Nixon's Real Enforcer

Rose Mary Woods | b. 1917

By FRANCIS WILKINSON

Rose Mary Woods loved to dance. In the old days, when they were just a small group in the vice president's office, she and the gang would head out to a Washington hotel, perhaps the Mayflower, which had a dance floor and a small band. In high-heeled shoes with ankle straps, sometimes with one of the Nixon advance men as a partner, Woods was a joyful sight, cutting loose after a 12-hour grind at the vice president's side. "She was a redhead, and fun," recalled Herb Klein, an early Nixon supporter who later became White House communications director.

A blazing typist and master of shorthand, Woods left her Irish Catholic home in hardscrabble northeastern Ohio to work at the Office of Censorship during the war. She was later hired as staff secretary for the Select House Committee on Foreign Aid, where she and a young California congressman laid the cornerstone of a professional relationship that would dominate her life and steady his.