Youngest Nixon brother dies

In obstruction of justice trial, he testified for defense

Edward C. Nixon, the youngest and last surviving brother of former President Richard Nixon and a faithful guardian of his White House legacy, died Wednesday in Bothell, Wash., near Seattle. He was 88.

His death in a nursing home was announced by the Richard Nixon Foundation.

Nixon, a geologist and energy consultant by profession, was 17 years younger than his brother Richard. He worked on his brother’s 1968 presidential campaign and was cochairman of his re-election committee in 1972.

“I’d have to say Dick was more than a brother,” Nixon recalled in “The Nixons: A Family Portrait” (2009), which he wrote with Karen L. Olson. “Because we never shared a boyhood, he assumed the role of assistant father and mentor.”

A few months after President Nixon’s inauguration in 1969, Edward Nixon was offered the chairmanship of the Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska by Commerce Secretary Maurice H. Stans. But he decided not to accept the post after questions were raised about nepotism and a possible conflict of interest.

He later testified as a defense witness in the conspiracy trial of Stans and John N. Mitchell, the former attorney general. They were charged with obstruction of justice and perjury in 1974 involving what the government said was their effort to impede investigation of financier Robert Vesco in return for his secret $200,000 cash contribution to Nixon’s re-election campaign. Both were acquitted.

Edward Nixon testified that Stans had told him it was immaterial whether the $200,000 was provided by cash or by check, undercutting the prosecution’s claim that the contribution was intended to be covert.

Edward Calvert Nixon was born on May 3, 1930, in Whittier, California, where father, Frank, ran a grocery store. He once described his mother, Hannah (Milhous), as “the judge” and his dad as “executioner.”

Like the other brothers, Harold, Francis Donald (known as Don) and Arthur, Edward Nixon was named for an English king. Harold died when he was 23, Arthur when he was 7. Don died in 1987, and the former president in 1994.

Edward earned a bachelor of science degree in geology from Duke University in 1952 and a master’s in geological engineering from North Carolina State University in 1954. He served in the Navy as an aviator, helicopter flight instructor and in the Naval Reserve as professor of naval science at University of Washington.

He was president of Nixon World Enterprises, an energy consulting firm 1971 until his death.