A memorial service is set for Tuesday, July 14 for Herbert G. Klein, former aide to President Nixon, community activist and onetime editor-in-chief of the former San Diego Union newspaper, who died Thursday, July 2 after a battle with pneumonia. He was 91. Klein, a La Jolla resident at the time of his death, was White House director of communications during the Watergate scandal, which forced Nixon to leave office in 1974. Klein resigned the post in July of 1973. He had been associated with Nixon since 1946, when Nixon launched a California congressional bid. In 1960, he helped spearhead the first televised presidential debates between Nixon and then Sen. John Kennedy. A Los Angeles native, Klein earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1940 from USC, where he met his wife Marjorie. Marjorie died in 2008. Klein was a Navy public affairs officer in San Diego for three years during World War II, after which he became a special correspondent for the San Diego-based Copley Newspapers. He later wrote for Copley’s Evening Tribune and San Diego Union. In 1959, he was named editor of The Union. He was Nixon’s press secretary during Nixon’s failed bids for the presidency and California’s governorship. He became Nixon’s communications director in 1968, the year Nixon won the White House. In July of 1973, amid the Watergate break-in scandal, Klein joined Metromedia Inc., a national broadcast group. Klein rejoined Copley as editor-in-chief in 1980. An avid football fan, Klein attended more than 35 Super Bowls in his lifetime, including the first one, in 1967. He was a member of a committee that brought Super Bowl to San Diego in 1988, 1998 and 2003. He had a leading position in creating San Diego’s Holiday Bowl, the staple annual post-season college football tilt. Klein was a member of the San Diego International Sports Council and San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. boards. He was also on the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce executive committee. Klein is survived by brother Kenneth, daughter Patricia Root, three grandsons and two great-grandsons. The memorial service takes place at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 14 aboard the USS?Midway Museum, 910 N. Harbor Drive.
