Nixon relocated to
California at the end of the century after having been
frostbitten working as a motorman in an open
streetcar in
Columbus, Ohio. After working as a farmhand and oil field
roustabout, he attempted to cultivate lemons outside
Los Angeles. Francis' son Richard also tested the waters of the citrus business. Shortly after graduating from law school, Richard founded the Citra-Frost Company which attempted to produce and sell frozen orange juice. After his son Richard was born, Francis Nixon abandoned the lemon grove, and the family relocated to the Quaker community of East
Whittier, California. The Nixon family then operated two businesses at the corner of Whittier Boulevard and Santa Gertrudes Avenue: a store that sold groceries and an
Atlantic Richfield gasoline station, but the family remained impoverished. Nixon's life was marked by the deaths of two of his sons, Arthur and Harold, from
tuberculosis. He has been described as a "restless, frustrated, and angry man, a mean-spirited person who psychologically abused his five sons and sometimes beat them." By the time of his later adulthood, Nixon often discussed his political opinions with strangers, his son Don remembering his father as being willing to debate anyone he encountered in the family market and having an intolerance of Democrats. Nixon voted for
Woodrow Wilson in the
1916 United States presidential election,
Warren G. Harding in the
1920 presidential election,
Robert Lafollette in the
1924 presidential election,
Herbert Hoover in both the
1928 and
1932 presidential elections, and
Franklin Roosevelt in the
1936 election. After his son Arthur's death in 1925, Nixon was haunted by the possibility of God having allowed the death as a form of personal punishment directed and pondered this frequently. He never again opened the family store on Sundays and started to have the family listen to sermons every evening. Nixon favored
Robert P. Shuler,
Billy Sunday, and
Aimee Semple McPherson, taking his sons once a week to hear either Shuler or McPherson at Trinity Methodist Church. In 1938, Francis' son Richard met
Pat Ryan, who Frank reportedly developed a "playful relationship" with and spared the same criticisms he had given his children. During the controversy concerning Richard's alleged improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses, Frank was "reduced to sobs" in hearing of the story and angered by his son's taking of any funds. The elder Nixons cared for their granddaughters
Julie and
Patricia while Vice President Nixon was involved with the
1956 Republican National Convention. Francis experienced a ruptured abdominal artery in the latter part of the month from which he was not expected to recover, resulting in the vice president curtailing his public appearances to tend to his father, who advocated that his son return to
San Francisco and work with the convention; Vice President Nixon refused. The next day, Francis Nixon died, his funeral being carried out three days later at the East Whittier Friends Meeting House. == Personal life ==