Ray Price (speechwriter)

{{Short description|American speechwriter (1930–2019)}}

{{more citations needed|date=February 2019}}

{{Infobox officeholder

|name = Ray Price

|office = White House Director of Speechwriting

|president = Richard Nixon

|term_start = December 31, 1970

|term_end = February 6, 1973

|predecessor = Jim Keogh

|successor = David Gergen

|birth_name = Raymond Kissam Price Jr.

|birth_date = {{birth date|1930|5|6}}

|birth_place = New York City, U.S.

|death_date = {{death date and age|2019|2|13|1930|5|6}}

|death_place = New York City, U.S.

|party = Republican

|education = Yale University (BA)

}}

Raymond Kissam Price Jr. (May 6, 1930 – February 13, 2019) was an American writer who was the chief speechwriter for U.S. President Richard Nixon, working on both inaugural addresses, his resignation speech, and Gerald Ford's pardon speech.{{cite news |last=Martin |first=Douglas |date=February 14, 2019 |title=Raymond K. Price Jr., a Key Nixon Speechwriter, Is Dead at 88 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/obituaries/raymond-k-price-jr-dead.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=February 14, 2019 }} During Nixon's presidential campaign of 1968, the candidate made use of the contrasting style of two speechwriters (the other being Pat Buchanan) with Price becoming known to colleagues as Mr Outside because his work was aimed at broadening Nixon's appeal.{{cite news|last=Schell|first=Jonathan|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/06/02/the-time-of-illusion|title=The Time of Illusion|work=The New Yorker|date=June 2, 1975|access-date=April 27, 2020}}

A native of New York City, Price graduated from Yale University in 1951. There, he was a member of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union and also belonged to Skull and Bones.{{cite book | first=Alexandra | last=Robbins | author-link=Alexandra Robbins | title=Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power | publisher=Little, Brown and Company | location=Boston | year=2002 | isbn=0-316-72091-7 | url=https://archive.org/details/secretsoftombsku00robb }}{{rp|173}}

Price wrote a retrospective on the presidency titled With NixonNew York : Viking Press, 1977. {{ISBN|0-670-77672-6}} and assisted Nixon in the writing of several books. John Dean mentioned Price as one person suspected (falsely) of having been Deep Throat. For 19 years, Price was a member of the Economic Club of New York.{{cite news |first=Gary |last=Shapiro |author-link=Gary Shapiro (journalist) | title=A Century Of Serious Conversation | url=http://www.nysun.com/new-york/century-of-serious-conversation/56102/ |work=The New York Sun | date=2007-06-07 | access-date=2008-11-23 }}