The morning after the announcement, Crown View Drive was invaded by the press. “You couldn’t move without bumping into a reporter,” Betty recalled. “You couldn’t go out your front door.”
And then there was the Secret Service. Even though Jerry still had to be confirmed by both houses of Congress before he would become vice president, because of the unusual circumstances, the Secret Service had decided he needed immediate protection. Everyone else in the family, Betty included, could come and go freely, but the vice president designate required around-the-clock protection. They set up a command post in the garage and used the driveway for the vice presidential limousine and the Secret Service follow-up car. Which meant the Fords had to park their own cars on the street.
On December 6, it became official. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of confirming Gerald R. Ford as vice president. Knowing it was probable and imminent, Mike and Jack had come home—Jack had shaved his beard because he wanted to look respectable for his father, and Mike had brought a Jerusalem Bible—an English translation of the Scriptures from the original Hebrew and Greek texts—that he had purchased especially for the occasion.
Faith ran deep in the family, and for this auspicious event, it was important to Jerry and Betty to have the Bible open to a place that held meaning for them when Jerry took the oath.
They agreed on Psalm 20, which began, “May [God] answer you in time of trouble . . .”
It was a historic moment in the House chamber of the US Capitol, being broadcast on live television in America and around the world, and Betty was, literally, center stage. Wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck dress in bright orange wool crepe that popped amid the sea of men in dark suits, Betty stood behind the podium, holding the heavy Bible open to the designated page, with Chief Justice Warren Burger on her right, Jerry on her left, and the president off to her husband’s side.
Betty held the Bible steady, beaming with pride, as Jerry placed his left hand on the open page and repeated the words prompted by Justice Burger. Up in the gallery, Mike, Jack, Steve, and Susan, sitting next to First Lady Pat Nixon, watched their father make history. When Jerry tripped up a bit on the last phrase, he corrected himself quickly and then laughed at his mistake. Betty looked into his eyes and laughed right along with him.
The crowd erupted into a standing ovation, and Jerry turned immediately to President Nixon and shook his hand. Then he walked over to Betty, put his right arm around her, and planted a kiss right on her lips. It was a tender moment—and unusual for such a public display of affection—but for everyone who witnessed it, there was no doubt about the love and admiration Jerry and Betty Ford had for each other.
Even though the new vice president had been minority leader for almost eight years, as the congressman from a small district in Michigan, he was still relatively unknown to most of America, and he realized his acceptance speech was his formal introduction.
He thanked President Nixon, his fellow members of Congress, and promised not to forget the people of Michigan.
“I’m a Ford—not a Lincoln,” he quipped. The audience roared with laughter at the double entendre comparing two American automobiles—the Ford, identified with the common man, and the Lincoln, a car associated with the wealthy. Then he exuded humility, admitting his speeches could not match the eloquence of President Abraham Lincoln’s. When the applause died down, he paused and turned to Betty, now seated on the platform off to his right.
Tears glistened in his eyes as the words formed in his mouth. “For standing by my side, as she always has,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion, “there are no words to tell you, my dear wife and mother of our four wonderful children, how much their being here means to me.”
As the audience erupted with applause, Betty smiled with appreciation. Up in the galley, the three sons looked at one another, wondering whether they should clap at the mention of themselves, while Susan wiped away a tear. But evident on the faces of all four was the sheer pride in the father they loved and adored. As Americans watched from their living rooms, they saw the Fords as the perfect all-American family: the handsome, athletic father who worked hard to support his family; the beautiful housewife and mother; the four attractive, wholesome children. The kind of family everyone wished they had. Perfect from the outside looking in.
The first big change was that the Secret Service moved into 514 Crown View Drive. Literally moved in, remodeled, changed the locks, and kept the keys. The agents needed a command post that would be manned twenty-four hours a day, and the only plausible solution was to convert the garage.
The Secret Service had given its requirements to the General Services Administration, which then had to request money from Congress. Special Agent Jerry Bechtle received confirmation of how much the garage conversion was going to cost, just as Vice President and Mrs. Ford were headed to a congressional reception. The director of the Secret Service had called Bechtle and told him, “You better tell the vice president the amount so he doesn’t get blindsided at the reception by Congressman Mahon.”
George H. Mahon, a Texas Democrat who’d been a representative since 1935, headed the Appropriations Committee that would have to approve the changes. In the limo ride to the reception, Bechtle, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned around and said, “Mr. Vice President, the cost estimate has come through for the conversion of your garage, and since you’re liable to get asked about it by Congressman Mahon, I thought I’d better let you know what we’re doing and how much it will be.”
“All right,” Vice President Ford said, “how much?”
“With all the communications we have to install and the construction on the house, it’s going to be fifty thousand dollars.”
Jerry and Betty looked at each other, their eyes wide in disbelief. Then they both burst out laughing.
“My God,” Vice President Ford said, “the house cost only thirty-five thousand.”
The driveway was already suffering from the weight of the armored vice presidential limousine, so the decision was made to dig out the driveway and replace the two garage doors with a solid brick wall and a bay window above. Inside, they would install a bathroom, a kitchenette, and a small sitting room, along with a complex electronic security and communication system. Holes were drilled for metal detectors and alarms; the windows would be fitted with bulletproof glass. Two structures that looked like telephone booths were set up in the corners of the backyard: sentry boxes for the Secret Service agents to stand post in inclement weather. Meanwhile, all the stuff that had previously filled the garage—bicycles, ladders, skis, rakes, a lawnmower—was crammed alongside the swimming pool until a shed could be built.
The Fords were so concerned about the disruption to the neighborhood, they wrote a letter apologizing for the inconvenience and placed it in each neighbor’s mailbox.
As wife of the minority leader, Betty had been able to handle the social side of her life without any help, but being the wife of the vice president was a whole new level. While it had been common for Jerry and Betty to receive forty or fifty invitations each week, now they were inundated with as many as five hundred invites on a weekly basis. Jerry had his own staff, but Betty realized there were now more projects and obligations than she could handle herself, and she needed help.
The previous summer, Susan had worked at the White House selling White House guidebooks for the White House Historical Association with a couple of her friends from Holton-Arms—Barbara Manfuso and Lise Courtney Howe. (“We jokingly referred to it as the White House Hysterical Association,” Susan recalled. “I was working there to make money to pay for my car insurance.”) Betty had become acquaintances with Lise Courtney’s mother, Nancy, who supervised the teenage salesgirls. As soon as Jerry’s nomination was announced, Nancy had called and offered her assistance if Betty needed it. Betty immediately took her up on the offer.
It started out as a few hours here and there, but once Jerry was confirmed as vice president, Betty hired Nancy to be her full-time personal assistant.
Meanwhile, in the time between Jerry’s nomination and confirmation as vice president, the Watergate investigation was closing in on the White House. With increased calls for Nixon’s impeachment, there was plenty of speculation swirling around the very real possibility that Gerald R. Ford could assume the presidency. The public wanted to know “Who are the Fords?”
The media became insatiable, and while Jerry had twenty-five years of experience dealing with the press, for Betty and the rest of the family, it was a brand-new experience.
“For all of us, it was fun for about ten and a half seconds,” Susan said. “And then it wasn’t.”
Television talk-show host Dick Cavett brought in a crew with lights and cameras to film an entire hour with Vice President Ford, Betty, Steve, and Susan. It was presented that it would be nonpolitical, just a sort of “getting to know you” piece, complete with a tour inside their home. First, the television crew moved most of the furniture out of the living room onto the patio directly beneath a tree brimming with birds—prompting Betty to make a desperate plea to Nancy Howe: “Get down there as fast as you can and tell them to get that stuff covered so the birds don’t decorate it!” But once on camera, Cavett went straight to politics, asking Jerry whether he would make a deal with Richard Nixon if the president were convicted of criminal charges.
“I have no doubt whatsoever that the president is not guilty of any criminal charges that might be forthcoming. I’m absolutely positive,” Jerry said. But Cavett persisted. And while the vice president remained calm, his growing frustration was evident.
“Really, Dick, I don’t think I ought to comment . . . as a matter of fact, I think the president is being unfairly accused, based on any evidence I’ve seen, for being involved in the execution or the cover-up of Watergate.”
Cavett tried a different technique with Betty: “Is the thought of living conceivably in the White House appalling or overpowering?”
“I would say it is inconceivable,” Betty answered. In an effort to cut off the questioning, Jerry added, somewhat tersely, “We’re very happy here, and I think it’s unwise to speculate on that, Dick. None of us have ever talked about it or thought about it.”
From there, Cavett turned to Steve and Susan and asked a series of incredibly awkward questions.
“Do you know about the birds and the bees?” he asked. “Can you imagine anything more embarrassing than having your parents say, ‘I’m going to have a serious talk with you’?”
Steve was clearly mortified, while Susan laughed nervously. Yes, the only thing more embarrassing than that would be to be asked the question on a television program that’s being broadcast into every living room in America!
It was enough to make anyone cringe. Fortunately, Jerry jumped in and answered for them, stumbling over his words to explain that “somehow boys learn about it, and maybe girls are treated differently.”
Without hesitation, Betty added, “If boys learn about it, girls learn about it too.”
The conversation turned to skiing. Cavett asked Steve, “Would you guess that I’m a skier, to look at me?”
Steve looked at Cavett with incredulity. Another dumb question.
“Uh, well, anybody can ski,” he answered.
“What about the drug scene around school?” Cavett asked Susan and Steve. “Do you see much pot or other hard drugs around school?”
The whole experience was incredibly uncomfortable, and, Betty recalled, “I was never so glad to see a bunch of people get out in my life.”
Betty had little experience dealing with the press, and she would learn by trial and error. It was always a surprise to see how an interview would end up appearing in print or edited for television.
Dorothy Marks of Women’s News Service described Betty as “a thoughtful, pretty woman with the erect carriage, slim figure, and really good legs of the model and professional dancer she once was.” Marks asked her, “How do you see yourself as second lady?”
“I like to think of myself as a feminist,” Betty said, “although I haven’t joined any women’s lib organizations. I guess you would say I have tried to put family first, knowing Jerry has had to put politics first. I have tried to support him by taking active roles in the Republican Women’s Club, the Eighty-First Congress Club, the Congressional Club, and I’m ready to continue that support in this new job.”
Betty agreed to an interview with Barbara Walters of the Today show. Her only stipulation was that she didn’t want to talk about anything political; that was her husband’s realm. After the normal pleasantries, Barbara looked down at her notepad and gave Betty a zinger.
“How do you feel about the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion?”
That January, in the landmark Roe v. Wade case, the Supreme Court had affirmed the legality of a woman’s right to an abortion. It was extremely controversial, and now Betty was being asked to weigh in on it. So much for Walters’s agreement not to ask anything political. Betty could have declined to answer, but she chose to answer honestly. That’s just the way she was.
“I agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Betty said. “I think it’s time to bring abortion out of the backwoods and put it in the hospitals, where it belongs.”
In another interview, she reiterated her approval of a woman’s right to an abortion, adding that it was particularly appropriate for “some high school girls who are forced to marry, have their babies, and end up in marriages that are fiascos.”
Betty’s comments sparked an avalanche of mail, most of it negative. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I couldn’t lie. That’s the way I feel,” she said later. Her reputation for candor was established.
Time magazine assigned David Kennerly to cover Vice President Ford full-time, and one of his first assignments was to photograph the family at a park near their house in Alexandria one Saturday morning. Being single and twenty-six, Kennerly went out with a friend the Friday night before and, in his words, “basically got hammered.” He woke up with a massive hangover and couldn’t remember what time he was supposed to meet the Fords.
“I had their phone number,” David recalled, “so I just called the house.”
Betty answered, and David said, “Hey, Mrs. Ford, this is David Kennerly. What time am I supposed to be over there?”
She could tell from his incoherent speech that he was hungover, but all she said was, “Ten o’clock. We’ll see you then.”
When David arrived at the house, Betty greeted him at the door.
“Well, good morning, David,” she said with a smile. Before he could say anything, she handed him a cold beer and added, “Here, I think you’re going to need this.”
They both laughed, and in that moment, a very special relationship began.
After falling in love with Vail back in 1968, the Fords had purchased a third-floor, three-bedroom $50,000 condo at the Lodge at Vail the following year. Always budget conscious, Jerry and Betty saw it as a good investment in the growing mountain community. The entire family could stay there every Christmas, while it paid for itself as a rental property throughout the rest of the year.
The Secret Service sent out a call for any agents who knew how to ski and dispatched an advance team, renting a condo across the street from the Fords’ place. There was no room inside for a command post, so they parked a truck on the street below and set up a table outside the front door where the agents would stand post around the clock. Along with the Secret Service, the Fords would be trailed by a small contingent of press.
“In fact, I learned how to ski courtesy of Time magazine,” Kennerly recalled with a grin, “back when you could put that on an expense account.” Betty had given up skiing at this point, but Kennerly recalled that the rest of the family were all good skiers. Though they didn’t always ski together: the kids enjoyed the moguls and steeper terrain, while Jerry preferred the groomed intermediate runs.
“I’d go up on the chairlift or the gondola by myself, and no one knew who I was,” Steve remembered. “There were a lot of people talking about how the vice president’s up here . . . it was kind of amusing to hear what people have to say about your dad.”
While Jerry and the kids were skiing, Betty shopped for Christmas decorations and last-minute gifts. This was her favorite time of the year. She loved Christmas, especially in Vail, and she did everything she could to make lasting family memories.
The condo had a two-story vaulted family room with a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace and Betty insisted on a live Christmas tree that nearly touched the ceiling. She had saved every construction paper and egg carton ornament the kids had made since their kindergarten days, and those were mixed in with fragile glass balls and assorted ornaments they’d collected from foreign trips.
It was during this trip that David Kennerly began getting to know the family on a more personal basis. “They were so warm and friendly. Just a normal family,” he recalled.
Kennerly was only three years older than Mike Ford, so he connected with the kids, but he and Betty hit it off too. “It wasn’t like she was a motherly figure,” the photographer said, “because she had a very young spirit. We really connected with humor.”
Near the end of the trip, the Fords invited David to join them at a Chinese restaurant. They were all laughing and having a good time, when at the end of the meal, everyone got a fortune cookie. There were about fourteen people there, and they went around the table reading their fortunes aloud. When it came to Jerry’s turn, he cracked open his cookie, read it silently to himself, and then slammed it down on the table.
Kennerly remembered that “he looked kind of shaken.”
“So, what does it say?” Kennerly asked.
“Aw, nothing,” Ford said.
Kennerly pried it out from under his hand and read it aloud. “You will undergo a change of residence in the near future.”
Everybody had been laughing and carrying on, but suddenly the table went silent. Betty looked at Jerry, wide eyed.
“No, no, I hope not,” Jerry said dismissively.
He certainly didn’t believe a message in a fortune cookie had any bearing on his future, but there was no doubt both he and Betty were in sheer and utter denial. They seemed to think that if they didn’t let their minds wander down that path, it just wasn’t going to happen.
Susan Ford would remember that “It was our last private Christmas. The last one where we could just be ourselves.”
Meanwhile, back in Washington, picketers were marching in front of the White House. One person held a placard that said “Pick Out Your Curtains, Betty.”
In early March 1974, the Secret Service received some intelligence information that caused immediate concern. Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst had been kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, apartment by a left-wing revolutionary organization that called itself the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and the FBI had obtained intelligence that Susan Ford was on the group’s target list as well. Vice President Ford was notified, and he immediately called Betty to tell her there was a credible threat against Susan and that the Secret Service was assigning agents to her. It was a Friday afternoon, and Susan was being driven home from school. The agents would be there by the time Susan got home.
This was highly unusual because, at that time, the Secret Service was not required to protect the vice president’s family.
Betty was understandably frightened. The thought that something could happen to one of her children because of Jerry being the vice president had never occurred to her.
“I was so excited for the weekend,” Susan recalled. Her boyfriend Palmer Holt was coming up from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. “We had a hot weekend planned,” she said.
When Susan arrived home from school, Betty calmly explained what the agents had told her.
“But Mom, I’ve got plans this weekend! Palmer’s coming up. I don’t want Secret Service agents following us around! No way!”
“Just go talk to the agents in the command post, Susan. It’s for your own safety.”
“Daddy is ruining my life!” Susan cried. She pulled a cigarette out of her purse and proceeded to light it, even though she knew her mother disapproved of her new habit. She took a long drag and then grabbed a can of Coke out of the fridge before stomping down the two steps that led to the garage turned command post.
Bob Innamorati, the agent assigned to Susan, recalled opening the door and seeing this tall, blonde, jeans-clad teenager with a Coke in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“I honestly did not know what to expect,” he said. “But I quickly realized that she was very smart and mature beyond her years.”
After initial pleasantries, Agent Innamorati explained that yes, indeed, he and one other agent would be with Susan at all times, wherever she went.
“We’ve got tickets to see a concert in Georgetown tomorrow night,” she said.
“Unfortunately, everything you do this weekend must be spontaneous,” Innamorati said. “Nothing preplanned. You can’t go to the concert.”
For a sixteen-year-old, it was life shattering. “They were shutting down my social life,” Susan recalled. “And I was pissed.”
That spring, Mike came home with the wonderful news that he and his girlfriend, Gayle Brumbaugh, were engaged to be married. Betty wanted to give her daughter-in-law-to-be something that was precious to her and held meaning, so she presented her with a turquoise cross made by a Zuni Indian artist.
In a letter to Mary Lou Logan, a longtime friend from Grand Rapids, Betty wrote, “Mike is marrying a lovely girl from Maryland that he met in college. I could not have picked out a nicer young lady if I had done it myself.”
Mike and Gayle were thinking about August 10, 1974, as a wedding date, but something inside Betty told her that August would not be a good time. Even though she still wouldn’t allow herself to imagine any scenario that would put her and Jerry in the White House, she suggested to Mike and Gayle that they get married in July so they could enjoy the rest of the summer before they had to go back to school. They agreed and picked July 5.
It would be the same weekend as Susan’s seventeenth birthday—and Susan wasn’t happy about sharing it—but Betty followed her gut instinct. It was one of those times she would look back on and say, “Somebody up there has been looking out for me for years.”
On April 6, 1974, Betty Ford made her first solo trip outside Washington as second lady. The occasion was to launch a unique arts program that started in Michigan called the Artrain. Six railroad cars full of visual and performing arts exhibits were set to launch on a tour that would stop in twenty-four small towns in six southern states, beginning with Georgia.
Georgia’s governor, Jimmy Carter, and his wife, Rosalynn, had invited Mrs. Ford to stay the night at the governor’s mansion in Atlanta, where they would have a reception for her, and then a parade and dedication ceremony for the Artrain the following day.
Unbeknownst to Betty, her hostess was “really worried” about this visit. Rosalynn knew that her husband, a Democrat, was thinking of running for president in 1976, and his opponent might very well be Vice President Ford. “But, of course, I didn’t tell her that,” Rosalynn recalled years later. And her anxiety dissipated as soon as she met Betty.
“She was so warm and cordial,” Rosalynn remembered. “She just put me at ease from the beginning.”
The only staff Betty brought with her on this trip was her personal assistant, Nancy Howe. Having been around Betty for five months at this point, Nancy had seen how the pain medication Betty took caused some changes in her. For one thing, she moved very slowly, as if in a constant state of slow motion. Nancy knew the trip’s schedule was timed to the minute, and no doubt she worried that if Betty was late, it would reflect poorly on her boss.
Shortly after arriving at the governor’s mansion, once everyone was introduced and Mrs. Ford was settled in her room, Nancy pulled one of Mrs. Carter’s staff aside and told her quietly, “Just so you know, Mrs. Ford takes medicine for a pinched nerve, and it often has an effect on her. It takes her a long time to get ready. So, for the parade tomorrow, we need to tell her that everything begins an hour earlier than it actually does.”
That evening, at the appointed time for the reception, Governor and Mrs. Carter greeted guests as they arrived at the front door of the mansion. Everyone was eager to get a glimpse of, and hopefully the chance to speak to, the wife of the new vice president. This was, in a way, Betty Ford’s debutante ball. And she was late.
The marble-floored Circular Hall was filled to capacity, and people were buzzing, wondering when the guest of honor would make an appearance. Thirty minutes after the reception had begun, Betty appeared, wearing a long, yellow knit dress she had borrowed from Nancy Howe, and as she glided down the long, winding staircase that looked like a set out of Gone with the Wind, the room fell to a hush. And then, suddenly, the crowd burst into applause.
Painter Jamie Wyeth, the twenty-seven-year-old son of famed artist Andrew Wyeth, remarked that Betty was “really quite beautiful” and that she had “a regal quality . . . a movie star feeling about her.”
The Carters had invited some of their close political friends as well as some Georgia Republicans, and although Betty Ford was there to promote the arts, no one seemed interested in discussing Rembrandt or Renoir. Everyone was speculating about whether the well-coiffed woman in the yellow gown might soon be moving into the White House. Betty graciously greeted the guests as they proceeded through a reception line, and when some were bold enough to ask, she smiled coquettishly and said, “I’d rather not talk about that.”
While that subject may have been off-limits, she was candid about most everything else. When someone inquired about her slim figure, she happily explained that she’d begun dieting a year earlier and had lost more than thirty pounds.
“Now I’m down to a size eight, less than a hundred ten pounds,” she said proudly. Her secret? Lots of lettuce, cottage cheese, crackers, and tea.
“What do you think is the role of a political wife?” one reporter asked.
“I think we have to be supportive,” Betty said. “I also think we have to be a sounding board for him. My husband has also said that I’m his toughest and best critic.” And then, with a laugh, she added, “But sometimes I regret it.”
She charmed the group with a story about how Jerry had come home one night recently after a long day and said, “I’m going right to bed.”
“ ‘Oh no you’re not,’ I told him. There was a tango party coming up, and we needed to practice. So, I grabbed him and said, ‘Okay, here we go! I’m going to teach you some great, dramatic tango steps.’ ”
Everyone was laughing as she demonstrated how she and Jerry were tangoing all over their small living room.
“She’s got a right good personality,” said one man—a Democrat friend of the Carters. “She’s charming, her hair’s arranged pretty, and she looks right at you when she talks to y’all.”
A woman who had known Betty for some time but hadn’t seen her in many years remarked to one of the reporters that what she liked about the second lady was that “none of this has changed her. She has great modesty. She’s still as plain as an old shoe and sharp as a tack.”
Later, when Betty and the Carters posed for photographs, Jimmy Carter bent down and whispered to her, “Do you ever become accustomed to this?”
She leaned into his arm and, with a big grin on her face, said, “Twenty-five years, twenty-five years.” To the press and the public, this may have been Betty’s coming-out party, but as far as she was concerned, she wasn’t doing anything different from what she’d been doing for the past quarter century. It’s just that now she was beginning to get some of the attention. And she kind of liked it.
The next day, despite Nancy Howe’s surreptitious attempts to ensure Betty was on time, Rosalynn Carter recalled that “we were late everywhere we went that day,” and that Betty seemed “a little drowsy.”
Wall-to-wall people lined the parade route through Dalton—known as the “Carpet Capital of the United States”—and as the two women rode together in a convertible, Rosalynn was very much at ease, waving to the people and calling out, “Hello! Hello!” and “Hey, how are you?” She’d been in countless parades campaigning with Jimmy throughout the state.
Betty, however, wasn’t quite sure what to do. Socializing at a reception was easy for her, but the last time she’d been in a campaign-type situation was back when Jerry was first running for Congress in 1948, before they were married. Her discomfort appeared to grow, and after a while, she said to Rosalynn, “You must know all these people.”
Rosalynn was astonished. “No, I don’t know them at all,” she replied. She suddenly realized that even though they were both politicians’ wives, Betty had basically been home raising children in Washington her whole married life.
Betty seemed just as surprised by Rosalynn’s response, but from that point on, she joined in, waving to the strangers and calling out with a smile, “Hello, how are you?”
The parade ended at the Artrain, and it was time for the dedication. Sitting next to Rosalynn on the speakers’ platform, Betty was nervous. She wasn’t used to public speaking—even about nonpolitical issues such as the arts. She leaned toward Rosalynn and whispered, “Can’t I just thank the mayor and sit down? I don’t want to make a speech.”
Rosalynn suggested it would be appropriate for her to say a few words. So, when it was time, Betty got up and stood at the podium.
Standing erect, looking out at the large gathering of people, Betty spoke off the cuff, without any prepared notes.
“Art is nonpolitical, and it is in the arts that we are all brought together,” she began. She talked briefly about how her special interest in the arts was in dance and how dancing had been such an important part of her youth. It was a good little speech, and the people of Dalton, Georgia, loved it. As the crowd applauded, Betty seemed to become more at ease, having surmounted her initial fear.
As soon as the thank-yous and formalities were finished, Betty and Rosalynn were led to the Artrain for a tour of the exhibits. As they walked through, Betty commented on one of the trainmen’s caps, and before you knew it, she had it on her head. It was purely spontaneous—perhaps after reminiscing about her dance experiences, it reminded her of the cap she’d worn at Bennington, back when she was just “Skipper”—and she kept it on as she walked through the train, clearly much more at ease than she’d been earlier. It was as if wearing a hat gave her a different persona and some much-needed courage. She became a woman who exuded composure, even if, in reality, she felt less than confident.
At the end of the traveling art exhibit, Rosalynn and Betty walked out of the Victorian-style caboose and stood on the rear platform. Below them, it was a festive scene with groups of preteen baton twirlers and uniformed Girl Scouts gathered next to choral groups and young girls in ballet costumes. Betty had a big smile on her face, with the conductor’s cap still perched whimsically on her head. Someone handed her a pair of scissors, and as the crowd clapped and cheered, she clipped the ceremonial ribbon for the opening of the Artrain.
A few female reporters who covered the women’s social pages and a couple of photographers were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to get some quotes for their stories. Cameras flashed, and reporters started firing questions:
“Mrs. Ford, how do you feel about the possibility of your husband becoming president?”
“I’ll take it as it comes. After twenty-five years in politics, I’ve learned to roll with the punches.”
And then, one of the reporters called out, “Mrs. Ford, are you on something?”
Evidently, the “drowsiness” Rosalynn Carter had observed earlier did not go unnoticed by the press.
Without hesitation, Betty answered, “Well, I do take Valium every day.”
Her frankness surprised the reporters, and they wanted to know more. Why? How much? “Valium, three times a day, or sometimes Equagesic. That way I’m more comfortable,” she explained unapologetically. “Otherwise I find I get nervous when I realize how much there is to do each day, and I get tense when I’m running late, so rather than wait till I get to the point where my neck goes into a spasm, I take a Valium.”
Her openness surprised Rosalynn Carter, who knew that “any blemish on the public’s image of a candidate’s or an elected official’s perfect wife, children, and idyllic family life can be a detriment.” But Betty didn’t realize that she had created a stir. She was just answering the question honestly. She had nothing to hide.
In 1974 Valium was by far the most prescribed drug in America. Its use as a minor tranquilizer for symptoms of anxiety accounted for a large share of the estimated fifty-seven million prescriptions written the previous year, and, to many, the little tablet had become as socially acceptable as a double martini before dinner. Betty’s admission, however, didn’t sit well with a lot of people who would read her comments in the newspaper the next day. Almost immediately, there was a backlash, as hundreds of people wrote letters accusing Betty Ford of being “a dope addict.”
When the subject was brought up later, she shrugged it off. “I’m candid,” she said. “I wouldn’t deny it. I do take tranquilizers. People just don’t understand they are for my neck.”
Unlike Rosalynn Carter, who was more cautious about revealing personal matters because of her husband’s likely upcoming bid for the presidency, Betty wasn’t concerned about how her comments might affect her husband’s political chances. It didn’t matter. There weren’t going to be any more campaigns. At the end of Nixon’s term, Jerry was going to retire. He had promised. But besides that, Betty Ford was being Betty Ford. She didn’t know any other way to be.
Secret Service agents on Jerry’s detail were aware that she was drinking, but not to the point that they were concerned. What was more interesting to them was that Jerry made a tremendous effort to be home with Betty. He’d fly to the West Coast or the Midwest and very seldom spent the night. Even if there was an event in Los Angeles at eight o’clock in the evening, Jerry would insist on returning to Virginia that night, even if it meant arriving back in Washington at three or four in the morning.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service had its hands full protecting sixteen-year-old Susan. In many ways, by protecting the vice president’s daughter, they protected the vice president and his wife from some potentially embarrassing situations. Even if Jerry and Betty never knew about it.
“My parents thought if you had the agents, you were safe,” Susan recalled. “It was kind of a joke. Because their job was not to be your parent. Their job was to watch your behavior, not to correct your behavior; to make sure that I was safe.”
The agents realized that to be a sixteen-year-old girl with two guys in suits hovering over you was not anybody’s idea of normal, so they devised a way to give her some freedom while still being able to protect her.
“I used to carry a little remote that looked like a cigarette lighter that I could put in my pocket,” Susan recalled. “It was a panic button. And that way, they could back off me, like when I was at a fraternity party, with all these people, and if I felt uncomfortable or unsafe, I just hit the button, and it would come across the radios.”
Susan had broken up with Palmer Holt and was now dating Gardner Britt, son of a Fairfax County car dealership owner, who was attending Virginia Polytech Institute and State University. One weekend, Susan and the Golubin twins went down to Virginia Tech to visit him. Betty and Jerry felt completely comfortable with the situation because the girls were being driven and protected by two agents. What could go wrong?
The girls attended a fraternity party Saturday night, and “we were underage drinking, I admit it,” Susan said. The next day, “We were hungover, trying to sleep in the back seat on the way back home.” Halfway between Charlottesville and Washington, they stopped at a McDonald’s for some food and a much-needed restroom break.
They all ordered some food to go, and then the two male agents stood holding the bags of food while the girls went into the restroom. Suddenly there was the screech of a high-pitched alarm.
The agents raced to the door of the ladies’ room, their hands on their guns.
“They thought I hit my panic button,” Susan recalled. The other patrons in the restaurant were looking around, wondering, What’s going on? Who is in the restroom?
“Turns out, it was actually the chime on the French fry cooker,” Susan recalled with a laugh. “So, we just kind of took our bags, walked out the door, and quickly got into the car before anyone could recognize me.”
In the eight weeks between when Gerald Ford was nominated for the position of vice president and the time he was confirmed, there was an intense investigation into his personal and professional life, the likes of which had not been seen before or since. The FBI’s investigation of Ford was the largest, most intensive probe that the bureau had ever conducted into the background of a candidate for public office. Some 350 special agents had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, the IRS went over his tax returns line by line, and, overall, 1,700 pages of reports were compiled. “The process was like undergoing a physical exam in public view,” Jerry Ford recalled.
The one thing that could have potentially caused problems was the one thing that had concerned Jerry the very first time he ran for Congress: the fact that his wife had been married, and divorced, before she became Mrs. Gerald R. Ford Jr.
“The National Enquirer was going to write a piece about the fact that she had been married previously,” David Kennerly recalled. Betty was deeply concerned that it would be an embarrassment to Jerry. “Don’t worry about it,” Kennerly said. “Why don’t you talk to Bonnie Angelo?”
Time had started a People section, which eventually spun off into People magazine, and Bonnie was the features reporter. “Maybe she’ll ask you have you ever been married before? And you’ll say yes. And she’ll ask, ‘Why haven’t you ever told anyone before?’ And you can just say, ‘Well, no one has ever asked.’ ”
David Kennerly approached Angelo with the story tip. “You should talk to Mrs. Ford—she might have a story for you. You might ask her about her previous marriage.”
“I didn’t know she was married before!” Bonnie exclaimed.
“Well, yeah, nobody does,” Kennerly said. In retrospect, he admitted, “I didn’t mention anything about the National Enquirer.”
That Sunday, there was a little item in the new People entertainment column of Time mentioning Betty’s previous marriage.
“So, essentially it drove a stake through the story,” Kennerly said. “It was literally a paragraph in the People section of Time instead of what could have been a front-page scandal in the National Enquirer.”
“I think this is when my relationship with her got stronger,” he reflected years later. “A reporter couldn’t have done that,” he said. There was a difference between reporters and photographers. “All I was doing was wanting to get in occasionally to take pictures.”
Steve Ford, just about to turn eighteen, was in his senior year at T. C. Williams High School, and the school thought it would be wonderful to have the father of one of its students—who happened to be vice president of the United States—give the commencement address.
“I wasn’t thrilled about it at the time,” Steve recalled. “I was a pretty typical teenager, going, ‘Come on, Dad, don’t do that.’ When you’re eighteen years old and you’re trying to lay low, to have your father come in and do the commencement isn’t the way to stay below the radar.”
Vice President Ford did indeed give the commencement address to the 1974 graduating class, and within a few months, there would be no way anyone in the Ford family could stay below the radar. History had them in the crosshairs.