Along with a full Secret Service detail, four staff members personally chosen by President and Mrs. Ford moved with them to Rancho Mirage, California: President Ford’s military aide, Bob Barrett; Greg Willard from the White House Advance Office; and Annie Grier and Joy Chiles from the Press Office. The four of them had been working tirelessly in the eighty days between the election and Inauguration Day to facilitate the Fords’ transition from the White House to their postpresidency life in the desert. There were myriad administrative complexities: organizing presidential papers; coordinating staff and facilities authorized by the General Services Administration; and sorting through millions of pages of documents and mementos to be preserved for the presidential library. Add to all this the personal aspects: boxing up clothes, furniture, and personal belongings not only from the White House but also things that had been put in storage when they moved out of 514 Crown View Drive two and a half years earlier.
After a few days in Pebble Beach, where President Ford played in the Bing Crosby Pro-Am golf tournament, the Fords flew to Houston for a benefit dinner in memory of famed NFL football coach Vince Lombardi, and finally arrived in Palm Springs on Friday, January 28. Plans were under way to build a home in Rancho Mirage, but in the interim, Jerry and Betty moved into a partially furnished $375,000 house they leased from Emily DeWare, a Texas heiress, in the exclusive gated hillside community of Thunderbird Heights. Some of the Fords’ furniture and a few personal effects went into the house, while the Secret Service set up a command post in a portion of the garage, surrounded by boxes of the Fords’ belongings piled from floor to ceiling.
The four staff members rented a bungalow on the Thunderbird Country Club grounds, just down the hill from the DeWare house. It had two tiny rooms with a kitchenette in the middle. For the next several weeks, the kitchenette served as the “Office of the Thirty-Eighth President of the United States.” It was so incongruous that, at times, the staff members would pause, look at one another, and burst out laughing: Wow, what a change from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! But if the change was sudden and drastic for them, it was even more so for Betty and the president. Within just a few days, the starkness of it all became palpable.
The Fords were living in the DeWare house on a narrow, isolated street. They couldn’t just walk down to the clubhouse and have lunch. They had to be driven to go anywhere—and that meant being driven by the Secret Service. They had a few friends in the desert and would attend sporadic black-tie galas. Occasionally, people would invite them over for dinner, but having the former president and first lady to dinner was an event—it wasn’t like the informal backyard barbecues they’d enjoyed with neighbors on Crown View Drive.
They hadn’t been in Rancho Mirage much more than a week before President Ford started traveling, while Betty was left to set up house and somehow fill her days. All through February and into March, the president was gone a great deal. There were speeches at universities, corporate boards trying to entice him to join, and more invitations to charity events and golf tournaments than he could possibly accept. It was not the retirement Betty Ford had envisioned.
“Those of us on the staff immediately recognized how lonely it was for them—especially for Mrs. Ford,” Greg Willard recalled. “It was inescapable how blasted lonely it was out there. And, as their staff, we felt this odd sense of responsibility to somehow fix it. Unfortunately, there simply wasn’t a good fix.”
Everyone around the Fords, even the Secret Service agents, was feeling it. They all wanted to get Betty out and about. On one occasion, with the president away on an overnight trip, Greg stayed back in Rancho Mirage and stopped by the DeWare house to see Betty.
“Mrs. Ford, a bunch of us have been talking about this new movie A Star Is Born with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. Come on and go with us to see it tonight.”
“Yeah! That sounds fun! I’ll go!” she said.
Greg bought bags of popcorn for everyone, and as the group sat there in the darkness, he kept reflecting on how remarkable the situation was. Just a few months ago, when she was first lady, living in the White House, there were so many invitations; so many people who wanted every moment of her time. Now here she was, sitting in a dark movie theater, surrounded by only her husband’s personal aide and her Secret Service agents. Yesterday’s news.
The Fords had been in Rancho Mirage about six weeks when an opportunity for a trip to New York City popped up. The Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship had asked Jerry to give a speech to a group of trustees and major contributors. Both Jerry and Betty were in contract negotiations with NBC for some television appearances, and several top publishing houses were bidding for their memoirs. It was an ideal time to meet with the various parties to iron out the details.
A year earlier, during a campaign stop in New York City, Betty had attended a performance of Broadway’s latest hit A Chorus Line. Directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett, the show was an emotional glimpse into the struggles and triumphs of a group of dancers auditioning for a Broadway musical, and with its powerful music by Marvin Hamlisch, it had gone on to win nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical of 1976. When Betty first saw the show, she was flooded with memories of those heady days in New York City when she, too, had visions of becoming a professional dancer. She had been wanting to see it again, and for Jerry to see it, and now was the perfect chance.
Betty called the staff office to see if tickets to the show could be arranged for her and Jerry. She then asked, “Who’s going on the trip with us?”
“Annie Grier and I are scheduled to work the trip,” Greg Willard replied.
“Well, then, let’s get four tickets. You and Annie are going with us. You two need to see it.”
In New York, Harper & Row Publishing offered Betty and Jerry a joint contract for an estimated $1 million to write their memoirs, separately but equally. No previous president and first lady had ever made a similar two-book deal that placed their experiences as public figures on an equal basis. Trevor Armbrister, an author and former Saturday Evening Post reporter, would help President Ford with his book, while Betty selected Chris Chase, a female freelance writer suggested by the publisher to assist with writing her autobiography. Betty’s book was scheduled to be published before Jerry’s, in the fall of 1978.
The evening of Monday, March 21, the sold-out crowd at the Shubert Theatre was getting restless. It was eight minutes past showtime, the house lights were still on, and there was a group of prime middle orchestra seats unoccupied in the otherwise full theater. Suddenly there was a commotion in the back. The entire audience turned to see what was going on. As soon as they saw President and Mrs. Ford walking down the aisle, pandemonium erupted throughout the theater.
Everyone stood up and started cheering. “Bravo! Bravo!”
President Ford smiled and nodded, clearly appreciating the raucous ovation. But it was Betty who was taking it all in—her face was filled with pure, unmitigated joy. You could see it in her eyes; it was sheer happiness. After weeks of quiet loneliness, to have this kind of reception was like a shot of adrenaline to her soul.
People were reaching out their hands, and while the agents tried to gently push them back, Betty and Jerry graciously offered their hands in return as they made their way down the aisle. As soon as they were seated, with their two guests on either side of them, the agents took their seats in the row behind.
Finally, the lights went down, and the show began.
Onstage, a group of dancers, some dressed in leotards, others in street clothes, were following instructions during an audition: “Five, six, seven, eight . . .”
From the moment the dancers came onstage, it was as if Betty was reliving those months in New York City in her twenties when she was one of those idealistic girls on the stage; when her only dream was to be chosen by Martha Graham as one of her principal dancers.
Betty could no more hold still in her seat than she could not breathe. As the dancers glided across the stage, stood on their toes, and kicked their legs up to their foreheads, her own feet, in designer heels, pointed and flexed as if she were silently dancing the numbers right along with them.
Greg and Annie glanced at Betty from time to time and couldn’t help but smile at the glee on her face. For six long weeks, those around the Fords had wondered, How do we fix this? How can we cure her loneliness? For this night, at least, the answer was right here at the Shubert Theatre on West Forty-Fourth Street. It was as if this play had been written for her, about her.
She sat there mesmerized. The story line was about a group of dancers in their twenties and thirties, sharing the heartbreaks of their childhoods and how dance had saved them, baring their souls to the director whose decision would change the course of their lives.
One girl sang how dance was her escape; how going to the ballet made her forget her worries. Betty listened intently to every lyric, and every so often she’d turn to look at her husband to make sure he was enjoying it as much as she’d hoped he would. He was. About halfway through the show, a female dancer named Val began singing a song called “Dance Ten, Looks Three,” in which she described with shocking frankness how she had undergone plastic surgery to enhance her “tits and ass” in order to get more jobs.
There were quiet gasps in the theater. Everyone knew President and Mrs. Ford were in the audience, and they weren’t sure how this was going to go over, given the former first lady’s mastectomy. The president sat there, watching, listening. Suddenly Betty started slapping her leg in time to the rhythm, laughing, and moving her shoulders up and down. It put Jerry immediately at ease, and when he broke into a beaming smile, the rest of the audience relaxed.
When a line in the song referenced how the new breasts had enhanced the girl’s sex life, Betty turned to Jerry, laughing, with a naughty glint in her eye. She loved it! And she loved that it made her husband blush.
Nearly two hours in, at the very end of the musical, the choreographer asked the dancers, “If today were the day you had to stop dancing, how would you feel?”
There was a pause, and actress Priscilla Lopez, as Diana Morales, her voice pure and poignant, began singing, “What I Did for Love.” Betty reached over and clasped her husband’s hand, tears welling in her eyes as the opening lyrics began.
It felt as if she were singing to Betty and Jerry; as if the song had been written just for them, just for this moment. The past three years had been an emotional roller coaster. They’d landed in the White House—not what they’d wanted at all, but they’d thrived, and Betty had loved it. And then they’d worked so hard to be reelected, only to lose in a heartbreaking defeat. She was almost afraid to look at her husband, for fear they’d both break down.
The song was all about remembering what the dancers had been through, how they’d danced their hearts out, purely out of love, and looking back, they had no regrets.
Betty and Jerry turned and looked into each other’s eyes, fighting the tears, as their hands squeezed so tightly, it was as if they were embracing.
As soon as the curtain fell, the entire audience rose to its feet with applause.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Betty was clapping with all her might. “Wasn’t it wonderful, Jerry?” Her entire being was sparkling.
“It was, Betty. It was perfect!” the president replied with a huge smile.
Suddenly Betty had an idea. She turned to Greg Willard. “Do you think we could go backstage?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Greg said. He’d been on their staff long enough to know exactly what she wanted and how to make it happen. “I’ll take care of it.”
They made their way backstage, and Betty was in heaven. She was beaming with joy as she grasped the hands of the dancers and told them how wonderful they were, how much she and the president had enjoyed the performance.
“The choreography was marvelous!” she exclaimed. “Now show me, how did you do that one move?”
And then the dancers were moving their arms and counting “five, six, seven, eight,” and Betty was moving right along with them. This was her language, and she was just so happy. It was the happiest she’d been in months, and she didn’t want the evening to end.
Meanwhile, several of their Secret Service agents were waiting outside with the motorcade, wondering what was going on to delay the scheduled departure. Agent Marty Venker got on the radio.
“Follow-up—Venker. Passkey’s ready to go, but Pinafore is definitely not.”
Everyone knew what that meant. No one was leaving until Betty was ready to go.
Several days later, back in Rancho Mirage, a bulky package was delivered to the DeWare house gate. The Secret Service agents carefully examined the package and its contents. Inside was a VCR tape, along with a handwritten note from a seventh-grade boy in Pennsylvania.
The agents brought the package to the staff to decide whether the Fords should see it—you never knew what kind of crazy stuff people might send. Greg Willard examined the package and was intrigued by the young boy’s heartfelt note. He went into the living room, inserted the video into the VCR player, and pressed Play.
The boy had created a tribute to President and Mrs. Ford, splicing together video clips of them from a network television broadcast during President Carter’s inauguration. Included were Marine One, the presidential helicopter, lifting off from the Capitol with the Fords aboard, followed by a series of clips of the two of them at Andrews Air Force Base, and finally, Air Force One taking off to deliver them to California. In place of the network audio commentary, the boy had dubbed a different soundtrack: it was “What I Did for Love,” the song from the musical they’d just seen in New York.
Greg was gobsmacked. That song! What are the odds?! It was a short video, just long enough for the entire song to play, just long enough to tug at your heartstrings.
Betty was outside on the patio reading, and when she came in, Greg said quietly, “Mrs. Ford, if you have a minute, I think you want to look at this.”
“What is it?”
He handed her the note and said, “You won’t believe this, but the video’s background music is that wonderful song from A Chorus Line—the one you and the president loved so much.”
Mrs. Ford looked at him in disbelief. “ ‘What I Did for Love’?”
“Yes,” Greg said. “It’s really quite moving.”
“Well, yes, I’d like to see it.”
They sat down together on the sofa and watched the video. Neither of them spoke, as the cascade of emotions welled up inside.
When the president returned later that afternoon, Betty said, “Jerry, you’ve got to see this . . .”
From that point on, “What I Did for Love” was their song.
The first week in April 1977, President Ford had a five-day stint as a visiting professor of political science at his alma mater, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, so he and Betty used it as an opportunity to spend the following Easter weekend with friends and family in Grand Rapids. They were both looking forward to a relaxing weekend surrounded by people who knew them from way back—and hosting a dinner party for those who had helped raise money for the White House swimming pool—but out of the blue, as happened so frequently, Betty’s pinched nerve flared up, leaving her in severe pain the entire weekend. Sunday morning, she managed to attend the Easter service at Grace Episcopal Church—where she and Jerry had been married—but by the end of the service, she was in such excruciating pain, she could barely move.
Jerry was scheduled to give a speech in Louisville, Kentucky, a couple of days later, but they decided to return first to Rancho Mirage. The Fords were traveling on a military jet, which stopped in Oklahoma City to refuel. During the stop, everyone got off the plane to stretch, but Betty didn’t move from her seat. One of the agents stayed with her, and no one asked why she remained on the aircraft. Finally, they took off for the last leg back to the West Coast.
As the aircraft prepared to land, two staff members took seats near Betty in the front cabin, where she had been sitting the entire flight. They couldn’t help but notice that she had her right hand clasped tightly over her left hand. As the plane came to a stop, Betty pulled away her right hand, and they could see a huge welt next to her wedding ring, where she had been squeezing her left hand. They didn’t say anything—it wasn’t their place—but their antennae were up. What is going on?
It had been a long day of travel, and it was late, so the staff members returned to their apartment, while the agents took President and Mrs. Ford back to the DeWare house. Greg Willard had just unpacked and was ready to plow into a backlog of paperwork, when the phone rang. It was the president.
“Greg, can you come down here to the house. Mother and I need to talk to you.”
He could tell by his boss’s tone of voice that it involved something very urgent.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be right there, Mr. President.” When Greg walked in, Jerry and Betty were sitting in the living room, Betty in a nightgown and robe. She was wincing in pain, her eyes weary, and it was obvious she was in agony.
“As you can see, Mother is in terrible pain,” Jerry said. “We want to talk about surgery.”
Betty looked up, her voice a whisper. “I can’t live like this. I can’t do it. I know the risks of surgery; I’ve considered them before. I want to proceed down the surgery path.”
“Can you look into it, Greg?” the president asked. “Find out what we need to do?”
“I’ll call Dr. Lukash, sir,” Greg replied. “He’ll be the best one to guide us and get the process started quickly. I’ll call him at the White House now.”
Dr. Lukash had stayed on with President Carter as the White House physician, and within thirty minutes, he was aware of Betty’s situation and her desire to consider surgery. Lukash immediately contacted the medical staff at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage.
The next day, Greg Willard and the Secret Service agents met privately with administrators at the hospital to make the necessary arrangements. The medical team decided that Betty first needed to have a myelogram: a diagnostic procedure in which contrast dye would be injected into her spinal column, followed by multiple CT scans of her spinal region to try to determine what was causing her severe pain. The procedure was scheduled for the following morning.
Betty arrived at the hospital bright and early and was prepped for what was expected to be a routine, hour-long procedure. President Ford remained at their residence, expecting that his wife would be back home for lunch. The procedure itself was uneventful, and when it was over, the doctors told Betty everything went fine.
“We’ll examine the results and keep you under observation for a few hours,” they told her. “You should be able to go home by early afternoon.”
By early afternoon, however, it was clear that Betty Ford wasn’t going anywhere. She’d become very ill. Greg Willard recalled somberly, “By late afternoon, she was clearly not well; she was struggling.”
President Ford was summoned to the hospital and was rushed immediately to Eisenhower by his Secret Service agents. Something was very wrong. Betty had become noncommunicative, extremely nauseous, and was experiencing tremors throughout her body.
The doctors huddled together, studying her charts, and concluded finally, “We have to admit her. She’s having a very bad reaction to the myelogram dye. It happens in about five percent of people, and the dye just needs to work its way through the system.” According to the lead physician, “She probably won’t be able to go home this evening. Out of an abundance of caution, we’ll admit her and keep her here overnight.”
President Ford had never seen his wife in such bad shape, and everyone was very concerned. This was supposed to have been a routine diagnostic procedure meant to determine whether she could have the surgery that she hoped would ease her constant pain.
She was taken to a hospital room that had a small connected anteroom with a sofa. That evening, a very worried Greg Willard slept there, in what would turn out to be his first of several overnight stays. The president returned home but called repeatedly during the night to get the latest reports.
Betty slept some that night and seemed to be a little more comfortable; nevertheless, she remained noncommunicative, and the tremors continued.
The medical team continued to administer IV fluids, still convinced that once the dye was flushed from her system, it was just a matter of time before the adverse reaction would pass. President Ford’s visits to Eisenhower continued with increasing urgency. His appearance was grim; he felt helpless. As he would leave the house for Eisenhower, the agents would call ahead to the anteroom to report that he was on his way. As soon as he reached the hospital, he would receive the latest medical update before proceeding into Betty’s room. The doctors kept assuring him it was just a bad reaction, but that still didn’t address the obvious question: When was it going to stop?
So far, the president’s staff had managed to keep the hospitalization quiet; no press had gotten wind of it. But they knew it was just a matter of time before something leaked. By the second night, a new fear surfaced that Betty’s breast cancer may have metastasized to her brain. The medical team decided she should undergo a brain scan to see if that horrific possibility might explain her symptoms. To make certain the scan and her movements within the hospital remained totally private, the procedure was performed in the middle of the night, with just medical personnel, Secret Service agents, and staff huddled in the cramped radiology control room.
As the scans got under way, one of the group quietly asked the radiologists, “Tell us what you’re not looking for? What is it we all hope not to see?” The response was stark: “It just doesn’t make sense that she’s having this prolonged reaction to a myelogram. What we do not want to see are differentiated shades within areas of the brain scans. The concern is that there might be lesions—metastatic tumors or a benign mass—that have developed on her brain that could be causing this.”
The results of the scans turned out to be a relief—no lesions, no metastatic breast cancer, no brain tumors. Thank God. But what, then, was causing her to suffer so? The doctors still couldn’t explain it. However, by the third day, Betty began to rebound. She was more alert, and her tremors had receded. But she remained extremely weak. Finally, on the fourth day, Betty was allowed to go home.
Ironically, everyone had become so consumed about her horrible reaction to the myelogram, they’d forgotten the reason she’d come to Eisenhower in the first place: When could she have surgery?
The answer she received was not what she had hoped to hear. The source of her pain could not be remedied by surgery. The situation was inoperable. Betty was devastated. Despite all she had been through the past several days, to know that she had no choice but to live with her debilitating pain for the rest of her life was crushing.
What no one recognized at the time—including some of the top medical professionals in the country who’d been consulted—was that the wretched reactions Betty had suffered in the hospital had absolutely nothing to do with the myelogram dye: they were classic symptoms of drug withdrawal.
Once she came home, everyone around the Fords, including Jerry, sensed that “something was not right.” They just didn’t know what. Over the course of the next several weeks, Betty’s strength was slow to return. She persevered just to have an occasional lunch at the house with a friend or with Annie Grier and Joy Chiles. Afterward, she inevitably needed to rest. In the meantime, Jerry maintained his frenetic travel schedule, jetting around the country from one speaking event to another. Lady Bird Johnson had invited the Fords to the LBJ Ranch, in central Texas, in early May, and Betty had been looking forward to the visit. But when the time came for the trip, she just didn’t have the strength to go, so Jerry went alone.
Looking back, it’s clear what was happening. Mired in pain, all alone there in the desert, seemingly a million miles away from the pinnacle of the White House and her friends, it’s not at all surprising that Betty Ford began spiraling down. Armed with a cabinet full of pills—all prescribed by her doctors—she’d mix and match depending on the aches or stresses of the day. No one around her knew exactly what she was taking or in what combinations, but they blindly assumed that the doctors knew best. She saw her internist every week for vitamin B shots and refills for any of the vials that were getting low. Around five or six o’clock each evening, she’d ask Benjy, the former White House navy steward who had stayed on to work for the Fords, to make her a drink—usually a vodka tonic. And while she might have a second drink, none of the staff perceived her alcohol consumption as anything outside of the parameters one would have considered, in the ’70s, as moderate social drinking.
To those around Betty, there was no indication she had a problem with alcohol or prescription drugs. But in retrospect, it’s clear that by this point, the mix of pills, depression, pain, and booze had already begun its stealthy and relentless takeover.