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E-mail StoryHerb Benham: Back in the Sunny days, another president's daughter got married
| Saturday, May 10 2008 9:27 AM
Last Updated: Friday, May 9 2008 2:23 PM
When your first name is Sunny, it either says something about your parents or the kind of person you are or hope to be.
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Sunny Scofield has the piece of Tricia Nixon's cake in a clear Plexiglas box along with apple blossoms made of spun sugar and her press pass.
Sunny Scofield covered Tricia Nixon's wedding while she was working for Channel 23. She still has a piece of cake and her press pass from the event.
In Sunny Scofield’s case, it’s more the first than the last, but as Sunnys often do, Sunny has grown into her name.
“My original name was Sunshine,” Sunny said. “When I came to California, friends shortened it to Sunny.”
I met Sunny last week at the Rosewood Retirement Community. Her name was familiar — maybe Sunnys always are — and it turns out that Sunny was president of the League of Women Voters during the ’60s and knew my mother. Back then, the League of Women Voters was thought of as either something faintly sinister or “the women have to be involved in something so why not this.”
Sunny had a local TV show called “Sunny Today” that ran half an hour a day, five days a week between 1968 and 1975.
She was Oprah before Oprah was Oprah.
Our meeting at Rosewood, which took place in the wood-paneled and very Ivy Leaguish-looking library, had nothing to do with league business nor with the origin of Sunny’s name. Rumor had it that Sunny still had a piece of wedding cake from Tricia Nixon’s wedding 37 years ago.
The reason that Tricia Nixon’s wedding was news at all was because of the hoopla surrounding the nuptials of Jenna Bush, daughter of the president and first lady. Sunny’s piece of cake, if it existed, would make a tasty little sidebar.
I suppose if you were searching for a 37-year-old wedding cake that might be perfectly preserved, Rosewood might be the first place to look. I mean that affectionately. Sunny had the piece of cake in a clear Plexiglas box along with apple blossoms made of spun sugar and her press pass, which allowed her to cover the wedding.
“The press was not allowed inside the White House for the wedding,” she said. “A nice senator walked outside to the tent where we were standing and asked if I wanted a piece.”
Sunny had traveled to Washington on her own. Channel 23 had refused to pay for her plane ticket, her accommodations, even her cab fare, but she had had tea in the White House with the first lady six weeks before the wedding along with other members of the American Women in TV and Radio. She’d befriended Helen Smith, Pat Nixon’s press secretary, who had given her a press pass.
“I thought it would make a good show,” she said. “I took my camera and filmed the Rose Garden after all the guests had left. Barbara Walters was there taking pictures.”
Sunny had one glimpse of the bride.
“She was beautiful,” she said. “I’ll never forget how pretty her hair looked.”
The idea behind “Sunny Today” was almost revolutionary. She felt that viewers wanted more than just game shows or soaps.
“My idea was to educate and entertain,” she said.
Subject matter included the effects of divorce on the family, the Basque culture, finances for women and mental health.
“Originally, I suggested that we add a call-in feature to the show,” she said. “They told me it would never work.”
Call in. What was she thinking? That would certainly never fly on TV or radio.
Two years ago, she moved to Rosewood. Sunny threw away all the tapes from the show and most of the photographs. One thing she did not toss was the box with the slice of wedding cake, the apple blossoms spun from sugar and press pass No. 941 for the Nixon-Cox ceremony.