Not long after VP Richard M. Nixon and his boss, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, won the 1956 election, Nixon and wife Pat toured Southern California.
Introduced by Congressman Edgar W. Hiestand (R), a staunch anti-Communist and a member of the John Birch Society, Nixon spoke to an enthusiastic shopping center crowd under a banner sign which read: “Panorama City Welcomes Dick”.
(Photos courtesy of the USC Digital Archives)
An “add” to the story–Panorama City was the creation of Fritz Burns–one of the first of the all.l packaged suburbs.
Nixon would have come for Burns–LA would have built public housing on the land given for Dodger Stadium–but Butns led the cry for free enterprise and the post war suburb–with some “public housing IS communism” rhetoric against the proposed housing project whose land was given to the Dodgers.
More than one person “cleaned up” on the free land given for Dodger Stadium.
–MORE???–
Anyone remember Nixon’s landing at Van Nuys Airport–in 1960–on his way to the Nixon–Kennedy debate downtown? A drenching rainy day experience. Or President Ford at VN airport? (I shook his hand.). Or Bobby Kennedy’s coming to LAValley College?
I’m not the political junkie that suggests–but we count timei in that way.
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Here in Van Nuys 