They met in February 1938, at a try-out for the Whittier Community Players. (The play called for someone to play the district attorney, and a friend suggested to Nixon that if he played an attorney convincingly onstage, it might help bring in some business.) He was immediately smitten; she was not. When the play opened, he invited his parents to come and take a look at the young woman he hoped to marry. When her son asked what she thought of her, Hannah, a formidable mother who knew a rival when she saw one, could comment only that “she did her part nicely.”
