This date and Watergate are super memorable for me. I was going into my Junior year in high school and had watched a fair amount of coverage on TV.
My parents and I were going to Washington DC that summer. We met with our Congressman Carlos Moorhead, who knew my grandfather. My family was always politically pretty active and part of the reason for going to DC was to talk to the Congressman about getting a nomination for the Naval and Air Force academy. Congressman Moorehead, a freshman Republican served on House Judicial committee and voted initially against the impeachment. He sat in his office and explained to my parents, life long Republicans, while he had changed his mind and voted this time to impeach President Nixon. (He did later nominate me to both academies, which I should add were way easier to get into in the mid 70s than now.)
Later that day we went to the Senate, and heard Senator Edward Brooke, a black Republican senator from Massachusetts (go figure!) introduce a resolution to impeach Richard Nixon. My father who spent a couple of years lobbying in Sacramento was flabbergasted. He said I seen a lot of state assembly and senate session and you never anything of importance introduced. It didn't strike me as that big a deal, because there were not many senators on the floor and the talk of impeachment was common on TV. But it actually was important, Senator Brooke was the first Republican to advocate for Nixon impeachment and resignation.
The next day we took a White House tour, none of us had gone before but my dad thought the tour guides were pretty subdued. The next day we would figure out why.
The next day was Aug 8 and Richard Nixon resigned, and we all agreed that our White House tours tickets signed by Richard Nixon were historically significant. I am not looking forward to going through my mom's stuff when she passes, but this is one thing I do hope to find.
