Background
Woods, Rose Mary was born on December 26, 1917 in Sebring, Ohio, United States. Daughter of Thomas M. and Mary (Maley) Woods.
consultant presidential assistant
Woods, Rose Mary was born on December 26, 1917 in Sebring, Ohio, United States. Daughter of Thomas M. and Mary (Maley) Woods.
Educated high school. L.D.H., Pfeiffer College, 1971.
Before H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman became the operators of Nixon"s presidential campaign, Woods was Nixon"s gatekeeper. Following graduation from McKinley High School, she went to work for Royal China, Incorporated., the city"s largest employer. Woods had been engaged to marry, but her fiance died during World World War World War II To escape all the memories of her hometown she moved to Washington, District of Columbia, in 1943, working in a variety of federal offices until she met Nixon while she was a secretary to the Select House Committee on Foreign Aid.
Impressed by his neatness and efficiency, she accepted his job offer in 1951.
She developed a very close relationship with the Nixon family, especially First Lady Pat Nixon. Woods was President Nixon"s personal secretary, the same position she held from the time he hired her until the end of his lengthy political career.
Fiercely loyal to Nixon, Woods claimed responsibility in a 1974 grand jury testimony for inadvertently erasing up to five minutes of the 181⁄2 minute gap in a June 20, 1972, audio tape. Her demonstration of how this might have occurred – which depended upon her stretching to simultaneously press controls several feet apart (what the press dubbed the "Rose Mary Stretch") – was met with skepticism from those who believed the erasures, from whatever source, to be deliberate.
The contents of the gap remain a mystery.
Woods died on January 22, 2005, at a nursing home (McCrea Manor) in Alliance, Ohio. A memorial service was held at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.