Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  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 event
s, 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. S
he’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.