Betty Ford: First Lady, Women's Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer

by Lisa McCubbin

  Painter Jamie Wyeth, the twenty-seven-year-old son of famed artist Andrew Wyeth, remarked that Betty was “really quite beautiful” and that she had “a regal quality . . . a movie star feeling about her.”

  The Carters had invited some of their close political friends as well as some Georgia Republicans, and although Betty Ford was there to promote the arts, no one seemed interested in discussing Rembrandt or Renoir. Everyone was speculating about whether the well-coiffed woman in the yellow gown might soon be moving into the White House. Betty graciously greeted the guests as they proceeded through a reception line, and when some were bold enough to ask, she smiled coquettishly and said, “I’d rather not talk about that.”

  While that subject may have been off-limits, she was candid about most everything else. When someone inquired about her slim figure, she happily explained that she’d begun dieting a year earlier and had lost more than thirty pounds.

  “Now I’m down to a size eight, less than a hundred ten pounds,” she said proudly. Her secret? Lots of lettuce, cottage cheese, crackers, and tea.

  “What do you think is the role of a political wife?” one reporter asked.

  “I think we have to be supportive,” Betty said. “I also think we have to be a sounding board for him. My husband has also said that I’m his toughest and best critic.” And then, with a laugh, she added, “But sometimes I regret it.”

  She charmed the group with a story about how Jerry had come home one night recently after a long day and said, “I’m going right to bed.”

  “ ‘Oh no you’re not,’ I told him. There was a tango party coming up, and we needed to practice. So, I grabbed him and said, ‘Okay, here we go! I’m going to teach you some great, dramatic tango steps.’ ”

  Everyone was laughing as she demonstrated how she and Jerry were tangoing all over their small living room.

  “She’s got a right good personality,” said one man—a Democrat friend of the Carters. “She’s charming, her hair’s arranged pretty, and she looks right at you when she talks to y’all.”

  A woman who had known Betty for some time but hadn’t seen her in many years remarked to one of the reporters that what she liked about the second lady was that “none of this has changed her. She has great modesty. She’s still as plain as an old shoe and sharp as a tack.”

  Later, when Betty and the Carters posed for photographs, Jimmy Carter bent down and whispered to her, “Do you ever become accustomed to this?”

  She leaned into his arm and, with a big grin on her face, said, “Twenty-five years, twenty-five years.” To the press and the public, this may have been Betty’s coming-out party, but as far as she was concerned, she wasn’t doing anything different from what she’d been doing for the past quarter century. It’s just that now she was beginning to get some of the attention. And she kind of liked it.

  The next day, despite Nancy Howe’s surreptitious attempts to ensure Betty was on time, Rosalynn Carter recalled that “we were late everywhere we went that day,” and that Betty seemed “a little drowsy.”

  Wall-to-wall people lined the parade route through Dalton—known as the “Carpet Capital of the United States”—and as the two women rode together in a convertible, Rosalynn was very much at ease, waving to the people and calling out, “Hello! Hello!” and “Hey, how are you?” She’d been in countless parades campaigning with Jimmy throughout the state.

  Betty, however, wasn’t quite sure what to do. Socializing at a reception was easy for her, but the last time she’d been in a campaign-type situation was back when Jerry was first running for Congress in 1948, before they were married. Her discomfort appeared to grow, and after a while, she said to Rosalynn, “You must know all these people.”

  Rosalynn was astonished. “No, I don’t know them at all,” she replied. She suddenly realized that even though they were both politicians’ wives, Betty had basically been home raising children in Washington her whole married life.

  Betty seemed just as surprised by Rosalynn’s response, but from that point on, she joined in, waving to the strangers and calling out with a smile, “Hello, how are you?”

  The parade ended at the Artrain, and it was time for the dedication. Sitting next to Rosalynn on the speakers’ platform, Betty was nervous. She wasn’t used to public speaking—even about nonpolitical issues such as the arts. She leaned toward Rosalynn and whispered, “Can’t I just thank the mayor and sit down? I don’t want to make a speech.”

  Rosalynn suggested it would be appropriate for her to say a few words. So, when it was time, Betty got up and stood at the podium.

  Standing erect, looking out at the large gathering of people, Betty spoke off the cuff, without any prepared notes.

  “Art is nonpolitical, and it is in the arts that we are all brought together,” she began. She talked briefly about how her special interest in the arts was in dance and how dancing had been such an important part of her youth. It was a good little speech, and the people of Dalton, Georgia, loved it. As the crowd applauded, Betty seemed to become more at ease, having surmounted her initial fear.

  As soon as the thank-yous and formalities were finished, Betty and Rosalynn were led to the Artrain for a tour of the exhibits. As they walked through, Betty commented on one of the trainmen’s caps, and before you knew it, she had it on her head. It was purely spontaneous—perhaps after reminiscing about her dance experiences, it reminded her of the cap she’d worn at Bennington, back when she was just “Skipper”—and she kept it on as she walked through the train, clearly much more at ease than she’d been earlier. It was as if wearing a hat gave her a different persona and some much-needed courage. She became a woman who exuded composure, even if, in reality, she felt less than confident.

  At the end of the traveling art exhibit, Rosalynn and Betty walked out of the Victorian-style caboose and stood on the rear platform. Below them, it was a festive scene with groups of preteen baton twirlers and uniformed Girl Scouts gathered next to choral groups and young girls in ballet costumes. Betty had a big smile on her face, with the conductor’s cap still perched whimsically on her head. Someone handed her a pair of scissors, and as the crowd clapped and cheered, she clipped the ceremonial ribbon for the opening of the Artrain.

  A few female reporters who covered the women’s social pages and a couple of photographers were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to get some quotes for their stories. Cameras flashed, and reporters started firing questions:

  “Mrs. Ford, how do you feel about the possibility of your husband becoming president?”

  “I’ll take it as it comes. After twenty-five years in politics, I’ve learned to roll with the punches.”

  And then, one of the reporters called out, “Mrs. Ford, are you on something?”

  Evidently, the “drowsiness” Rosalynn Carter had observed earlier did not go unnoticed by the press.

  Without hesitation, Betty answered, “Well, I do take Valium every day.”

  Her frankness surprised the reporters, and they wanted to know more. Why? How much? “Valium, three times a day, or sometimes Equagesic. That way I’m more comfortable,” she explained unapologetically. “Otherwise I find I get nervous when I realize how much there is to do each day, and I get tense when I’m running late, so rather than wait till I get to the point where my neck goes into a spasm, I take a Valium.”

  Her openness surprised Rosalynn Carter, who knew that “any blemish on the public’s image of a candidate’s or an elected official’s perfect wife, children, and idyllic family life can be a detriment.” But Betty didn’t realize that she had created a stir. She was just answering the question honestly. She had nothing to hide.

  In 1974 Valium was by far the most prescribed drug in America. Its use as a minor tranquilizer for symptoms of anxiety accounted for a large share of the estimated fifty-seven million prescriptions written the previous year, and, to many, the little tablet had become as socially acceptable as a double martini before dinner. Betty’s admission, howeve
r, didn’t sit well with a lot of people who would read her comments in the newspaper the next day. Almost immediately, there was a backlash, as hundreds of people wrote letters accusing Betty Ford of being “a dope addict.”

  When the subject was brought up later, she shrugged it off. “I’m candid,” she said. “I wouldn’t deny it. I do take tranquilizers. People just don’t understand they are for my neck.”

  Unlike Rosalynn Carter, who was more cautious about revealing personal matters because of her husband’s likely upcoming bid for the presidency, Betty wasn’t concerned about how her comments might affect her husband’s political chances. It didn’t matter. There weren’t going to be any more campaigns. At the end of Nixon’s term, Jerry was going to retire. He had promised. But besides that, Betty Ford was being Betty Ford. She didn’t know any other way to be.

  Secret Service agents on Jerry’s detail were aware that she was drinking, but not to the point that they were concerned. What was more interesting to them was that Jerry made a tremendous effort to be home with Betty. He’d fly to the West Coast or the Midwest and very seldom spent the night. Even if there was an event in Los Angeles at eight o’clock in the evening, Jerry would insist on returning to Virginia that night, even if it meant arriving back in Washington at three or four in the morning.

  Meanwhile, the Secret Service had its hands full protecting sixteen-year-old Susan. In many ways, by protecting the vice president’s daughter, they protected the vice president and his wife from some potentially embarrassing situations. Even if Jerry and Betty never knew about it.

  “My parents thought if you had the agents, you were safe,” Susan recalled. “It was kind of a joke. Because their job was not to be your parent. Their job was to watch your behavior, not to correct your behavior; to make sure that I was safe.”

  The agents realized that to be a sixteen-year-old girl with two guys in suits hovering over you was not anybody’s idea of normal, so they devised a way to give her some freedom while still being able to protect her.

  “I used to carry a little remote that looked like a cigarette lighter that I could put in my pocket,” Susan recalled. “It was a panic button. And that way, they could back off me, like when I was at a fraternity party, with all these people, and if I felt uncomfortable or unsafe, I just hit the button, and it would come across the radios.”

  Susan had broken up with Palmer Holt and was now dating Gardner Britt, son of a Fairfax County car dealership owner, who was attending Virginia Polytech Institute and State University. One weekend, Susan and the Golubin twins went down to Virginia Tech to visit him. Betty and Jerry felt completely comfortable with the situation because the girls were being driven and protected by two agents. What could go wrong?

  The girls attended a fraternity party Saturday night, and “we were underage drinking, I admit it,” Susan said. The next day, “We were hungover, trying to sleep in the back seat on the way back home.” Halfway between Charlottesville and Washington, they stopped at a McDonald’s for some food and a much-needed restroom break.

  They all ordered some food to go, and then the two male agents stood holding the bags of food while the girls went into the restroom. Suddenly there was the screech of a high-pitched alarm.

  The agents raced to the door of the ladies’ room, their hands on their guns.

  “They thought I hit my panic button,” Susan recalled. The other patrons in the restaurant were looking around, wondering, What’s going on? Who is in the restroom?

  “Turns out, it was actually the chime on the French fry cooker,” Susan recalled with a laugh. “So, we just kind of took our bags, walked out the door, and quickly got into the car before anyone could recognize me.”

  In the eight weeks between when Gerald Ford was nominated for the position of vice president and the time he was confirmed, there was an intense investigation into his personal and professional life, the likes of which had not been seen before or since. The FBI’s investigation of Ford was the largest, most intensive probe that the bureau had ever conducted into the background of a candidate for public office. Some 350 special agents had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, the IRS went over his tax returns line by line, and, overall, 1,700 pages of reports were compiled. “The process was like undergoing a physical exam in public view,” Jerry Ford recalled.

  The one thing that could have potentially caused problems was the one thing that had concerned Jerry the very first time he ran for Congress: the fact that his wife had been married, and divorced, before she became Mrs. Gerald R. Ford Jr.

  “The National Enquirer was going to write a piece about the fact that she had been married previously,” David Kennerly recalled. Betty was deeply concerned that it would be an embarrassment to Jerry. “Don’t worry about it,” Kennerly said. “Why don’t you talk to Bonnie Angelo?”

  Time had started a People section, which eventually spun off into People magazine, and Bonnie was the features reporter. “Maybe she’ll ask you have you ever been married before? And you’ll say yes. And she’ll ask, ‘Why haven’t you ever told anyone before?’ And you can just say, ‘Well, no one has ever asked.’ ”

  David Kennerly approached Angelo with the story tip. “You should talk to Mrs. Ford—she might have a story for you. You might ask her about her previous marriage.”

  “I didn’t know she was married before!” Bonnie exclaimed.

  “Well, yeah, nobody does,” Kennerly said. In retrospect, he admitted, “I didn’t mention anything about the National Enquirer.”

  That Sunday, there was a little item in the new People entertainment column of Time mentioning Betty’s previous marriage.

  “So, essentially it drove a stake through the story,” Kennerly said. “It was literally a paragraph in the People section of Time instead of what could have been a front-page scandal in the National Enquirer.”

  “I think this is when my relationship with her got stronger,” he reflected years later. “A reporter couldn’t have done that,” he said. There was a difference between reporters and photographers. “All I was doing was wanting to get in occasionally to take pictures.”

  Steve Ford, just about to turn eighteen, was in his senior year at T. C. Williams High School, and the school thought it would be wonderful to have the father of one of its students—who happened to be vice president of the United States—give the commencement address.

  “I wasn’t thrilled about it at the time,” Steve recalled. “I was a pretty typical teenager, going, ‘Come on, Dad, don’t do that.’ When you’re eighteen years old and you’re trying to lay low, to have your father come in and do the commencement isn’t the way to stay below the radar.”

  Vice President Ford did indeed give the commencement address to the 1974 graduating class, and within a few months, there would be no way anyone in the Ford family could stay below the radar. History had them in the crosshairs.

  12

  * * *

  The Unthinkable Happens

  Mike and Gayle had moved their wedding date up a month, and Betty was pleased as could be when they got married on July 5 in Catonsville, Maryland. Among the bridal party were Jack and Steve as groomsmen, Susan as a bridesmaid, and the vice president of the United States as best man. So many family friends from Grand Rapids attended, the Fords practically rented a whole motel. It was a beautiful faith-based Episcopalian ceremony—a joyous day. The calm before the storm.

  Eight years earlier, in 1966, Congress had passed an authorization to build a house for the vice president, but at the time Ford took office, funds still had not been appropriated. Meanwhile, the chief of naval operations resided in a beautiful old Victorian mansion on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory, just off Massachusetts Avenue NW, while vice presidents Hubert H. Humphrey, Spiro T. Agnew, and now Gerald R. Ford Jr. had all lived in their private residences, each of which had to be converted, at considerable cost, to bring them up to the security standards of the Secret Service. In May 1974, a decision was made to use the US N
aval Observatory mansion as a temporary residence for the vice president and his family, much to the indignation of its current occupant, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt. This home, too, needed to be updated and upgraded, and as second lady, Betty was expected to make all kinds of decisions for the remodeling.

  When Betty toured the house for the first time, accompanied by the White House curator, Clem Conger, and his assistant, Betty Monkman, she quickly realized that a lot needed to be done to turn this vacant house into a place that was not only a livable home for their family but also suitable for all the entertaining that was expected of the vice president and his wife. The admiral had moved out, and while he had left a few things, there were no paintings on the wall—not even a table in the dining room.

  “It was far more expensive and time-consuming than anyone had expected,” Jerry Ford recalled, “but Betty kept at it with her characteristic enthusiasm and drive.”

  For the past several months, Betty had been meeting with officials of the navy and the Secret Service to determine what changes would have to be made. She was planning to go to New York City the week of August 7 to look at furnishings. Before she went to New York, however, she wanted Jerry to approve the areas she’d selected for the family living quarters and for entertaining guests. She had made arrangements to go back to the house with her husband and all the appropriate participants on Thursday, August 1. At five thirty that evening, Betty was waiting in the limousine outside the Old Executive Office Building, waiting for Jerry to finish up his day and drive with her to the Naval Observatory house.

  What she didn’t know was that the vice president’s day had been quite eventful. Tormenting, actually. At three thirty, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig had gone to Jerry’s office and revealed some disturbing news: the US Supreme Court had just ruled that sixty-four conversations taped secretly by Nixon in the Oval Office had to be turned over to US District Court Judge John Sirica, the judge presiding over the Watergate incident. Haig had just heard or read transcripts of the tapes.