George Washington had the cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln had the stovepipe hat. So what iconic object can we associate with Richard Nixon? How about the bowling ball.
The 37th president liked to blow off steam at the White House bowling lanes, rolling as many as eight games in one evening. The thunder of the alley reverberated in the basement of the Executive Office Building across the street from the presidential residence.
Three or four times a week, Nixon challenged his personal valet and kitchen staff to marathon matches that ran late into the evening. He had a respectable 170 average and a high game of 232, although those numbers were considered state secrets.
“In many ways, bowling is better for me than golf because it doesn’t take as much time,” Nixon once told Washington press corps. “I don’t have time to duck out and play golf, but I can duck out and bowl.”
Dr. Walter Tkach, White House physician, said bowling helped improve Nixon’s posture, visual acuity and muscle coordination. “He works up a real sweat,” Tkach explained.
The Professional Bowlers Association, which was founded in Akron, appreciated the president’s dedication to the sport and considered him a goodwill ambassador. In 1970, the PBA published a bowling photo of Nixon on the front cover of the official program of the Firestone Tournament of Champions at Riviera Lanes in Fairlawn.
The image captured the highly focused president — wearing a checkered shirt, dark slacks and white bowling shoes — in mid-roll with a Don Carter ball.
“The people Nixon refers to as the ‘silent majority’ are our biggest followers,” Akron’s Bud Fisher, public relations director for the PBA, told sports writer Martin Ralbovsky in a feature story for the Newspaper Enterprise Association. “We estimate the ‘silent majority’ numbers 40 million strong. If the president identifies with these people, and we identify with them, who knows what might develop in the future?”
In those days, Greater Akron boasted about 20 bowling lanes. Alleys were jammed on evenings and weekends as rubber companies and other local businesses competed in industrial leagues in popular places such as Bories, Colonial, Eastgate, Gran, Ken-Bowl, Magic City, Midway, Northgate and Roll-A-Way.
From neighborhood to neighborhood, the rumble of hard rubber and the crash of wooden pins played out like a blue-collar symphony.
R.D. Thomas, president of Akron’s Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., likened the $100,000 Tournament of Champions at Riviera “to a sporting event on the same level as baseball’s World Series and pro football’s Super Bowl.”
Although shaggy hair and casual clothes were popular among younger people, the PBA prided itself on a staid approach. Dick Ritger, chairman of the PBA’s personal image committee, explained that pro bowlers would earn better contracts and win more endorsements by presenting a clean-cut countenance.
“All we ask is a neat appearance, which includes pressed trousers, polished shoes and neatly trimmed hair,” he said.
So Nixon felt like a good fit for the organization. The PBA recorded videos of all tournament finals in case the president missed the live television broadcasts.
“We made special tapes of the finals every week this season, and we’re delighted that the White House didn’t request a single one,” PBA founder Eddie Elias of Akron said in 1970. “We assume the president was watching them live.”
The Firestone Tournament of Champions that year was a memorable one with Akron native Don Johnson bowling a 299 game in the April 4 finale, just missing perfection when a single pin failed to fall in the last frame.
The PBA announced plans for a 1971 President’s Cup Tournament in Washington, D.C., and invited Nixon to roll out the first ball.
“If we didn’t know the president was interested, you don’t think we would be holding a tournament in Washington, D.C., now do you?” Elias asked.
Alas, the tournament didn’t come to pass. Instead, the Fair Lanes Open was held in Springfield, Va.
Friends of Nixon paid for the $40,000 installation of a one-lane bowling alley beneath the north portico of the White House in March 1973 so he wouldn’t have to cross the street.
Of course, that was just about the time that the Watergate scandal engulfed the presidency. Those pins must have crashed again and again as Nixon tried to let off steam.
Eventually the bowling ball had to be returned to the rack. It was supplanted by another iconic object associated with the Nixon presidency: the tape recorder.
Copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of the book Lost Akron from The History Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.