Pat Nixon - Early Life

Early Life

Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada, the day before St. Patrick's Day. Her father, William M. Ryan Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish descent; her mother, Katherine Halberstadt, was a German immigrant. "Pat" was a nickname given to her by her father, referring to her birthdate and Irish ancestry. Upon enrolling in college in 1931 she dropped her first name of Thelma, replacing it with Pat and occasionally rendering it as Patricia; the name change, however, was not a legal action, merely one of preference.

After her birth, the Ryan family moved to California, and in 1914 settled on a small truck farm in Artesia (present-day Cerritos). Thelma Ryan's high-school yearbook page gives her nickname as "Buddy" and her ambition to run a boarding house.

During this time she worked on the family farm, and also at a local bank as a janitor and bookkeeper. Her mother died of cancer in 1924. Pat, who was 12 at the time, assumed all the household duties for her father, who died in 1929 of silicosis, and two older brothers, William Jr. (1910–1997) and Thomas (1911–1992). She also had a half-sister, Neva Bender (born 1909), and a half-brother, Matthew Bender (born 1907), from her mother's first marriage; her mother's first husband had died during a flash flood in South Dakota.