Writing This Book in Nixon’s Library

Our offices were almost all located along Chestnut Ridge Road — except for my home in Jersey City and our office at 39 East Central Avenue in Pearl River, New York, the building I bought from a pizza man after I got evicted from my townhouse for running an industrial-scale business out of my living room.

Our very first garage office was at 884 Chestnut Ridge Road in Chestnut Ridge, New York. From there, we moved to 135 Chestnut Ridge Road in Montvale, New Jersey.

After our ten-year lease expired, we relocated once again — this time to 577 Chestnut Ridge Road in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

For more than twenty years, we worked on the same road.

***

Just a few miles away, history had unfolded long before we arrived.

After the presidency, Richard Nixon spent a significant part of his post–White House life in Saddle River, New Jersey, where he retreated from public view and devoted himself to writing.

Tucked into the quiet, wooded privacy of Bergen County, Nixon used the isolation of his estate to reflect, analyze, and attempt to rebuild his legacy through words.

During that time, he also rented an office at the Perillo Tours Plaza building.

There, he worked long hours dictating and revising manuscripts, transforming himself from a disgraced former president into one of the most prolific post-presidential authors in American history.

The calm of Saddle River offered something the White House never could:

silence — and the time to write.

***

I was also living in Saddle River at the time. Just down the street was Rocco Commisso, the richest man in New Jersey, and around the corner lived the Inserra family, owners of the ShopRite supermarket chain.

One night, when Lawrence R. Inserra Sr. needed an ambulance, the town’s only unit was out of service. After that experience, he donated two ambulances to the town.

That was my neighborhood.

***

Years later, when we moved into the Perillo Tours building ourselves, I asked Steve Perillo about the Nixon photos and memorabilia displayed in the lobby alongside his father, Mario Perillo.

Steve smiled and said, “Nixon’s office was in this building. As a matter of fact, your office now was Nixon’s library — where he wrote his memoirs.”

Nixon’s Beyond Peace (1994), his final book, offering policy ideas just weeks before his death, was written in that very library — my new office.

***

Nixon was also known to love Chinese food. After Jiang Zemin, the President of the People’s Republic of China, paid a private visit to Nixon in Saddle River, a Chinese restaurant mysteriously opened in the small shopping plaza next to our office — the same space that had once housed Nixon’s library.

The food was excellent.

An autographed photo of Nixon hung behind the cash register.

That spot is now a Fresh Market.