Election Night, 1976
That evening, Betty and Jerry invited a group of close friends and family to watch the election returns in the White House residential quarters. Susan, Steve, Jack, Mike, and Gayle were there, along with Clara and President Ford’s brother Tom; Grand Rapids friends Peter and Joan Secchia; former major league baseball player and popular television sportscaster Joe Garagiola, who had played a big role in the campaign; Senator and Mrs. Robert Dole; Senator Jacob Javits of New York; singer Pearl Bailey; as well as assorted staff and others who came and went as the evening progressed.
It was an informal atmosphere, with people gathered around several television sets, sitting in chairs, on sofas, or wandering from room to room. Betty and Pearl Bailey sat together cross-legged on the floor in front of one of the televisions for a while, like two young schoolgirls.
The early evening brought a sense of excitement. There was a feeling that President Ford had narrowed the gap so much on Governor Carter that he might win—that he could win. In those days, the Democratic states were red and the Republican states were blue on the television electoral map, and when a state would go blue, Garagiola would call out, “Here we go, Prez! Here we go!” He was the head cheerleader. “Go blue!”
Then around eleven thirty, the mood started to change. President Ford took two calls within that next hour, and the news was not good. At one twenty in the morning, NBC declared that Carter had won New York, and shortly thereafter, Texas went red too. It wasn’t looking good, but there was still a narrow path to enough electoral college votes for victory. At roughly three o’clock, Dick Cheney and Bob Teeter, a pollster, came up and talked privately with Ford. The president had all but lost his voice, so he asked Greg Willard to gather everyone together.
Cheney and Teeter explained that the way it was going, the way the numbers were shaping up, the tally of electoral college votes was simply too close to call; the final totals in the key states of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Hawaii likely wouldn’t be known for several more hours. At three twenty, Ford realized that “there wasn’t a darn thing that I could do,” so he went to bed.
Betty couldn’t go to sleep until she knew for sure that they’d lost. She stayed up with Susan, Mike and Gayle, Steve, and a few others. Susan was sprawled out on the floor, and the rest of them sat in chairs gathered around the television when, at 3:38 a.m., NBC news anchor John Chancellor announced, “We project that James Earl Carter will be the thirty-ninth president of the United States.”
No one said a word. Even though they knew it was probably coming, to hear it announced was like a stake in the heart.
After a few moments, Betty turned to Mike and Greg Willard, who were both sitting to her right, and asked, “Do you think we should wake him up?”
“No,” they answered in unison. “Let him sleep.”
At that point, NBC cut to a live video feed of Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia. Betty looked at the television and said, “Governor, I hope you know what you’re getting in for.”
Everyone chuckled. Leave it to Betty to lighten the mood. And then she said, “You know, I had the craziest thing happen to me when I was in Pittsburgh . . .” She began to tell a funny story from the campaign trail, and suddenly everyone was laughing hysterically. As soon as she finished, Susan piped up, “Oh, Mother, you won’t believe what happened to me in this one parade . . .” Soon it was this cacophony of everyone telling stories of funny things that had happened during the campaign.
Finally, about four thirty, Betty went into the bedroom to change into her nightgown and robe. When she came back out, she said, “Okay, everyone, it’s going to be a busy day. Let’s all get some sleep.”
She was standing in the archway between the West Sitting Hall and the Center Hall, and Mike, Gayle, Steve, and Susan got up and walked over to hug her good night.
They’d invited Greg Willard to spend the night on the third floor, and as he walked toward the elevator, he made eye contact with Betty. With a despondent look on his face, he mouthed, “Good night.”
Mrs. Ford walked over to him, and he said, “Oh, Mrs. Ford, I’m so sorry. I really thought he was going to pull it out.”
Betty looked at him sternly, in a motherly way, grabbed him by the hands, and said, “Now, you listen to me, young man. When we walk out of here on January twentieth, we’re walking out with no regrets and many wonderful memories. We’ll walk out with our heads high, filled with pride, and you’re going to walk out with your head high along with us.”
She kissed him on the cheek and said, “Now, go get some sleep.”
That moment, Greg remembered, was “quintessential Betty Ford.” Of course she was disappointed at the loss, but she wasn’t going to dwell on it. “She could have been despondent, angry, or bitter; instead, she summoned that remarkable Betty Ford inner strength and focused squarely on the future.”
The day after the election, David Kennerly recalled, “was a day when more than a few tears were shed, among the family and those of us who were close to them. It was a tough loss.” To make things worse, President Ford could barely talk. And the press was waiting for him to give his concession speech.
Around eleven in the morning, President Ford was in the Oval Office with Dick Cheney and a couple of other staff members. He called the White House switchboard and asked them to get Governor Carter on the phone. When Carter answered, Ford whispered, “I can’t talk. I’m going to have Dick Cheney read my statement.”
Sitting in a chair across the room, on an extension, Dick Cheney read the president’s brief concession. It was official, but a press conference was scheduled for twelve fifteen.
At noon, Betty, Mike, Gayle, Jack, Steve, and Susan joined the president in the Oval Office.
“David,” Betty said to Kennerly, “I want a photo of all of us behind the desk, just like we did the day the president took the oath of office.”
Everyone was crying, and no one wanted a photo, but they weren’t going to turn down Mother. They gathered behind the desk, and no one could even force a smile. Betty turned to Jack, who was at her right, and grabbed him under the chin.
“Chin up, kid,” she said with a grin. “Look, there are worse things that could have happened.”
“That moment,” David Kennerly recalled, “was so indicative of her strength. She was holding everyone up. That photo is one of my all-time favorites.” In the sequence of photos that follow, everyone is smiling—they are forced smiles—trying to be as brave as Mother.
It was time to go to the press room. Jerry reached out to Betty and whispered, “I can’t read the concession speech. Will you do it for me?”
She looked into his eyes, so filled with disappointment and sadness. It was the first election he’d ever lost. “Of course I will,” she said.
The family walked out the door of the Oval Office and paraded somberly down the colonnade past the Cabinet Room, turned right, and entered the door to the press room.
President Ford went first, and the rest followed. As they stepped onto the small stage, gathering around the podium, the members of the media applauded.
President Ford stepped forward to the microphone. “It’s perfectly obvious,” he said, his voice crackling and hoarse, “my voice isn’t up to par, and I shouldn’t be making very many comments, and I won’t. But I did want Betty, Mike, Jack, Susan, Steve, and Gayle to come down with me and to listen while Betty read a statement that I have sent to Governor Carter.”
His eyes were sad, but he gathered strength from having his family around him.
“I do want to express on a personal basis,” he continued, “my appreciation and that of my family for the friendship all of us have had, and after Betty reads the statement that was sent to Governor Carter by me, I think that all of us, Betty and the children and myself, would like to just come down and shake hands and express our appreciation personally.”
He paused and then said, “Now let me call on the real spokesman of the family.” Behind him, Susan, Mike, Jack, and Steve broke into laughter as he turned to his wife and said, “Betty.”
Laughing at that unexpected introduction, Betty stepped up to the podium and kissed her husband on the lips.
It had been just three years since they’d first shocked the public by kissing each other on the lips in front of the entire world when Jerry had been nominated to be President Nixon’s vice presidential appointee. There’d been countless public displays of affection since then—for they had bared their personal struggles and triumphs with the country. They didn’t know how to hide their emotions. With the Fords, what you saw was who they were.
Dressed in a gray suit with a white high-collared, feminine blouse, her hair and makeup perfect, Betty stepped up to the microphone as Jerry moved aside. Don’t show any emotion, she thought to herself. Not for the country’s sake, but for the family’s.
She looked out to the audience of press, and in her soft, soothing voice, she said, “The president asked me to tell you that he telephoned President-elect Carter a short time ago and congratulated him on his victory. The president also wants to thank all those thousands of people who worked so hard on his behalf, and the millions who supported him with their votes. It’s been the greatest honor of my husband’s life to serve his fellow Americans during two of the most difficult years in our history. The president urges all Americans to join him in giving your united support to President-elect Carter as he prepares to assume his new responsibilities.”
As Betty spoke, the news cameras zoomed in on President Ford’s face. Watching Betty read the statement, his eyes conveyed the heart-wrenching grief he felt for not having been able to sway the country. But in his demeanor, you couldn’t help but notice how proud he was of his beloved Betty for her courage in that moment.
And then Betty read the telegram. Her voice was clear, strong, and deliberate, and on her face was a smile filled with pride.
Dear Jimmy, it is apparent now that you have won our long and intense struggle for the presidency. I congratulate you on your victory. As one who has been honored to serve the people of this great land both in Congress and as president, I believe that we must now put divisions of the campaign behind us and unite the country once again in the common pursuit of peace and prosperity. Although there will continue to be disagreements over the best means to use in pursuing our goals, I want to assure you that you have my complete and wholehearted support as you take the oath of office this January. I also pledge to you that I and all members of my administration will do all that we can to insure that you begin your term as smoothly and effectively as possible. May God bless you and your family as you undertake your new responsibilities. Signed, Jerry Ford. Thank you very much.
The audience of press clapped, and then the president, Betty, and their family walked out among them, shaking hands, chatting with the reporters. It was an odd relationship between the political family in the fishbowl and the press, whose job it was to expose everything about them. And while each member of the Ford family had his or her quibbles with members of the media, the patriarch of the family had set an example by respecting them for the job they’d done. As Betty smiled graciously and shook hands, she wasn’t focusing on what had gone wrong, or how they might have done things differently—she was already looking ahead to the future and the pleasures of private life, thinking to herself: All I have to do is get us all through the next three months, until the day we leave the White House.
Betty had put up a good front when she’d given her husband’s concession speech, but as the days went on, she became somewhat melancholy at Jerry’s having lost the election after twenty-eight years of faithful service to the country. She thought the American people had made a big mistake. In a sense, she was out of office too. “People with low self-esteem crave reassurance from the outside world,” she wrote later. She realized she was one of those people, and in her two and a half short years as first lady of the United States, she’d received about as much reassurance as any human being could get. Sure, Betty had her critics, but she’d been voted one of the most admired women in America. And the best part of it all was that she was just being herself. She hadn’t changed to fit what she thought people wanted her to be. She’d just been Betty, and that’s who people loved.
In an article for the Evansville Press, writer Judy Clabes summed up the nation’s adoration of Betty Ford with an article entitled “We’ll Miss You, Betty Ford.” It began, “You didn’t ask to be first lady. But when it was thrust on you, you were there, doing it up right when we needed you most.
“You were frank, honest, open, natural—all the things we had begun to think first ladies couldn’t be. But most of all, you were human. You made us more comfortable with ourselves.”
The article went on to describe the controversy she’d stirred up, and that while people didn’t always agree with her, “we couldn’t help but love you for the way you were making us feel again.” Clabes wrote about how Betty was obviously a devoted mother and loving wife—“you kissed and hugged your husband for all the world to see”—and yet she was her own person, always expressing her own mind.
“You made us proud, Betty Ford . . . it was we who prayed for you when we learned of your pending mastectomy. But it was you who gave us strength. You were open, forthright, unashamed, courageous—giving hope to thousands of women who had been through that hell, saving countless others from a similar fate.”
The article reminded readers of Betty dancing the bump with Tony Orlando and the “Betty Ford for President” buttons. “We’ll miss your unrehearsed laugh, your warmth, your steadying influence . . . at the time when we needed you most, you were almost too good to be true. But that’s the best part of all. We did believe again, and you didn’t let us down.”
The day before the inauguration, Betty realized this would be her last opportunity to say goodbye to the White House employees and staff who had, for the past two and a half years, day in and day out, made her life so tolerable, so easy, and, if she really thought about it, some of the best years she’d ever had.
Photographers David Kennerly and Eddie Adams from Time, who was doing a piece on President Ford’s last day in office, were walking around with Betty and a few of her staff members as she poked her head into offices, saying goodbye. It was all very informal.
“We walked by the Cabinet Room, which has always been—or had been certainly up until that point—a very male domain,” Kennerly recalled.
Suddenly Betty stopped and, with a look of mischief, said, “I’ve always wanted to dance on the Cabinet Room table.”
Kennerly was the only one in that little group who didn’t think she was kidding.
“Well, Mrs. Ford,” he said, “this is your last chance.”
She took her shoes off, and hopped up onto the table. “She was very fragile looking, but as a former dancer, she was extremely agile,” Kennerly remembered.
Taking her place in the center of the table, in one fluid movement, she crossed her right leg over the left, foot flexed standing on the toe, just as her left hand went to her hip, and her right arm stretched to the ceiling. It was a pose rehearsed over a lifetime, prepared for this spontaneous finale.
David Kennerly captured it in three or four short clicks, and then Betty Ford brushed her hands together and said, “I think that’ll about wrap it up for this place.”
Inauguration Day, 1977
The schedule for Inauguration Day was planned nearly to the second, and on this day, Betty knew she couldn’t be late. They’d set an alarm, but Betty and Jerry both awoke at dawn. They began the morning with what had become their normal routines: Jerry eating his breakfast in the dining room as he read the newspaper, while Betty took hers in the sitting room. Jerry knew that Betty didn’t like to talk before ten o’clock if she “had any choice in the matter,” and today, of all days, was one in which they both respected the other’s need to be alone in thought.
The first order of the day was to greet the Carters at the White House for coffee before the ride to the Capitol, and Betty was anxious to get it over with. The tradition for the outgoing president and first lady to host the couple that will be moving into the White House later the same day has got to be one of the most awkward, and emotional, social situations there is—especially when your successors have beaten you in a hard-fought campaign. But both Betty and her husband were the gracious hosts they’d always been. “We were all human beings, civilized, and the thing you want to do is be as pleasant as possible,” she wrote, and although she smiled for the obligatory photos, it was strained, and later, she would not be able to recall a word that was said.
When it was time to go, Betty put on her fur coat and walked arm in arm with her husband, still the president of the United States for one more hour, out the door to the North Portico. Pasting on yet another smile as they walked through the sea of photographers, she tried not to think about the fact that this was the last time they’d walk out these doors. Their life in the White House was over.
President Ford and President-elect Carter rode together to the Capitol in the presidential limousine, with the Secret Service in the follow-up car directly behind them. Third in line came Betty and Rosalynn Carter in their own car.
“I’m sure her thoughts are as deep and varied as mine, but, like most people, we don’t express them,” Mrs. Carter wrote in her memoir. Instead, they chatted about Camp David, where the Fords had just spent their last weekend.
“The food is so delicious there,” Betty said. “I’m going to have to go on a diet.”
She was gracious, but counting the minutes until the torturous obligation was over.
As they came out the west side of the Capitol, Betty looked out at the mass of people gathered at the bottom of the steps, cheering and clapping, and that’s when it hit hardest. She waved, forcing a smile. And then, as she and Jerry walked down the steps, their hands intertwined, it was all she could do to keep the tears from pouring out. It was so difficult. It just hurt.
“All our married life was being left there,” she wrote. “We were married, we went to Washington, looked for a place to live and found it, our children were born there, Jerry’s twenty-eight years of work had been there,” and now she felt like “the whole thing had just gone down the drain.”