In Congress, Gerald R. Ford Jr. took on more and more responsibility and continued to earn the respect of his peers. He had a small staff at the office, but there were certain things that a congressman’s wife was expected to do. Whenever constituents visited the nation’s capital, they’d inevitably want to stop in and say hello to their congressman, and because Jerry represented such a small district, he’d met many of the voters over the years, and they felt like he was a friend. They’d expect Jerry to get them tickets to tour the White House—which back then he could easily do—and then Jerry would give Betty a call to ask if she’d take them around town.
“I don’t know how many times I went to Mount Vernon,” Betty said. “After a while, I just drove the people out there and sat in the parking lot reading a book while they trudged through George Washington’s front parlor and back bedrooms.”
Many of the wives did the same things to support their husbands in Congress, and it had become a common practice for members to add their wives and other relatives to their payroll. At one point, Betty was doing so much on his behalf that Jerry considered adding her to his paid staff. His trusted administrative assistant, John Milanowski, advised against it.
“I know it’s legal,” John said, “and I know that other members are doing it.” But not only would it be misunderstood in his conservative district, Milanowski added, “It’s contrary to your whole philosophy of public service.” Jerry agreed, and Betty never received a nickel for the countless hours she acted as chauffeur and gracious tour guide.
As Jerry’s prominence increased, Betty took on greater responsibilities—not because her husband requested it, but because she realized there was a choice to be made.
“I saw that I would have to grow with Jerry or be left behind,” she said. “And I had no intention of being left behind.”
She became the program chairman for the Congressional Club, which entailed putting on cultural programs without any budget. Her experience organizing dance recitals on a shoestring all those years ago became very useful, but Betty also learned she could raise funds by “begging and borrowing from museums and friends.”
When she realized that the Democratic wives were more effective in raising money, Betty took it upon herself to “shake up the Republican wives.”
“If anybody asks you to do anything,” she’d tell them, “say yes. Get off your duffs.” She coerced a lot of her Republican counterparts into modeling in fashion shows that raised money for various charities. She’d show them how to walk up and down the runway with their backs straight, one hand on a hip, and they got so they enjoyed it.
Betty’s great sense of style and fashion was talked about around town, and at one point, a reporter from Ladies’ Home Journal pitched the idea for a story on the secrets of this fashionable congressman’s wife. Photos were taken of Betty and three-year-old Susan to appear in the magazine a few months later.
Meanwhile, Americans had just elected a new president. It was a stark change, going from the seventy-year-old Dwight D. Eisenhower and his matronly wife, to John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, who brought youth and glamour to the nation’s capital. When JFK and Jackie moved into the White House in 1961, the country was fascinated by them, and the press couldn’t get enough.
The cover article for the April 1961 edition of Ladies’ Home Journal was “Jacqueline Kennedy: From Wedding to White House, a Look Inside Her Private Picture Albums.” The magazine printed a captivating head shot of the new first lady on the cover with a banner proclaiming: “This Is the President’s Favorite Photograph of His Wife.”
The edition flew off the shelves. As it happened, inside was a two-page spread about the little-known wife of the representative from Michigan’s Fifth District. The headline read: “How Does She Dress So Well and Not Spend a Fortune?”
Presented as “the busy wife of a congressman and four young children who stair-step from three and a half to eleven years old,” the article detailed Betty’s “expert wardrobe management” secrets on a budget amid an array of stunning photos that proved the point. There was Betty modeling “an irresistible pink suit” purchased for $49.95 to wear to her frequent meetings and luncheons; and another photo of her looking glamorous in a white chiffon evening dress—“just $40.00 on sale”—accessorized with matching turquoise stole and shoes. There was a full-length photo of Betty and her adorable towheaded daughter, Susan, in matching lavender dresses. Betty’s secrets included buying a few new pieces each season in classic neutrals and changing the look with colorful shoes, stoles, and jewelry. She confided that she buys expensive long evening dresses only when they’re on sale. For daytime, her usual attire was a good suit or a casual dress and sweater. “Slacks are fine to wear around the house,” she was quoted as saying, “but for all outside activities, taking the children to the dentist, and so on, I wear a dress.”
It was Betty’s first appearance in a national women’s magazine. She thought it was fun—a one-off experience—never imagining that thirteen years later, every national publication in America would be clamoring to have her on its cover.
During the Eisenhower administration, Jerry and Betty received few invitations to the White House because, as Betty recalled, “the party in power doesn’t do as much entertaining of its own people as they do of the opposite party; it’s the opposition you have to convince on legislation.” But with the election of JFK, a Democrat, the tables turned.
When Jerry first arrived in Washington in 1949, he was assigned an office in the Old House Office Building, on the southwest side of the Capitol. His office happened to be across the hall from John F. Kennedy’s. At that time, Kennedy was a junior congressman from Massachusetts, and they often walked together to sessions. Even though they represented different parties, the two found common ground. They had a great deal of respect for each other and became friends.
“The Kennedy White House was much more sophisticated than the Eisenhower White House had been,” Betty wrote. With Jacqueline Kennedy as first lady, the parties were more lavish, more lively, and invitations to state dinners were coveted. In July 1961 President and Mrs. Kennedy hosted Pakistan’s president, Ayub Khan, in what would be one of the most memorable state dinners of all time, and Jerry and Betty were lucky enough to be among the mere 137 guests.
The dinner was held at Mount Vernon, something Betty noted was an achievement in and of itself. “I don’t know how Mrs. Kennedy ever got the ladies of the Mount Vernon Association to let her give a dinner there,” she wrote. “They’re a very elite, very closed society; in order to belong, your heritage probably has to go back to George Washington, or one of those soldiers who was in that boat with him when he crossed the Delaware.” Indeed, it was the first time the mansion had been used for a social function since the 1920s.
The elaborate event began with the guests being transported up the Potomac split among four different US Navy yachts used by the White House: the Honey Fitz, Sequoia, Patrick J., and the Guardian. Live music played aboard each yacht—an accordionist on one, a Marine Corps trio on another—as waiters served drinks and hors d’oeuvres during the hour-long cruise to George Washington’s historic home. When the flotilla arrived at Mount Vernon, dozens of limousines were waiting at the boat landing to take the guests up the hill to the mansion.
For all the times Betty had visited Mount Vernon, this occasion was unlike any other. Mrs. Kennedy had gone to great lengths to create the colonial atmosphere of the eighteenth century, with soldiers in Revolutionary War battle dress firing musket salutes, a fife and drum corps, and waiters in period tailcoats and white gloves serving mint juleps.
“It took you back in time,” Betty recalled. “You could just imagine what it would have been like on a southern plantation long ago.”
The plated three-course dinner was served outdoors under a large green tent on the lawn, with the guests seated at round tables. Twinkling white lights adorned the trees, and once the sun set, the atmosphere was magical. After dessert, everyone moved across the lawn to a natural amphitheater to listen to a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra.
Betty shined at these types of social events, mingling confidently among old friends and introducing herself to those she hadn’t met before. At one point during the evening, she and Jerry were talking with their longtime friends Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, who were now vice president and second lady. They were having such a good time that the Johnsons invited Jerry and Betty to ride with them on their boat for the return trip. Naturally, the Fords accepted.
But just as the guests were getting ready to leave, Jerry and Betty received a message that President and Mrs. Kennedy wanted them to go back on their boat.
“Of course, they outranked the Johnsons, so it was the Honey Fitz for us,” Betty recalled. “I have no idea why we were so sought after, but I had a ball and danced all the way home.”
Glamorous Washington soirees like the night at Mount Vernon were in stark contrast to Betty’s daytime activities shuttling between Congressional Club meetings, Parent-Teacher Association meetings, car pools, and Cub Scouts.
“Being a housewife seems to me a much tougher job than going to the office and getting paid for it,” Betty was known to say.
Muriel Humphrey, wife of then senator and future vice president Hubert Humphrey, recalled that Betty was willing to take on any job. There seemed to be a luncheon, a fashion show, an organizational meeting, or any number of obligations almost every day.
“All of us were always rushing away from meetings to pick up children at school and get home in time to start dinner,” Mrs. Humphrey recalled.
For Susan, the memories of her mother not being around began early. “I remember her clothes, the blue linen suits and the yellow linen suits, and her trying to get dressed in the morning, with Steve and me screaming at her ankles.” Betty’s obligatory outings were so frequent that the two youngest children would sometimes pretend they were sick, hoping their mother would stay home instead. It was especially difficult for the two youngsters because their father was gone so much too.
Even as a junior member of the House, Jerry was constantly on the road. No matter where he was, though, he made it a rule to fly back and spend Sunday with the family. Growing up, Susan recalled that church on Sunday was expected. “You got up, you got dressed, and we went to church on Sunday.” Afterward, they’d come home, and Betty would cook up a big brunch of bacon and pancakes, or waffles with strawberries and sour cream. The Sunday evening meal was a big deal too.
“Dad was always home for Sunday-night dinner,” Susan said. “It was taken very seriously.” During the week, it wasn’t unusual for the kids to invite one or two friends over for dinner—and Betty always cooked extra just in case—but Sundays were strictly family time.
Betty usually made a roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, served as the family sat around the table sharing the news of the week with one another. “I know that the children looked forward to those Sunday meals as much as I did,” Jerry remembered.
If Sundays at 514 Crown View Drive were like a Norman Rockwell painting, the days in between were much more unpredictable. “Our house was chaos,” Susan recalled. “It was total chaos.”
Somebody was always getting into trouble or doing something he or she shouldn’t, and when Susan was little, if the boys found out she’d tattled on them, they’d put her through the “truth test.” They’d grab her and hold her at the top of the laundry chute, her feet dangling as she kicked and screamed, threatening to let go if she didn’t confess.
When Betty first became a mother at age thirty, she worried about every little scratch on the furniture, but by the time there were four children in the household, “you can forget about order,” she wrote. “You just have to hope you don’t crack your ankles stumbling over three bags of marbles and a Tinkertoy.”
Like every mother, she had to be resourceful. One Christmas, they had been visiting relatives in Michigan, and Jack had received a terrific Roman gladiator’s outfit. They were having so much fun at Grandma and Grandpa Ford’s house that they were late leaving for the airport to catch the flight back to Washington. Jerry was racing to get there on time, and on the windy Michigan roads, Mike was getting carsick. They didn’t have time to stop, so Betty had to make a quick decision.
“Jack, give Mike your gladiator helmet!”
“He filled it up,” Jack recalled, “and I could never wear that helmet again.”
There was a joke in the Alexandria emergency room that if Mrs. Ford wasn’t there with one of the boys at least once a week, there was something wrong at the Ford household. Whether it was stitches or cuts or a broken bone, “Mom was able to deal with the blood,” Steve recalled. “She was not squeamish. Probably because she grew up with two older brothers.”
All three boys played football, baseball, and basketball, wrestled, and did crew. And back before you could buy a skateboard, the boys made their own. “They’d take my roller skates,” Susan remembered, “and strap them to a board. That was their skateboard.”
Betty took on the role of Cub Scout den mother, guiding a pack of ten little boys working on their merit badges. “I put in three years’ hard time,” she quipped. They’d meet once a week at the Ford house, tiling ashtrays, making leather belts, and concocting crafts from milk cartons and a messy mixture of flour and water. When the weather was good, Betty would herd them outside and try to teach them how to do cartwheels.
“I got a modicum of respect for this minor talent,” she recalled.
And while the three boys were, well, doing boy things, Betty could hardly wait until Susan was old enough for dance lessons. Modern dance lessons, of course. For most little girls, their first introduction to dance was ballet, but Betty was firmly against it for her daughter.
“Their bodies aren’t made to do that at that age,” she’d explain. She had nothing against ballet, it was just that she firmly believed children needed free form.
“Be a giraffe or be an elephant,” she’d encourage Susan as they danced together around the living room. There was no “point your toe” and “straighten your knee.”
Susan loved to dance, and happily took lessons year after year. She idolized her mother, and knowing that her mother had been a dancer in New York City, Susan wanted to be just like her.
The year Susan turned five, and the boys were twelve, ten, and six, the Fords had a twenty-by-forty-foot swimming pool built in the backyard. It was sixteen feet deep at one end—deep enough so the kids could jump and dive off the diving board without fear of hitting bottom—and long enough for Jerry to swim laps. Betty had handpicked some Japanese-style fish-shaped tiles in two shades of blue that wrapped around the top of the water line, which made the water sparkle an inviting turquoise color, and they’d added a cement patio between the pool and the house, just big enough for an outdoor dining table and a couple of lounge chairs. The pool was heated, so Jerry could use it practically year-round, and from May to October, it was the gathering point for the neighborhood.
“When you have a pool in your backyard, all the kids end up in your backyard,” Susan noted. Betty loved having all the children around, but she also didn’t want to be roped into sitting out there all summer long as a lifeguard. If a child was going to swim in their pool, Jerry and Betty required the child’s parents to sign a release that stated: “We are not lifeguards. If your son or daughter is coming to swim, they need to be able to swim, and you will not hold us liable if anything happens to your child.”
Of course, there were incidents. There was the time Jerry and Betty had gone to the Greenbrier—a favorite resort for members of Congress, just four hours from Washington in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia—for a weekend getaway and came home to find Susan’s face bandaged from chin to ears. She’d slipped into the pool—most likely while being chased—and her chin had caught the edge as she slipped underwater. Another time, a neighbor girl, who was babysitting the Ford kids, tried to jump from one corner to the other, fell and scraped her shins, and wound up in the emergency room.
Despite the minor injuries over the years, the pool provided endless hours of fun for the family, and created a beautiful backyard setting in which Betty and Jerry could entertain their friends.
Every so often, however, they’d find things in the pool that weren’t supposed to be there.
“One of my strongest memories,” Steve Ford recalled with a laugh, “is of Mother dealing with all the childhood pets we brought home.” There were fish tanks and aquariums for snakes, chameleons, and turtles.
“We had rabbits, hamsters, gerbils—you name it, we had it,” Susan added. And one day Steve convinced his mother to let him get an alligator.
“At the time, I guess it was legal,” he said. “You could go down to the pet store and get a small alligator.” It started out being just a few inches in length, like a gecko, but it grew and grew until it got to be a couple of feet long. The boys would catch live crickets, and an occasional mouse for it to eat, but mostly they’d feed it store-bought ground beef. As the gator got bigger, it required a lot of ground beef. On top of that, “It would bite you every time you got near it,” Steve recalled.
Finally, the pet alligator grew so large, Betty insisted it had to be kept outside, so the boys built a box for it in the backyard. One day it got out and decided to take a swim.
“I’ll never forget; Mom and Dad were just beside themselves,” Steve remembered. “The alligator had gotten loose and was swimming in the pool.” It was his pet and his responsibility to get it out. So he piled on layers of clothes in case it bit him, jumped in the pool, and roped him out. It was just a question of time. Something had to be done about the alligator.
As the nights started getting colder, Steve would bring the alligator into a pen in the basement each night. “But Mother ended up doing it most of the time,” Susan recalled, “like most mothers do.” And one night, Betty decided to let nature take its course.
The next morning, Steve realized he’d forgotten to bring his reptile inside the night before, and when he went to check on it, the alligator was stiff as could be. There had been a frost overnight, and the poor creature had succumbed to the cold. Betty wrote, “Clara helped dig the grave in the backyard, and the horrid pet was buried with all due ceremony, a cross planted over its head.” There would be many more pets in the Ford household, but never another alligator.
When Jerry was traveling, he made it a point to call home every night after dinner. Betty would line up the four children, and each one would spend about five minutes talking to Dad, telling him about his or her day.
“He called to say that he was sorry he was gone; he missed us,” Mike Ford recalled. “Checking how the football was going or the schoolwork. And then he’d say, ‘Take care of Mom. Do what Mom says. Be good for Mom.’ He counted on us to be as helpful as we could.” Once the kids were all in bed, Jerry would call again and talk to Betty. That time was just for the two of them. By then, Betty would have poured herself a nightcap—her way to unwind after catering to everyone else’s needs all day long.
When he returned home on the weekends, Jerry would inevitably need to go to his office at the US Capitol to catch up on mail and other issues that had accumulated in his absence. To give Betty a break from being with the kids all week, he’d bring them up to the Capitol with him.
“The first thing he would make us do was sit down and type a note to our mother,” the Ford children recalled. One by one, they’d sit on Dad’s leather chair behind the desk, sitting up on their knees when they were too small to reach, and slip a blank sheet of paper behind the roller of the black Royal typewriter. They’d hunt and peck for the letters and tap away a short note that told their mother how much they appreciated her, and often, at their father’s suggestion, adding a line about how hard Dad was working.
“Dear Mom, you’re the greatest Mom. We love you, stuff like that,” Steve remembered.
Jerry would proofread the letters, offering suggestions, and then they’d sign them, fold them up, and put them in an envelope to take home to Mother. Once that task was finished, Jerry would say, “Okay. You’re free to go. Be back by three o’clock.”
For the next couple of hours, the hallowed halls of the US Capitol became their playground. They’d play hide-and-seek in Statuary Hall, sneaking behind the towering figures of Daniel Webster, Ethan Allen, and Jefferson Davis. They’d run up and down the endless marble staircases and find their way to the underground subways with the wicker carts that led to the office buildings. “We’d ride them back and forth,” Susan recalled with a smile, her eyes twinkling with the memory. “But we’d always get lost, and we’d have to ask a Capitol policeman. ‘I’m Jerry Ford’s daughter, and I can’t find my way back to his office, and I don’t know what dome I’m under.’ ” The Capitol policemen were always kind and helpful, happy to guide them back to Congressman Ford’s office.
Jerry’s staff would always know when the kids had been there.
“They would take all the things off the top of our desks and hide them, or exchange names,” Jerry’s longtime assistant Anne Holkeboer recalled. “We had name plates on each desk, so my name might be in somebody else’s desk, and all the little items that you just kind of keep on your desk—they were gone.” Eventually the staff learned to clear their desks on Friday afternoons, just in case.
Later, when Jerry and the children returned home and presented Betty with the letters, she’d open them one by one, always as if it were the first time and she was getting some great surprise. She’d read the letters aloud with a big smile on her face.
“How grown up you are to have typed such a letter,” she’d say. “I’ll treasure this beautiful note from you.”
And she did. Betty tucked them away in a drawer and kept every single one. Of course, she knew Jerry had put them up to it, and after reading the letters, she’d always give him that look—that special look they had between each other when no words were necessary. Even though the letters were from the kids, it was Jerry’s way of telling her how much he appreciated and loved her. He knew she carried the load of raising the children—managing the day-to-day activities, being the disciplinarian—and he knew it wasn’t easy.
“She ran our house because Dad was gone so much,” Susan said. “She was strict about things like homework and bedtime and respect. Respect your elders.” If someone got out of line, she’d send them to their room or take away television privileges. Betty wasn’t any easier on Susan just because she was the only girl and the youngest. If Susan started a fight with the boys, and it turned into a wrestling match on the floor—which happened a lot—Susan would cry out, “Mom! Mom! Mom!”
Betty wouldn’t fall for it. “Don’t expect me to bail you out of this,” she’d say to Susan. “You picked your fight, now fight your fight.”
“They were not rescuers,” Susan said of her parents’ disciplinary style. They were intent on making sure their children understood there were consequences for what they did—whether it was lying or stealing or not being on time. “With three boys and a girl, and with Dad gone so much of the time, Mom had no choice but to be strict,” Susan said. “It was the only way she could survive.”
There was no “Wait until your father gets home” for a decision about discipline. “When they misbehaved, I made the decision right then and there,” Betty recalled.
When Jerry wasn’t traveling, he tried to spend as much time as possible with the kids. Once they started playing Little League baseball and youth football, Betty would drive the boys out to the field, but Jerry would show up as soon as he could get away from work. At home, everyone in the family, including Betty, fought to have time alone with him.
“Dad would always come home and take a swim,” Susan remembered. “That was his way of unwinding.” He’d swim for fifteen or twenty minutes, go upstairs and change clothes, and when he came downstairs, Betty would have a martini waiting for him.
“They would go sit in the den, or sometimes it was out on the patio if it was a nice evening, and we pretty much knew we were not to be there. That was their time.”
Nothing had to be said: there’d be a look, and the kids knew that meant they needed to be upstairs doing homework or feeding the dogs, taking care of other things. It was a special time for Betty and Jerry to relax together before dinner.
Most of the time, though, Jerry wasn’t there.
“It put a strain on the marriage,” Jerry admitted. Even though he called every night, he was all over the country, sometimes overseas, and “with four active children,” he acknowledged, “Betty had a tough obligation. She had to be not only the mother but the father.”
At times, it was overwhelming. As the children grew, and as Jerry became more powerful in Congress, Betty began to feel like the more important her husband became, the less important she was. As he was getting all the headlines and applause, she would think: But what about me? Who do they think is making it possible for him to travel all over the United States giving speeches? And yet, for a woman who appeared on the outside to have everything, she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t perfectly happy. Like so many women, not only at that time but still today, Betty tried to find ways to cope.
“I’d have my five o’clock drink at a neighbor’s house,” Betty wrote in her memoir. “Or even by myself, while talking on the phone with a neighbor. I’d have another while I was fixing dinner, and then, after the kids were in bed, I’d build myself a nightcap and unwind by watching television.”
Mike, the oldest of the Ford children, didn’t think anything of it at the time. “Dad and Mom would always have an evening drink together. And they would go to cocktail parties a lot,” he recalled.
Jerry could have a drink or two and have no problem. Meanwhile, Betty’s addiction to alcohol was in its sly infancy, its insidious effects already taking hold. Through it all, there was one member of the household who saw what was happening. She was the keeper of all their secrets and was the glue that held them all together: Clara Powell.