Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  “It’s a very strange feeling,” Betty said. That morning, she had left the family’s beloved home in Alexandria—the place “in utter chaos, crates and cartons everywhere, chunks of our lives uprooted and labeled for storage”—and when she walked into the residential quarters of the White House, all the things they’d designated to move with them—clothes, knickknacks, assorted furniture—were all there, unpacked and placed exactly where she’d told Rex Scouten she wanted things to go.

  She’d had ten days to get used to being first lady, but physically moving into the White House gave it a sense of reality that hadn’t been there before. Now, any time she left the privacy of the living quarters, her every move would be monitored by the Secret Service.

  Everyone in the family had been assigned a code name, all beginning with the letter P. President Ford was “Passkey”; Mrs. Ford was “Pinafore”; Mike, “Professor”; Jack, “Packman”; Steve, “Peso”; and Susan, “Panda.” The agents used the code names when communicating by radio to announce when a member of the family was moving, and where he or she was going. New names were assigned to the individual family members of each new administration, but the code names for places—such as Andrews Air Force Base and Camp David—had remained the same since the Eisenhower administration. After living on a street called Crown View Drive for the past nineteen years, Betty Ford would learn that her new residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was known to the Secret Service as “Crown.”

  The political twist of fate that put Betty Bloomer Ford into the White House—from Grand Rapids, to Crown View Drive, to “Crown”—and had her meeting kings and queens, was unprecedented and, seemingly, entirely unpredictable.

  The sudden and dramatic change was “a very traumatic experience,” Betty would recall. But she had never backed away from a challenge, no matter how difficult, and she wasn’t about to start now. And while being first lady was certainly not a position Betty Ford had ever aspired to, let alone imagined she might become, as it turned out, she was exactly what America needed.

  “The day the Fords came into the White House, it was like spring had come overnight after a long, cold winter,” Secret Service Agent Bob Alberi recalled. “The previous six months of the Nixon administration had been painful for everyone. Nobody talked to anybody.” It had been so tense that the agents charged with protecting President Nixon were concerned that he might harm himself.

  Just twenty-seven years old at the time, Alberi vividly remembered the first time he met Betty Ford.

  “What’s your name, young man?” she asked.

  He was shocked. The first lady wanted to know his name? President and Mrs. Nixon had never spoken to him—they’d barely even looked at him.

  “My name’s Bob Alberi,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Bob,” she said. “Where are you from?”

  “Arlington, Virginia, ma’am.”

  “Where’d you go to high school?”

  “Gonzaga. My father worked at the Pentagon.”

  Agent Alberi was assigned to President Ford, “but from that moment on,” he said, “anytime I saw Mrs. Ford, she would always stop and say, ‘Hi, Bob, how is everything going?’ Both President and Mrs. Ford were delightful,” he said. “It was a terrific change.”

  From the start, Alberi noticed that the new president and his wife had a very special relationship. “President and Mrs. Ford would hold hands in the car, like they were newlyweds,” he said. “It was so refreshing.”

  Ordinary Americans, too, seemed to feel like the Fords were just the “family next door.” Betty received hundreds of pieces of mail each week. Many were letters of encouragement and praise, while others asked questions about what she ate, what her husband ate, or commented on something they’d read about her. Still others offered advice. One woman from Cincinnati wrote:

  Dear Mrs. Ford,

  Someone close to the President should convince him to change his hairstyle. His hair should be parted on one side, arranged over the top, properly shaped, and then lightly sprayed. I believe my husband has less hair than the President, but the results of my efforts have been pleasing and revitalizing to him.

  Nancy would read some of the letters aloud, and they’d have a good laugh together, but Betty was adamant that every letter needed a response. She and Nancy came up with a standard response that would acknowledge the well-meaning advice graciously:

  Dear _______

  Mrs. Ford asked me to acknowledge your recent letter in which you shared your views and feelings with her. Please know that the President and Mrs. Ford are always pleased to have the benefit of comments from fellow citizens, and they appreciate the effort you made to convey your opinions.

  Betty took her role seriously, and while she couldn’t respond personally to every letter, she wanted to make sure that people who’d taken the time to write to her were at least acknowledged—no matter how silly their comments or requests.

  When the Fords moved into the White House, Steve Ford was a couple of weeks away from starting his freshman year at Duke University. The check for admissions had been sent, but at eighteen years old, the idea of moving into the freshman dorm with Secret Service men carrying guns and radios—“that is not the group you want to hang out with,” Steve recalled. “It seemed overwhelming.”

  Shortly after they’d moved into the White House, Steve walked into the Oval Office and said, “Dad, I’m not ready to go to college. I want to take a year off. I’ll go back to school next year. But I want to get used to this whole thing of you being president.” Steve told him he wanted to go out West and become a cowboy.

  “It’s not what my dad wanted to hear, and, obviously, he had more important things on his plate than me not going to college. But Mom and Dad were great parents, and they allowed us kids to find our own way.”

  So instead of going to Duke, Steve headed out to a Montana ranch with his Secret Service detail of ten guys, who exchanged their coats and ties for cowboy hats and boots.

  The press was focused on the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation, but President Ford had a country to run and little time for the media. Thus, Betty, who was largely unknown to the public, was the next natural place to look for stories. The number of requests to speak with her was so extraordinary that the White House Press Office decided the only way to respond to the volume was for the first lady to hold a press conference of her own.

  September 4, 1974, was the first time a president’s wife held a full-scale White House news conference, and the State Dining Room was filled to capacity with nearly 150 reporters and photographers from around the world. Wearing a tailored shirtdress in a warm butter yellow, with a scarf as an accent around her neck, Betty sat with her back to the fireplace in a high-backed chair, a secretary desk adorned with a vase of flowers the only thing between her and the roomful of press.

  Covering the first lady was relegated mostly to female reporters, and as they fired away questions, Betty appeared relaxed, unafraid to touch any subject.

  There were questions about liberalizing abortion laws—she was for it. Advising her husband on inflation? She noted that the government needed to tighten its belt just as housewives had to balance a budget and keep a checkbook. Breaking into a smile, she added, “At least my checkbook has to balance.” She was poised, beautiful, candid, honest, and surprisingly funny.

  “Mrs. Ford, what sort of footprint would you like to leave at the White House? How would you like to be remembered?”

  “Well, I would like to be remembered in a very kind way,” she said, with another smile that brought laughter from the audience. And then, turning more serious, she added, “Also as a constructive wife of a president. I do not expect to come anywhere near living up to those first ladies who have gone before me. They have all done a great job, and I admire them a great deal. It is only my ambition to come close to them.”

  Time magazine’s Bonnie Angelo asked, “Are you keeping a diary or some sort of record that might—”

  “Bonn
ie,” Betty interrupted, laughing, “I hoped you were keeping it for me!”

  The room erupted in laughter. With no preparation, no notes in front of her, Betty Ford made no pretense and presented a woman far more sure of herself than any of them had expected.

  Three days later, she took her first trip alone as first lady, to Birmingham, Alabama. It was a trip that had been scheduled six months earlier, and she wanted to honor her commitment. She was one of eleven women being honored as “Legendary Women of America,” as part of a fund-raiser for St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham. After getting a tour of the maternity ward and holding a newborn baby for the photographers, Betty agreed to answer questions from the press. First, she wanted to clarify her previous statements on abortion.

  “I’m all for babies,” she said. “I have four children of my own and am looking forward to having a grandchild. As far as the matter of abortion, that is a matter of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court made the ruling, and the Supreme Court is the law of our land. And as long as that is the law of our land, I abide by the law of the land.”

  Clearly, the West Wing staff had coached her after her previous remarks sparked controversy. The Equal Rights Amendment? She was all for it. The ERA was a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. Betty felt so strongly about it, she was even willing to go on the road and campaign for it. And when she was asked how she felt about legalization of marijuana, she refused to answer but added that of her own children, “I’m sure they’ve tried it. Children try everything, don’t they?” She quickly caught herself and added, “But they definitely did not like it, and it is not used.”

  The Associated Press headline the next day: “Mrs. Ford Says She Thinks Some of Her Children Have Used ‘Pot.’ ”

  The mostly female press corps that covered first ladies could hardly believe what they were hearing. She was the most accessible first lady in recent times, and to a public used to canned and predictable first lady comments, one reporter wrote, “she is like champagne after vin ordinaire. Following the mannequin mask of Pat Nixon, the polished political astuteness of Lady Bird Johnson, the glacial elegance of Jackie Kennedy, the resistance of Mamie Eisenhower and Bess Truman to public exposure, Betty Ford remains, astonishingly, a real person.”

  Sally Quinn of the Washington Post wrote, “Betty Ford, in the first month of her stay in the White House as first lady, has managed to speak out on several controversial issues that most politicians’ wives would never dream of getting involved in.

  “Abortion, marijuana, amnesty, equal rights amendment, social mores, her relationship with her husband, her views on psychiatry, her own mental condition, tranquilizers, the Nixon pardon . . . Just ask, and you’ll get an answer—a straight answer. She’ll tell you plainly what she thinks about anything, without a moment’s hesitation, without any sense of fear.”

  In an interview with McCall’s magazine, Betty noted that she was surprised by the delving nature of some of the questions. “They’ve asked me everything but how often I sleep with my husband,” she said. And then, knowing full well it would be printed, she added, “and if they’d asked me that, I would have told them: as often as possible!”

  Inside the White House, the staff was equally as surprised with the openness of this new first lady. One day Betty called for Curator Clem Conger’s assistant, Betty Monkman, to come up to the residence. She wanted to discuss the possibility of having the wallpaper with the Revolutionary War scenes removed from the dining room.

  “And so, I went up there, and there was Mrs. Ford in her bathrobe in the West Sitting Hall,” Monkman recalled. It was late morning, around ten thirty or eleven. “I mean, I have talked to many first ladies, but never in their bathrobe. So that, to me, said something . . . that she felt so comfortable about herself and who she was.”

  Later, Betty would look back on those first few weeks and reflect that “in the beginning, it was like going to a party you’re terrified of, and finding out to your amazement that you’re having a good time. You never know what you can do until you have to do it.”

  Privately, Betty was very spiritual. Her faith was far more important to her than most knew. Hanging in her bathroom, where she’d see it first thing in the morning, and as the last thing at night when she was brushing her teeth, was a plaque with the Prayer of Saint Francis:

  Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.

  Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

  Where there is injury, pardon;

  Where there is doubt, faith;

  Where there is darkness, light; and

  Where there is sadness, joy.

  O divine Master,

  Grant that I may not so much

  Seek to be consoled as to console;

  To be understood as to understand;

  To be loved as to love;

  For it is in giving that we receive;

  It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and

  It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

  The plaque was one of the personal items she’d brought with her to the White House. It was a tenet of who she was and how she chose to live her life on a daily basis. She could never have imagined how prophetic the references to pardoning at the beginnng and end of the prayer would be.

  From the moment Gerald Ford took office, he struggled with the decision of what to do about former President Nixon. As with many difficult decisions he’d had to make over the course of his career, he discussed it with Betty.

  They were sitting in what had been President Nixon’s bedroom, the room they had turned into a den with all their familiar belongings surrounding them. As he smoked his pipe, Jerry told Betty he was thinking about pardoning Nixon. He’d been wrestling with the decision, weighing the pros and cons. Ultimately, he’d concluded that too much of his time was being consumed by the mess Nixon had created, and it was detracting from his ability to run the country effectively.

  Despite how Nixon’s reckless actions and outright lies to her husband had dramatically altered the course of her own life, Betty was not bitter or vengeful. It wasn’t in her.

  “I think Nixon has suffered enough,” she said. Compassion was always at her core. She realized the ramifications a pardon would have and knew that many Americans wanted to see Nixon tried in court, and yet President Ford would recall that “she felt enormous sympathy for his family.”

  In the end, Betty said what she always did whenever there was a tough decision her husband had to make.

  “I’ll support whatever you decide,” she told him.

  On September 9, 1974, one month after Gerald Ford took the oath of office, he pardoned former President Nixon for any crimes he had committed or may have committed. It was not a popular decision. The outcry was swift and fierce, with Ford’s favorable rating in a Gallup poll plummeting overnight from 71 percent to 49 percent.

  In a letter to her friend Mary Lou Logan, dated September 12, 1974, on White House stationery, Betty wrote:

  We were all a little reluctant to leave our home of twenty years which has brought us much joy. However, everyone here has been so gracious and helpful that we soon felt at home.

  The children have adjusted quite well to living here. Susan adores all of her room on the third floor and is quite settled in with her friends coming and going as usual. For a while, Steve continued to slip back to our old home on Crown View, but I feel he had adjusted to the change before he left to go out west. I was worried that Jack would not like having the Secret Service around and all of the formality of the White House, but he adjusted the fastest of anyone.

  They were all getting adjusted to this new normal, feeling like they’d finally passed the tests God had laid out before them.

  14

  * * *

  Going Public with Breast Cancer

  With so many new obligations, Betty had become increasingly reliant on Nancy Howe to help manage the
endless requests, phone calls, and invitations. The two were comfortable with each other and found ways to laugh and have fun. At one point, Betty commented that petunias were the only things that could stand the heat in Washington in the summer—meaning not only the heat of the sun but also the heat of Congress when all the members want to go home, and they start racing through legislation and getting all disagreeable. Nancy thought it was so amusing, and so typical of Betty, that she began calling her “Petunia.”

  There was an office in the East Wing of the White House designated for use by the first lady and her staff, but Betty preferred to conduct her business from the residence. She set up a small desk in the West Sitting Hall of the residential quarters, so she could write letters and answer phone calls without having to go through the time-consuming process of hairdressing and makeup. If she didn’t have to go out, she’d often remain in one of her elegant bathrobes until lunchtime. Nancy would come upstairs each morning, and she was usually the last person to leave before Jerry returned at the end of his workday. With appearances at charity luncheons and the constant social planning, there was little time for friends or personal interests.

  Nancy Howe had scheduled a routine gynecology checkup for herself at Bethesda Naval Hospital on September 26. Given the tumult of the past thirteen months, Nancy knew that Betty hadn’t had any time to look after herself.

  “Come along with me,” Nancy urged her. “You’re due for a checkup.” Betty agreed, and off they went.

  As the doctor checked Betty’s breasts, her mind was busy with all the things she still needed to do that day. He asked her to wait for a minute and then, without any explanation, returned with Dr. William Fouty, the chief of surgery. She lay there as Dr. Fouty reexamined her breasts; then he told her she could get dressed. Neither physician indicated anything was unusual, and the two ladies returned to the White House.