Sept. 7, 1964 - Checkers, former Vice President Nixon’s famous dog, is dead.
The black and white cocker spaniel, who gained national attention in a telecast by Nixon in 1952, was 12.
She was under a veterinarian’s care when she died yesterday.
An aide said Nixon, his wife, and their two daughters regarded Checkers as “the perfect family dog — in fact, a member of the family.”
The family has another dog, Vicki, a toy poodle.
Checkers, who had a ferocious bark but a gentle disposition, was perhaps the best-known dog of a public official since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Scottish terrier, Fala.
Checkers is believed to have been the only dog to attend the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington. That was when Nixon addressed the club in 1953. The club had asked him to bring the animal along.
In the 1952 speech, while he was campaigning for Vice President, Nixon detailed his finances and told of the home the family had bought, of his wife’s “respectable Republican cloth coat,” and of Checkers, who had been given to the family by a friend.
He had been accused of having improperly received $18,235 from supporters. His reply, broadcast nationally on television and radio, stressed his modest means. The address frequently was referred to afterward as the “Checkers speech.”
“One other thing I probably should tell you,” Nixon said in the speech, “because if I don’t, they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something — a gift — a gift after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog.
“And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip, we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
“It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl — Trisha, the 6-year-old — named it Checkers.
“And you know the kids love the dog, and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep it.”
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