Showing posts with label Bob Abplanalp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Abplanalp. Show all posts

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Historic Cruising Vessel

This is almost certainly the last photo taken of Richard Nixon. On Saturday, April 16, 1994, he was headed home from the Westchester (New York) Country Club after attending the wedding of a family friend. He's shown with his chief of staff, Kathy O'Connor (rocking that perm), and the bride's father, Bob Abplanalp, inventor of the aerosol valve and third musketeer to Nixon and Bebe Rebozo. Note as well the Chrysler limo.

On the Monday after the wedding, Nixon suffered a devastating stroke as he sat on the deck of his Upper Saddle River, New Jersey home, savoring an evening in spring and awaiting dinner. He died on Friday, April 22. The following week Kathy and his family returned his body to California, where Noah McMahon, about 2,000 other helpers, and I (then director of the Nixon library, where he would be buried next to Mrs. Nixon) were waiting. A Chapman University undergraduate, Noah volunteered to help with parking. He now runs two companies he founded, Anonymous LLC and the Giving Back Fund, and serves on the school committee at St. John's. Note as well the Chrysler limo.

Noah acquired the historic wheels several years ago from Bob Stanley of Bronxville, New York, who had bought it from Nixon's estate (of which I was co-executor). Noah had it painstakingly restored. This week, he picked up the attention-commanding license plates. He plans to lend Nixon's Chrysler to organizations for their fundraisers and silent auctions. If those whitewalls could talk!

Friday, December 30, 2011

I'm Willing To Go To The Matt This Time

I've been playing second banana for years to Nixon gags by OC Weekly's deft polemicist, Matt Coker. In 1999 the alternative weekly ran a full page, which I attributed to him, on my attempts to cast a favorable light on President Nixon's White House tapes. My wife and Nixon confederate Kathy O'Connor had it framed.

Now Coker's ended an article about my Nixon-Rebozo post with the indelible image of 37, Bebe Rebozo, and aerosol valve inventor Bob Abplanalp (also not gay, not that it would have mattered if he were) window-shopping on Martha's Vineyard. He writes, "Nope, nothing gay-sounding there." Kathy reminds me that all three of these dudes loved to shop. Why, when we were in Beijing-- But what's the use? It may finally be time for Coker and me to meet man to man and settle our differences over lattes and fistfuls of petite vanilla scones.