Nineteen seventy-five had been declared International Women’s Year, after nearly a decade of work by the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW). The PCSW was established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy to investigate questions about women’s equality in education, the workplace, and under the law. After much urging from Betty, on January 9, 1975, President Ford signed an executive order establishing a National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. Although this order didn’t have any legal or legislative force, “it had moral force,” Betty said. It meant the president of the United States was standing up for women and the Equal Rights Amendment, and against “legal inequities between sexes.”
Betty stood next to her husband in the Cabinet Room, packed with press and supporters. With pen in hand, President Ford looked up at his wife and, with a teasing smile, said, “Before I sign this, Betty, if you have any words of wisdom or encouragement, you are welcome to speak.”
Amid the laughter, Betty didn’t hesitate to respond. “I just want to congratulate you, Mr. President,” she said, grinning broadly. “I am glad to see that you have come a long, long way.”
More laughter, as the president shook his head with amusement. “I don’t quite know how to respond to that.”
To get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified as part of the US Constitution required thirty-eight states voting to approve it. Thus far, they were five states short. Equal rights for women was something Betty felt strongly about, and she was determined to use her influence, both privately with her husband—“pillow talk at the end of the day, when I figured he was most tired and vulnerable”—and publicly.
Her first overt action was to write a letter to a member of the North Dakota State Assembly just a few days before it came up for vote there. The assemblyman read her letter aloud during the session, and it made an impact. North Dakota became the thirty-fourth state to ratify the amendment. Now only four states were needed. Over the course of the next few weeks, as various states were about to vote, Betty picked up the phone and called prominent state legislators urging them to support the ERA. For a state lawmaker to receive a personal phone call from the first lady was impressive, and even those who disagreed with her often bragged about getting the phone call, which gave her side of the issue an elevated position.
When a group protested that the first lady was using a White House telephone line—suggesting she was using taxpayer dollars to lobby for the ERA—Betty had an outside line installed so she could continue making calls as a private citizen from her “home office.”
Indeed, the ERA had some formidable opposition, the loudest voice of which was Phyllis Schlafly, a Republican Party activist who had created an antiamendment campaign called Stop ERA. Schlafly believed that family and traditional values were under attack. She opposed the ERA because she believed it would open the door to same-sex marriage, abortion, the military draft for women, coed bathrooms, and the end of labor laws that barred women from dangerous workplaces. She claimed that equality would be a step down for most women, who, she said, “are extremely well treated” by society and laws. Schlafly painted women who were for ERA as bra-burning women’s libbers. She rallied throngs of housewives against ERA and went around the country talking about motherhood.
Meanwhile, Betty made call after call to lawmakers across the country, explaining her feeling that women should have the option to be homemakers, and there was nothing wrong with that—she herself had raised four children and not had a career—but even housewives should have equal opportunities for education, an equal chance to establish credit, and equal Social Security. If a woman entered the workplace, she should be given the same rights as any man and earn equal pay for the same work. She spoke in her naturally soft voice, employing flattery, gentle persuasion, and charm, using the power of her position to get her point of view heard.
For legislators with daughters, there was conversation on the cost of raising a girl: “It just isn’t right that we pay so much to educate them, only to find that they don’t have the same chance to use their education.” For those more liberal leaning, she talked about her career before marriage, and for those who thought the ERA would destroy families, she reminisced about the joys of being a mother to four children. It wasn’t about forcing women to give up being mothers or housewives, but about giving them equal rights no matter what path they chose.
“Frankly, I enjoy being a mother, and I am not about to burn my bra—I need it!” she told one reporter. But she took to proudly wearing a “Ratify ERA in 1975” pin on her lapel, so there was no doubt about which side she was on.
Not since Eleanor Roosevelt had a first lady been so willing to take an unequivocal position on a controversial, and highly emotional, political issue. Thousands of letters poured into the White House—three-quarters of them against Mrs. Ford’s position on the ERA. When asked about the criticism, Betty told the press, “I’m going to stick to my guns on this. I expected criticism, and I’m not bothered by it.”
One day Betty looked out the window from the third floor and saw a group of protesters gathered outside the White House holding signs that said “Betty Ford Is Trying to Press a Second-Rate Manhood on American Women” and “Women Want Equal Pay, Not ERA.” This gave her the distinction of being the first president’s wife to be picketed for her own political stance.
When asked about the voluminous amount of negative feedback, Betty commented that she thought those who were for the amendment were sitting back and not writing. That did the trick. Thousands more letters arrived at the White House, and within two weeks, the tide had completely reversed, with nearly 6,000 letters favoring the ERA versus 2,500 against.
It was around this time that Betty realized there was some inequality at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue too. She was returning to the White House from an event one day, just as the president was preparing to leave. The presidential limousine sat parked outside the South Portico, its flags with the presidential seal on either side of the front hood flapping in the breeze, as the first lady’s driver brought her car to a stop just behind it. As she got out of the car, she turned to Agent Dick Hartwig and joked, “Why don’t I have any flags? I’m the first lady. Don’t I deserve a flag?”
Everyone laughed, and they went inside.
That night, Agent Hartwig told his fiancée, Sally, the story. He adored Mrs. Ford, and would often share anecdotes about her sense of humor.
“We should make Mrs. Ford a flag,” Sally suggested. So, she and a friend got to work designing a special flag for the first lady, and about two weeks later, Agent Hartwig brought it to the White House.
He arranged for David Kennerly to be there, along with several members of the first lady’s staff, to surprise Mrs. Ford with a tongue-in-cheek ceremonial presentation of the handmade first lady flag.
It was blue satin, trimmed with white lace and braid decorated with red and blue stars. In the middle of it, carefully stuffed, shaped, and formed was a pair of red and white lace-trimmed bloomers, in honor of Betty’s maiden name. In bold white letters on top of the bloomers it said: “Don’t Tread on Me,” and at the bottom “ERA.” It even had an opening along the left side so that it could be attached to a fender pole on the car.
“She really got a kick out of it,” Agent Hartwig recalled. “Of course, we couldn’t actually fly it from the car,” he said, but she hung it from the front of her desk in the East Wing, keeping it proudly on display from that day on.
In the end, the ERA would not get the required number of states necessary to add it to the Constitution—even though Congress ultimately extended the deadline, it officially failed in 1982—but Betty vowed to keep on fighting, and at least she had her own first lady flag.
Another major issue plaguing the country at this time was high inflation. People were struggling to make ends meet in the stagnant economy, and while President Ford was working on financial policies to get the country growing, Betty announced that she would make her own small contribution by no longer spending money on expensive designer clothing. But with public functions to attend almost daily, she needed far more dresses, both day and evening, than she ever had before. Shortly after they returned to Washington from Vail, Betty read an article in the newspaper about an up-and-coming New York City designer named Albert Capraro who used only American-made fabrics and designed dresses that sold for as little as $70.
One of the perks of being first lady, she had discovered, was that whenever she wanted to call anyone, all she had to do was pick up the phone and ask the White House operator to connect her.
Capraro, who had just gone into business for himself after eight years as an assistant to Oscar de la Renta, was sitting in his Manhattan office and sketching some ideas for his summer collection when the phone rang.
“Mr. Capraro? This is Betty Ford. I noticed your designs in the Washington Star-News, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to come to Washington to discuss making some clothes for me.”
Two days later, Capraro arrived at the White House with a book of sketches. The thirty-one-year-old designer, who sported what he called a “Renaissance beard,” had an animated personality, and Betty liked him immediately.
She brought him into her closet, so he could see what she already had in her wardrobe, to show him the styles she preferred. Suits, dresses, and evening gowns were organized by color, and every piece had a card attached to the hanger, on which she or Nancy Howe would write where, when, and to what event the outfit was worn, including the shoes and accessories she’d worn with it.
“These are two of my favorites,” she said, pulling out two Oscar de la Renta dresses.
Capraro laughed. “Those are my designs!” he said. “I designed those when I worked as an assistant for Oscar.”
As they sat down to look over sketches, they bonded with their shared passion for fashion, talking chiffons and jersey, silk and suede. He took her measurements and recorded them carefully in a notebook, and after a few hours, she’d ordered twelve outfits. The best part was that she’d managed not to stray too far over the $1,000 budget her husband had authorized. Additionally, Capraro agreed to design some evening gowns for her out of some magnificent silk fabrics the president had brought back from a recent trip to the Far East.
As soon as word got out that the first lady had ordered her spring wardrobe from him, Albert Capraro became a household name. Betty was delighted. “She loved helping someone new,” Susan Ford said. And Capraro was equally charmed by his newest client. He noted how her eyes changed from blue to green depending on the clothes she wore and described her as a “perfect model: size six, five feet five and a half inches tall, a hundred and six pounds.”
Capraro would go on to design many fashions for both Betty and Susan. “We always had fun with Albert,” Susan recalled.
As in most work environments, there is inevitably discord among coworkers, and the first lady’s office was not immune. Betty had come to rely on Nancy Howe as an all-round assistant—a pseudo chief of staff—but over time Nancy became the center of controversy.
“I called her the palace guard,” Press Secretary Sheila Weidenfeld said. “She was always upstairs with Mrs. Ford and kept tight rein on who was allowed to see the first lady, and when.”
Nancy was paid as White House staff, and while her role was undefined, there is no denying she was devoted to Betty Ford. She’d typically arrive at the White House around seven in the morning to handle the personal letters that arrived daily for the first lady. At nine she’d head upstairs to the residence, and with Betty still in her dressing gown, the two would go over everything from the 170 invitations a week to appear somewhere, to Betty’s clothing needs, planned remarks, and guest lists for state dinners or other functions. Unless Betty had a luncheon event, the two would eat together—usually a sandwich or a salad—in the light-filled North Lobby.
Newspaper columnist Betty Beale had written several articles about Howe and her unequivocal access to the first lady, articles for which Nancy had happily provided comment. Nancy had stated that she was “the only White House staffer regularly in the mansion for a nightly aperitif with Mrs. Ford and the president when he joins the two of them around 7 pm in the North Lobby sitting room,” Beale wrote. The article described Nancy as “vivacious” and “bubbly,” noting that the Southern-talking aide had adopted a private name for Mrs. Ford. She called her “Petunia,” and according to Nancy, the name “tickled” the first lady.
But Nancy’s control over Betty’s schedule—and the annoying “Petunia” this and “Petunia” that—increasingly became a flashpoint with others. Even Susan started complaining that she’d often get blocked when she wanted to have a private conversation with her mother.
“It’s not a good time,” Nancy would say.
“She interfered with our relationship,” Susan recalled. And even though Susan had mentioned the problem to her mother, Betty couldn’t imagine getting along without Nancy and didn’t realize the extent to which Nancy was controlling everything.
On Sunday, March 2, 1975, the Fords were at Camp David when Betty opened the paper to the Family Weekly magazine supplement and saw the headline “Betty Ford’s Best Friend.”
It was all about Nancy Howe. “There’s a new job description at the White House these days—best friend to the first lady,” the article began. “Since government service has no such title, however, Nancy Lee Howe, who is the virtual shadow of the first lady, is listed as ‘Special Assistant to Mrs. Ford.’ ”
Betty was furious. She did not think of Nancy as her best friend. Yes, they spent a great deal of time together, and theirs was a friendship that went beyond simply an employer-employee relationship, but clearly Nancy had done an interview, without Betty’s knowledge, and had proclaimed herself “best friend.”
Betty called Sheila Weidenfeld. “She was hysterical,” Sheila recalled.
Sheila explained to the first lady that she had discouraged Nancy from talking to the reporter—it was inappropriate, and she’d never endorsed the idea. But Nancy proceeded anyway.
“She is not my best friend!” Betty sobbed. “I am so mad. I am so mad that right now, as I talk to you, I am rolling this article up into a ball and throwing it into the fire, where it belongs! I’m going to fire Nancy!”
The worst part, really, was that Susan had been trying to tell her mother for months how controlling Nancy was, how others on the staff had been complaining about her “palace guard” attitude, and how she had isolated Betty from her other friends and even family members. Betty had seen only loyalty and devotion, until now.
Between Susan, David Kennerly, and a call from her military aide Ric Sardo, whom Betty had come to trust and whose opinion she valued, by the end of the day, Betty had calmed down. She wouldn’t fire Nancy, but she would certainly be more cognizant of how things were being run.
It had become tradition for the Fords to spend Easter in Palm Springs, where a number of their friends spent the winter. The president liked the golf, and Betty enjoyed the dry, warm weather getaway during what was typically a dreary time in Washington. Normally the Fords stayed at Thunderbird Country Club, but this year Jerry’s close friend Fred Wilson, a wealthy insurance executive, and his wife had offered their home, which would accommodate the needs of the Secret Service for security purposes.
As it happened, the Easter getaway, the last weekend in March, coincided with tragic news coming out of Vietnam. One of the few bright spots for Nixon in 1973 was the signing of a peace agreement in January, followed by the withdrawal of US troops, which was completed on March 29 of that year. But the North Vietnamese Communists violated the cease-fire, and by 1974, the peace between the two sides had crumbled. The North Vietnamese were sweeping into the south, capturing major South Vietnamese cities, and a human tragedy was rapidly unfolding. A week earlier, President Ford had sent General Fred Weyand, the army chief of staff, and Graham Martin, the US ambassador to Vietnam, back there for an assessment. David Kennerly—who had spent time in Vietnam and had won the Pulitzer Prize for the haunting photographs he’d taken there prior to becoming the chief White House photographer—had asked if he could go along to provide President Ford with a personal, nonpolitical account of what was happening. The visit was cut short as he became part of an emergency evacuation of Americans. Upon returning to the United States, Kennerly flew directly to Palm Springs.
It was eleven o’clock at night when he arrived at the Wilson house, where President and Mrs. Ford were both waiting to greet him. Betty was in her robe, and as soon as she saw David, she ran to him and threw her arms around him.
“Oh, David!” she exclaimed. “We heard your helicopter was shot at! We were so worried!”
It was true. For the next five hours, David recounted harrowing stories of what was happening on the other side of the world. He had broken away from the officials who were involved in meetings to get into the countryside and had even traveled into Cambodia with the help of two CIA agents. He shot dozens of rolls of film of people suffering—such as a woman who’d been hit by shrapnel, dying in her husband’s arms—but it was one photo of a little girl wearing a dog tag, with a look of utter hopelessness in her eyes, that tore him to pieces. He’d barely gotten out of Phnom Penh before it fell to the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communist guerrilla force. Then, while flying over the South Vietnamese port of Cam Ranh Bay, his helicopter had been shot at by frustrated South Vietnamese soldiers—friendlies.
“Cambodia is gone,” Kennerly said bluntly. “And I don’t care what the generals tell you; they’re bullshitting you if they say that Vietnam has got more than three or four weeks left. There’s no question about it. It’s just not gonna last.”
Both Betty and Jerry hung on his every word. They trusted him implicitly.
“Mr. President,” Kennerly said, “those people are scared to death. We’ve got to get those people out of there. Not just the Americans.”
The Fords listened to his stories all night. And the next day, after he’d developed the photos, they saw the horrifying reality in black and white.
President Ford announced that because of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Vietnam, there were going to be a series of thirty “babylift” operations:
“I have directed that money from a two-million-dollar special foreign aid children’s fund be made available to fly two thousand South Vietnamese orphans to the United States as soon as possible.”
Tragically, the first plane, carrying around three hundred passengers, mainly orphans, crashed just minutes after takeoff, killing more than half of those on board.
Betty was crushed by the news of so many innocent children dying. The whole situation in Vietnam just seemed to go from bad to worse.
The babylift operation continued, and the next day the Fords flew up to San Francisco to receive the first planeload of orphans to arrive in the United States. The plane was filled to the brim with children, many unsettled and sick after such a tiring and emotional journey.
Because of her chemotherapy, Betty’s resistance to disease had been suppressed, and her doctors had said she couldn’t mingle with the children. She was restless, standing in a separate viewing area, watching as her husband held and comforted some of them. She wanted to hold the children, make them feel better. She had even considered adopting one of them for her own. But just to hug them would have been enough, and she couldn’t even do that. It broke her heart.
While the Fords were in Palm Springs, Nancy Howe and her husband, James, had traveled to the Dominican Republic with their daughter Lise Courtney as guests of a flamboyant South Korean businessman and lobbyist named Tongsun Park. It is illegal for anyone working in the government to accept personal gifts worth more than $50 from a representative of another government, and because of Nancy’s connection to the White House, the press had been nosing around. Indeed, there was an ongoing White House inquiry into the relationship between the Howes and Tongsun Park.
They came home, and three days later, James W. “Jimmy” Howe shot himself to death.
Betty was shocked and deeply saddened when she learned of Howe’s death and the allegations. But mostly she was concerned about Nancy. She called Nancy immediately and tried to console her.
Betty attended the funeral privately, with no press. To her, this was a purely personal matter. But the following day, it was announced that Nancy would no longer be employed at the White House. The press had a field day and insinuated that Betty Ford had fired her longtime personal assistant and “best friend” in the midst of Howe’s grief.
“Well, I didn’t fire Nancy Howe,” Betty later said adamantly. “When I was told she had to leave, I cried. Her own psychologist and another psychologist met with Dr. Lukash and decided that she wasn’t in shape to stay on. There was a feeling that the circumstances of Jimmy’s death would make it difficult for her to handle a sensitive and burdensome job.”
That, and the ongoing investigation into the Howes’ relationship with Tongsun Park. It was a terrible situation all the way around. Because of the investigation, Betty would not be permitted to speak to her friend for months. “It broke my heart,” she said. “I wanted in the worst way to be with Nancy through that period.”
Nancy Howe was never charged with any wrongdoing, but Tongsun Park would eventually be indicted on charges of illegally influencing US politicians and officials in connection with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
That same week, North Carolina voted down the Equal Rights Amendment, which meant it would not be passed in 1975. It had been a rough week. And while Betty had her burdens, she knew they didn’t compare to the weight her husband shouldered. Two weeks after Jimmy Howe’s funeral came the fall of Saigon, on April 30.
As President Ford would recall in retrospect: “The South Vietnamese forces were inadequate to protect us, and our only choice was to get out all American personnel, military and civilian, and as many of our South Vietnamese friends as possible. Our forces were literally surrounded at the embassy. It was some hectic, tragic twenty-four hours. To see that transpiring was probably as low a point in my administration as any.”
Upstairs at the White House, Betty sat with Susan, David Kennerly, Dr. Lukash, Ric Sardo, and Sheila Weidenfeld as news of the evacuation came in. They learned that two US Marine guards had been killed.
“They were only nineteen and twenty-two,” President Ford said. He looked so weary. With children near those same ages, Betty sensed her husband’s feelings of helplessness.
Reaching over to touch him, she said softly, “You should write notes to their parents.”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I will.”
Jerry hadn’t wanted this job; hadn’t asked for it. Betty’s heart ached for him, knowing the responsibility he carried alone.
At the end of May 1975, Betty went on her first overseas trip as first lady. She’d been scheduled to go to Japan and Martinique the previous fall, but breast cancer had intervened. Now she was feeling great, and she was excited to accompany President Ford on a whirlwind trip to Belgium, Spain, Austria, and Italy.
Every day of the six-day trip was planned to the minute, detailed in a loose-leaf notebook with a plastic cover marked simply “Schedule.” Betty had gotten much better about her notorious lateness, but to help ensure that she would be on time to events, while still looking her best—“there wasn’t any time to come into a city and ask which way to the beauty salon”—the president paid to have her hairdresser, Jim Merson, come along.
Additionally, Betty was given personal background papers on everyone she would meet. There was a photo of the person in the upper-right-hand corner, and on the left side was written the person’s name, how he or she should be addressed, individual interests, history, any imprudent or taboo subjects, and where each one ranked in the political pecking order.
The trip was filled with pomp and circumstance. Colorful parades, lavish dinners in palaces with kings and queens, princes and princesses. The schedule was arduous, but Betty kept up and told the accompanying press, “My health is good, and I’m having a ball!”
Meanwhile, back in Washington, history was being made, as the first-ever senior prom was being held in the White House.
“Be good,” Betty had said as she kissed Susan goodbye the morning they left. But she wasn’t worried. She was leaving her daughter with the best chaperones in the world: Aunt Janet and the Secret Service.
Susan nearly didn’t have a date; she had recently broken up with her boyfriend Gardner Britt. But the seventeen-year-old ended up asking twenty-one-year-old Billy Pifer, a premed student at Washington and Lee University she had met a few weeks earlier. To begin the evening, Susan and Billy, along with three other couples, enjoyed a preprom dinner of beef Stroganoff and a glass or two of white wine, while cruising down the Potomac on the presidential yacht Sequoia. Then Secret Service agents drove the party back to the White House just in time to welcome the other seventy Holton-Arms High School seniors and their dates for one unforgettable senior prom.
The senior class had raised $1,300 to pay for refreshments—Swedish meatballs and quiche, along with a nonalcoholic punch—and two bands. Most of the young men had hair that touched their shoulders, as was the style at the time, and the girls wore long dresses pinned with corsages presented to them by their dates. Susan looked beautiful in a long, peach-colored Albert Capraro dress she and her mother had picked out together in New York, and she was every bit the poised hostess. The press was on hand to capture the unique White House event, and Betty would read that her daughter was dancing (butt) cheek to (butt) cheek, otherwise known as the bump, with her tuxedo-clad date until one thirty in the morning.
One of the things President Ford had missed ever since moving to the White House was his daily swim. An indoor swimming pool had been installed in the West Wing during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and had been enjoyed by presidents and their families until Nixon had it removed to make space for a Press Room. President Ford, being an avid swimmer, recognized that a swimming pool would make a good addition to the White House, not only for him and his family but also for future residents. A White House Swimming Pool Committee had been formed the previous fall, and private donors, many of whom were friends of the Fords from Grand Rapids, funded the design and construction, which was overseen and approved by the Secret Service as well as the Fine Arts Commission. When the twenty-two-by-fifty-four-foot pool was completed in July, President Ford invited the press to take photos of him swimming laps, and from then on, he used it almost daily when he was in residence.
One of the biggest questions that still loomed over President Ford was whether he would run for president in 1976. A group of conservative Republican senators had concluded that because neither the president nor Vice President Nelson Rockefeller had been elected to office (Ford had appointed Rockefeller under the terms of the 25th Amendment), it would be in the best interest of the Republican Party, and of the country, for the 1976 presidential nomination to be sought and won in an open convention.
Jerry had promised Betty he would retire in 1977—but that was before their world had turned upside down. As with every major decision, the Fords discussed it as a family. A presidential campaign was a completely different ball game than a congressional campaign in the Fifth District of Michigan, and it would involve everyone in the family. They were coming up on one year of being in the White House, and no one was more surprised than the first lady when she finally came to realize she had enjoyed it.
“I was willing to take on four more years in the White House,” Betty said. “And when the time came, I felt Jerry would be the best man for the job.” The children agreed, and on July 8, 1975, Jerry Ford announced that he would seek the Republican Party’s nomination to run for president in 1976.
With Nancy Howe gone, Betty needed to find a replacement as soon as possible. Nancy Chirdon, who had been brought in to help with the mail after Betty’s mastectomy, had stayed on as an assistant to Sheila Weidenfeld, and she had impressed the first lady. Betty had learned a great deal from the Nancy Howe situation, however, and she decided to have two assistants share the duties equally. Nancy Chirdon would be one, and Carolyn Porembka, who had been Nancy Howe’s secretary, would be the other.
While there were always far more invitations than Betty could accept, there was one event she wouldn’t miss for all the world: a gala fund-raiser for the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Martha Graham’s dance company. She flew to New York City for a sneak preview of the upcoming one-night presentation of Lucifer, a ballet that Graham had choreographed especially for Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn. It was the first time she had seen Martha Graham since she’d left New York City nearly forty years earlier, promising to return after six months.
At eighty years old, Martha was still as toned and perfect as Betty remembered. In response to reporters covering the event, Betty said Martha had always been a source of strength.
“She was my teacher, and she shaped my whole life,” Betty said, choking back emotion. “She gave me the ability to stand up to all the things that I have had to go through with, I believe, much more courage than I would have had, had it not been for her.” She turned to her mentor and beamed. “Thank you, Martha!”
Comedian and film director Woody Allen had paid $5,000 to be Mrs. Ford’s escort to the star-studded gala. He too had studied under Martha Graham, but quit because, he said, “he didn’t like wearing leotards.” He showed up in a tuxedo and black-and-white Converse sneakers, while Betty looked ravishing—as glamorous as any of the movie stars in attendance—in a flowing lavender Halston gown. Glowing with elation, she was back in the world of dance that was so much a part of her soul. During intermission, Betty appeared with Martha, Woody, and Woody’s girlfriend, actress Diane Keaton, to speak to the press.
“This means a very great deal to me,” Betty said. “One of the most exciting things in my life.”
“And how do you feel being the first lady’s escort?” a reporter called out to Woody Allen.
“We’re just good friends,” he quipped.
At the end of the performance, Betty was invited onstage. The crowd stood and cheered as the first lady of the nation and the first lady of modern dance exchanged curtseys and bouquets of roses, a reunion forty years in the making.
As Betty soaked in the applause and adoration that evening, little did she know that the steely courage Martha Graham had instilled in her was about to be tested yet again.
For several months, Don Hewitt, the executive producer of TV’s 60 Minutes, had been trying to snare an interview with Mrs. Ford. Sheila Weidenfeld knew the show would be a great way for the American public to really get to know her, but at the same time, if she wasn’t confident enough or well prepared, it could destroy not only her reputation but also be politically disastrous for the president. Sheila had been putting off Hewitt with the excuse that Mrs. Ford’s health was still fragile, and she just wasn’t ready. Finally, by the summer of 1975, with Jerry’s announcement to run, the time seemed right, and Betty agreed to do it. It would be her first in-depth television interview since she’d become first lady.
The CBS crew arrived at dawn to begin setting up in the third-floor solarium. Meanwhile, Betty had her makeup and hair done before getting dressed for her television debut. She’d chosen a beige-peach jersey dress with soft, flowing long sleeves, accented with white linen trim on the collar and waist, designed by Cuban American designer Luis Estévez. A long scarf in the same color as the dress, which she had draped loosely around her neck and fastened with a decorative pin at her collarbone, gave the outfit an added pop of sophistication without being over-the-top.
Don Hewitt and forty-three-year-old correspondent Morley Safer came up to the second-floor West Lobby sitting room to meet Betty before they began the interview.
“I had never met her before,” Safer recalled. “And I didn’t expect to find a woman so strong and straight and frank.”
Hewitt and Safer were pros at making their subject feel comfortable and relaxed, conversing in idle chitchat, while saving the zingers for when the cameras rolled.
As soon as everything was ready, they proceeded upstairs to the solarium.
“When we sat down to talk, there was no period of awkwardness or discomfort; we chatted with great ease,” Morley Safer said.
“Look,” Betty said, “you can ask me anything you want, and I’ll tell the truth. I’m such a lousy liar, if I tried to lie to you, it would be transparent anyway.”
Sheila Weidenfeld stood off to the side, watching and listening intently as the interview progressed. From what she observed in the monitors, she thought Betty appeared relaxed and had an “enthusiastic, excellent camera presence.”
As Safer pried and probed into her personal life and that of her family, Sheila felt she was “open but not outspoken. Honest. She sounded just plain intelligent. The words seemed as legitimate as the smile.”
“I was delighted,” Sheila said. “So were they. So was she.” The show would air three weeks later, a day after the one-year anniversary of the day Gerald Ford had been sworn into office.
That Sunday, August 10, 1975, the Fords had flown to Vail. Everyone was excited to see Betty’s television debut, and that evening, she and Jerry, along with Don Rumsfeld, Press Secretary Ron Nessen, and some friends from Vail, all gathered around the television in the living room of Dick Bass’s house.
The ticktock-ticktock signature sound of the 60 Minutes broadcast began, and then Morley Safer appeared. “Elizabeth Ann Bloomer was her name when she was born in Chicago fifty-seven years ago and grew up in Grand Rapids,” he began.
Safer gave a brief synopsis of her life up to marrying a congressman—without mentioning him by name—and moving to Washington. “Then followed more than twenty years of housewifery and the obscurity that comes of living in the shadow of a politician. Well, a year ago this weekend, Jerry and Betty Ford found themselves in the unsought position of president and first lady. When we went to the White House to chat with Betty Ford, we expected to find, quite honestly, a rather bland and predictable political wife. We found instead an open woman with a mind of her own, prepared to talk about anything. No taboos.”
Then, there she was, from head to shoulders filling up the entire screen, her reddish-brown hair perfectly coiffed, her eyes sparkling, looking equal parts glamorous model and woman next door.
“I told my husband if we have to go to the White House, ‘Okay, I will go,’ ” Betty said. “ ‘But I’m going as myself. And it’s too late to change my pattern. And if they don’t like it, then they’ll just have to throw me out.’ ”
It was a wonderful beginning. Safer asked her about the difficulties of being a political wife.
“I had twenty-six years of experience as the wife of a congressman,” she said, noting that she had learned a bit in all that time. “You know, I wasn’t sitting around being a dummy.”
In an effort to probe deeper, Safer asked, “But would you advise your daughter to marry a politician?”
“That’s a hard question,” Betty answered as she broke into a smile.
“Would you advise against it?” Safer queried.
“No, I would not advise her against marrying a politician,” Betty said, her lips pressed together, with a slight uptick at the edges, just short of a smile. “I wouldn’t pick one out for her though,” she quickly added with a laugh.
It was terrific. Betty was sitting with perfect posture, as she always did, but she’d draped her arm casually on the back of the overstuffed yellow sofa, which made her come across like she was having a spontaneous chat with a neighbor. And even when Safer began asking more personal questions, Betty wasn’t ruffled at all.
He asked about the political pressures on a marriage and even went so far as to ask if she worried about her husband philandering with “some of the attractions in this city.”
“I have perfect faith in my husband,” she said. “And he really doesn’t have time for outside entertainment.” She paused, and then, with a glint in her eyes and a coy smile, she quipped, “Because I keep him busy.”
Jerry grabbed a small pillow from the sofa and, suppressing an embarrassed smile, tossed it at her. He hadn’t expected his wife to discuss their sex life on national television.
Safer addressed her admission that she’d seen a psychiatrist. “I found it very helpful,” she said without shame.
They talked about her outspokenness on the ERA and how she would continue to work toward getting it passed, and on her formula for a successful marriage.
“It shouldn’t be fifty-fifty. It should instead be seventy-thirty, with each side giving seventy and expecting thirty in return . . . and when you’re going overboard like that, trying to please each other, you can’t help but be happy.”
He tried to get her to expose problems in the marriage. What did they fight over?
Only “very minor details,” she admitted. Most disagreements were “probably because I was late.”
Money? “No, we never had any money to fight over,” she retorted with yet another engaging smile.
And what kind of influence did she have on her husband? Betty acknowledged that, yes, she had urged him to put a woman in a Cabinet position, and he had named Carla Hills to be US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but she was also working on another.
“If I can get a woman on the Supreme Court bench, then I’ll feel I would have accomplished a great deal.”
Safer noted that Betty had spoken out about subjects that were considered taboo for the wife of a president, such as abortion. Before he could finish his thought, she interjected, “Well, if you’re asked a question, you have to be honest, exactly how you feel. And I feel very strongly that it was the best thing in the world when the Supreme Court voted to legalize abortion, and, in my words, bring it out of the backwoods and into the hospitals where it belonged. It was a great, great decision.”
And what about people living together before they’re married? “Well, they are, aren’t they?” Betty replied with a laugh. Her candor was so refreshing and yet startling at the same time. No first lady had ever appeared on television like this before.
Then came a zinger. “What if Susan Ford came to you and said, ‘Mother, I’m having an affair’?”
There was ever so slight a pause before she replied, “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s a perfectly normal human being, like all young girls.”
Uh-oh. Everyone in the living room in Vail took a deep breath.
Betty went on, “If she wanted to continue it, I would certainly counsel or advise her on the subject. And I’d want to know pretty much about the young man she was having the affair with.”
Oh dear.
“In some cases,” Betty added, “perhaps there would be less divorce.”
Next, Morley Safer turned to the issue of drugs, and whether she worried about her own children “going wrong” with drugs.
“We’ve brought them up with a certain moral value,” she said, but added, “I’m not saying that they haven’t tried it, because I’m sure they’ve all probably tried marijuana.”
The wife of the president of the United States had just admitted her children had probably dabbled in an illegal substance. Oh my.
“Would Betty Bloomer have been the kind of girl who would have experimented with marijuana?” Safer asked.
“Oh, I’m sure I probably, when I was growing up, at their age, I probably would have been interested to see what the effect . . . I never would have gone into it as a habit or anything like that. It’s the type of thing young people have to experience, like your first beer or your first cigarette, something like that.”
Safer seemed like he could hardly believe this was the first lady of the United States, and he attempted to make that point: Wasn’t it unusual for her to be speaking out on all these previously “forbidden” issues?
Betty, full of confidence, almost defiant, interjected, “But also, didn’t the fact that I had the cancer operation and the publicity of that save a lot of people’s lives?”
Safer had to admit that was true. “Was that a conscious decision?” he asked.
“Definitely,” Betty said. “I felt that if I had it, many other women had it. Because I had no idea about it whatsoever, and it came about as a complete surprise. One day”—she snapped her fingers—“like that. And the next day, I was in the hospital. And I thought there are women all over the country like me, and if I don’t make this public, then their lives will be gone. They’re in jeopardy.”
Betty professed that it was her faith in God that carried her through the difficult times in her life, and acknowledged proudly that both she and the president prayed every night before going to sleep. Finally, Safer asked about the current state of her health.
Without hesitation, she said she’d never felt better. “Absolutely marvelous.” But that didn’t mean she was going to live forever. “Some people go three years, some people go four years, but . . . I’m convinced in my own mind that I’m completely cured.”
And what about that pinched nerve? That, she admitted, still gave her trouble, but “You know, everybody can’t be perfect,” Betty said. “You have to suffer a little to appreciate life.”
And with that, the segment ended. Betty looked over at Jerry and said, “Well?”
“I think you just cost me ten million votes,” President Ford deadpanned. And then, breaking into a smile, “No, I think you cost me twenty million votes.”
“Nonsense!” Don Rumsfeld chimed. “She won you thirty million votes!”
The morning after the interview, “All hell broke loose,” recalled Patti Matson, the first lady’s assistant press secretary. “Her exact words, as quoted in the newspapers, were startling to many and outrageous to others. If a person hadn’t seen the interview in person, there was no context, no understanding that her statements were in direct response to specific questions. Without seeing it, many wouldn’t have heard the tone of her answers or seen her soft demeanor.”
Indeed, the New York Times declared, “Betty Ford said today that she wouldn’t be surprised if her daughter Susan, eighteen years old, decided to have an affair . . . Mrs. Ford suggested that in general, premarital relations with the right partner might lower the divorce rate.”
And with that, the outcry began. “My stock with the public did not go up,” Betty recalled. “It went down, rapidly.” The White House was inundated with letters, wires, and phone calls, two-thirds of them against her. “The furor after 60 Minutes terrified me. I was afraid I might have become a real political liability to Jerry.”
Indeed, Morley Safer acknowledged that “Even though Mrs. Ford had said more or less the same things in print, the reaction to her saying them on television caused a national stir, and it brought the biggest mail response we’ve ever had.”
More than half the letters were in this vein: “I don’t know which was more tasteless, your questions or her answers.” Another viewer wrote, “Your appalling interview with Betty Ford was the last straw. It sickens me to know that a person with such . . . values is our first lady.”
But there was quite a bit of mail like this: “What a woman! Jerry sure is a lucky guy to have her by his side.”
A woman in Dallas wrote: “Because of her, I just might vote Republican for the first time in my life.” And still another: “Regardless of who is elected president in ’76, I move Betty Ford be retained as first lady.”
Feelings at the White House were mixed too. “I had a little trouble with Donald and Dick,” Betty said, referring to Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. “They were unhappy about my 60 Minutes interview.”
Indeed, despite Rumsfeld’s initial quip that Betty had won her husband “thirty million votes,” the segment had caused so much controversy that Rumsfeld and Cheney had brought up the subject with President Ford.
“We think Betty needs to lay low for a while,” Cheney advised. “Do you think you could get her to tone it down?”
President Ford looked at his two aides and said, “If you want Betty to tone it down, then you tell her.”
When White House press secretary Ron Nessen issued a statement saying the president “had long ceased to be perturbed by his wife’s remarks,” that caused yet another round of critiques.
It was decided that an acknowledgment letter be sent by Betty to everyone who responded negatively to her appearance. Sheila Weidenfeld and Betty worked on it together to make sure it had just the right tone. The letter would not be revealed directly to the press, but Weidenfeld’s plan was that some ordinary citizen would pass it along. Eventually, one recipient handed it over to the New York Times, which printed it in its entirety.
Thank you for writing about my appearance on the “60 Minutes” interview. The concern which inspired you to share your views is appreciated.
I wish it were possible for us to sit down together and talk, one to another. I consider myself a responsible parent. I know I am a loving one. We have raised our four children in a home that believes in and practices the enduring values of morality and personal integrity.
As every mother and father knows, these are not easy times to be a parent. Our convictions are continually being questioned and tested by the fads and fancies of the moment. I believe our values to be eternal, and I hope I have instilled them in our children.
We have come to this sharing outlook through communication, not coercion. I want my children to know that their concerns—their doubts and their difficulties—whatever they may be, can be discussed with the two people in this world who care the most—their mother and father.
On “60 Minutes,” the emotion of my words spoke to the need of this communication, rather than the specific issues we discussed.
My husband and I have lived twenty-six years of faithfulness in marriage. I do not believe in premarital relations, but I realize many in today’s generation do not share my views. However, this must never cause us to withdraw the love, the counseling, and the understanding that they may need now, more than ever before.
This is the essence of responsible parenthood. It is difficult to adequately express one’s personal convictions in a fifteen-minute interview. I hope our lives will say more than words about our dedication to honor, to integrity, to humanity, and to God.
You and I, they and I, have no quarrels.
Sincerely, Betty Ford
Sheila Weidenfeld would refer to it later as “the perfect letter.” Indeed, as soon as it became public, the tide turned. After conducting yet another poll, the New York Daily News declared “Keep Speaking Out, Betty!” When asked “Should Betty Ford have aired her views on premarital sex, pot, and abortion?”—60 percent responded “yes”; 32 percent, “no”; and 8 percent, “don’t know.”
The reaction to Mrs. Ford’s remarks appeared to depend very much on the age, education, and income of the respondent. Among people under age thirty-five, 80 percent approved of her, as did those who had college degrees and earned more than $20,000 in annual income.
Amid the furor, to show she had no regrets or blame, Betty sent Morley Safer a photo of the two of them taken during the interview. She inscribed it:
If there are any questions you forgot to ask—I’m grateful.
Sincerely, Betty Ford