” related that the first lady had recovered well from her attack of nervous trouble, but daughter Miss Helen Taft will preside at the White House functions for the present.”
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The first lady sparkled at the Tafts’ excessively elegant June 19, 1911, silver anniversary party held before thousands on the White House lawn. She remained on the sidelines during her husband’s 1912 renomination battle, citing her physical condition as the reason. But her role on the public stage was not yet over; Mrs. Taft was the first first lady to appear at a national nominating convention of the opposing party. She attended the 1912 Democratic presidential convention in Baltimore. This gathering nominated Woodrow Wilson, who subsequently was victorious in a three-way race with William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.
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An incapacitating cerebrovascular accident, occurring so early in the Taft presidency, was a tragedy—tragic not only for the new first lady, whose determination to engrave her indelible mark upon the first lady narrative and upon the Washington social scene was thwarted, but also tragic for the president, whose closest political advisor was both stricken and unavailable for counsel and support. “During Nellie’s illness Taft was a somber and stricken man, ever attentive to her needs and desires. Nellie’s stroke left her very weak, with partial paralysis of some facial muscles and with a speech difficulty which took some time and considerable effort to overcome.” Her condition was not only a burden for her, but also for those around her, especially her husband. He could no longer count on his wife as he had formerly since he feared for her health.
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Taft was stressed and his focus distracted by Mrs. Taft’s condition. Gradually she took part in social situations where she could speak a formula of greeting. But dinners and socials where she had to talk were avoided.
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Helen, the Tafts’ daughter, recollected the following to a national magazine forty-five years after the fact: “Within two months of my father’s inauguration, my mother suffered a brain hemorrhage which rendered her unconscious for four or five days and from the effects of which she never fully recovered. For the next two years she had, most unwillingly, to accept the role of invalid. During the whole period of my father’s presidency I doubt whether she visited the executive offices half a dozen times.”
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One Taft biographer suggested that if Mrs. Taft’s health had remained good and she had been in a position to advise the president about the tariff and other matters, Taft’s record might have been altogether different.
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Another summed up: “Given four years of good health and sustained hard work, she might have reshaped the role of the first lady decades earlier than Eleanor Roosevelt or Lady Bird Johnson did.”
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After his reelection defeat, the Tafts moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where William was a member of the Yale Law faculty for nearly ten years. In 1921 the ex-president achieved his own, but not his wife’s, professional goal when President Harding appointed Taft chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. After Taft’s death in 1930, his widow continued in live in Washington, but she also developed an annual pattern of travel. She visited Charleston, South Carolina, in mid-winter, made an overseas trip until early summer, then spent several months in Murray Bay, Canada, until October, and celebrated the holidays in Washington. She lived with a cook and a maid who were Irish immigrant sisters.
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The effects of the stroke on her articulation both lingered and persisted, but her speech generally improved after the presidency. Nellie had learned to let go of stress “that had provoked her earlier attacks, she was even calm when she fell ill.”
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Mrs. Taft was in excellent health during her three decades as a former first lady. In 1926 she had a gastrointestinal complaint for which she reached out to her former physician in the White House, Dr. DeLaney.
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In December 1935, she “Suffered a slight brain swelling with ‘distinct paralysis on the right side.’ Within twenty-four hours all such symptoms had vanished.” At the time, the event was dismissed as a minor matter and not a cerebrovascular accident. However in retrospect we realize it was a transient ischemic attack, a minor stroke, and her third such event. A year later, sufficiently recovered, she left for a seven-month overseas trip.
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In the summer of 1941 Mrs. Taft battled a lung illness and, in addition, she fractured her right arm at her summer home. A fourth CVA followed, which led to convulsions and a slight paralysis. She recovered. Mrs. Taft was ill during 1942 and into 1943; although bedridden she was lucid. She died with “a circulatory ailment” in Washington on May 22, 1943, just shy of her eighty-second birthday.
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Helen Herron Taft was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Her interment there was preceded not only by that of her husband, William H. Taft, but also by her White House physician, General Matthew DeLaney, who died in November 1926. Always the trailblazer, Nellie in death became the first first lady to be laid to rest at the storied burial ground. She preceded the much publicized burial of Jacqueline Kennedy there by half a century.
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Richard Nixon reported to the Nixon family physician John C. Lungren: “[T]wo days before the stroke, Pat was reading The Final Days…. Pat was extremely upset over the sections where Woodward and Bernstein portrayed us as demented alcoholics and our marriage as loveless—pure, unadulterated lies.”
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The public image of Mrs. Pat Nixon, first lady and wife of President Richard Nixon (1969–1974), was that of a stoic and ornamental supporter of her husband’s political aspirations. She was depicted as the perfect middle-class mother and housewife, supportive and silently admiring of her politician husband. Boller compiled a list of the most critical epithets directed towards Mrs. Nixon: “plastic Pat,” “antiseptic Pat,” “Pat the robot,” and “chatters, answers questions, smiles and smiles, all with a doll’s terrifying poise.”
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Retrospectives at the time of her death began to correct this portrayal. William Safire wrote in the
New York Times
: “She was politically savvy, an asset on the trail, and not just for patenting that rapt look listening to the same speech for the umpteenth time.” Donnie Radcliffe, writing in a newspaper which, more than any other, was responsible for the demonization of her husband, explained: “[F]ar from a ‘plastic Pat,’ as some tried to portray her. She was a complicated woman, a savvy politician who was fiercely loyal to her husband.”
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Her two biographers, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Mary C. Brennan, portray a woman far more substantial than the mainstream media’s caricature. Thelma Catherine Ryan was born on March 16, 1912, in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada, to an Irish immigrant father and a German immigrant mother. Her father insisted that she be called “Pat” and that her birth occurred on Saint Patrick’s Day and not a day earlier as documented on her birth certificate.

Pat’s early life was tough but she was brave, smart, and determined. Her parents were poor and when her mother died at an early age, Pat became the woman of the family, taking care of her father and brothers. The senior Ryan also passed away when Pat was young. Although an excellent student in high school, Pat gave up college in order to support her brother Tom’s university studies. Other formative experiences included a cross-country drive, two years of successful performance of many technical jobs at Seton Catholic Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, graduation from the University of Southern California after a delayed start, and recognition as a much admired teacher at Whittier High School in Southern California.
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Pat Nixon, the wife of Richard Nixon, was a smoker and a stroke victim (Library of Congress).

Medical History

Pat Nixon was a sturdy and healthy wife through her husband’s elective career. A single exception was a strained back in March 1958, suffered when she lifted her daughter Julie. The pain was severe and she was admitted to a hospital for the first time since her daughter’s birth ten years earlier.
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This first lady was a smoker, although to what extent remains undetermined. But the habit was of long duration. The Watergate crisis (1972–4) obviously took its physical and emotional toll. “She got thinner, and her face appeared more puffy and lined. Her smoking, which she tried to hide from the public, increased. In fact, on several occasions, she even smoked in public.” Previously she repeatedly told reporters that she did not smoke. In an interview at the time of her first cerebrovascular accident her last White House press secretary, Helen McCain Smith, recalled that Mrs. Nixon smoked cigarettes.
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For the first time in her life Pat Nixon was confronted by her own major medical problem. On July 7, 1976, at the Nixons’ retirement home in San Clemente, California, she was felled by a significant stroke.

Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974, and the Nixons moved to their California seaside retreat. But they could not escape the fallout from the Watergate political scandal.
Washington Post
news reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, perhaps wishing to embellish a fame-enhancing narrative, wrote a follow-up Watergate tell-all, titled
The Final Days
. The book, employing no documented sources and surmising “what might have been” conversations and internal thoughts, finally appeared in print in the early summer of 1976 after several months of a prepublication advertising blitz. The book portrayed the former first lady as an alcoholic and the Nixon marriage as loveless and close to collapse.
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On the morning of July 7, 1976, against her husband’s wishes, Pat Nixon read part of the book, which had been borrowed from one of Nixon’s secretaries. Adding to her stress, Nixon had just informed his wife that New York State was about to disbar him from the practice of law. An afternoon of housecleaning added to her exhaustion. After a swim with her husband, son-in-law David and daughter Julie, Mrs. Nixon fell asleep without undressing and woke up fatigued. She recalled that she could hardly walk. At breakfast the following morning, the ex-president noted that his wife had developed left hand paresis and weakness of the left side of her mouth. Nixon immediately called Jack Lungren, the family physician, who arranged for the chief of medicine of nearly Camp Pendleton to examine Mrs. Nixon at their home. The physician diagnosed a “tiny stroke” and dispatched her by ambulance to Long Beach Memorial Hospital, fifty-four miles away.
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Dr. Lungren admitted Mrs. Nixon with a diagnosis of cerebral hemorrhage secondary to vascular hypertension. Her blood pressure was elevated to 175/100. The physical findings were generalized weakness of the left arm and leg and slurring of speech. The brain hemorrhage was localized to the brain’s right cerebral cortex.
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