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

by Lisa McCubbin

  “I want to alert you that things are deteriorating,” he told Jerry. The new tapes contained evidence that would contradict Nixon’s version of events in the scandal and would prove that the president knew about the cover-up six days after the June 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. Haig proposed six options that had been discussed among Nixon’s staff as to how things might unfold. The sixth option, recalled Jerry, “was that Nixon could agree to leave in return for an agreement that the new president—Gerald Ford—would pardon him.”

  Haig didn’t come right out and ask, but it certainly appeared that he was trying to gauge the vice president’s willingness to make such a deal. Jerry told Haig he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to make any recommendations at all.

  The fact that Nixon had lied to him was crushing news, though. Nixon had repeatedly assured Ford that he was not involved in Watergate, and Jerry had chosen to believe him and give him the benefit of every doubt. They had been friends for more than twenty-five years. He was angry and hurt.

  “Throughout my political life,” Jerry wrote, “I was truthful to others; I expected others to be truthful with me.”

  “I want some time to think, Al,” Jerry said. He wanted to talk to the president’s attorney, James St. Clair. And he added, “I want to talk to Betty. She deserves to be brought up to date.”

  “It was really important to him; he didn’t want to think of this as dragging her into this task,” the Fords’ oldest son, Mike, said. “He always considered he and my mom as a team: as a parent team in raising the children, and as a team in the White House and in public life too.”

  Nixon was going to leave one way or the other, and Jerry was going to become president. At this point, it was just a matter of how and when. He could hardly wait to talk to Betty—not only to confide in her what was going on, but also to get her take on the situation. It was her opinion he valued above all. But first, there was this meeting at the new vice presidential residence.

  “The exercise at this moment, I felt, was ridiculous,” Jerry recalled. “The possibility that we’d ever live in that house was slim, and getting slimmer all the time.” But to change plans at the last minute would invite reporters to ask questions. That was the last thing he needed.

  As they walked through the house discussing draperies, furniture, and china, Jerry grew more and more impatient. He couldn’t say anything to Betty in front of anyone else. He wanted badly to get home to talk with her about it alone. By the time they got back to the house, however, they were running late for a dinner engagement at the home of Washington Star society columnist Betty Beale and her husband, George Graeber. He certainly couldn’t bring it up in front of them.

  It wasn’t until around eleven o’clock that he finally got the chance to talk to Betty alone. Sitting together in their family room, Jerry described the disturbing meeting with Alexander Haig. As he recalled, “Her eyes widened in disbelief.”

  She was “dumbfounded” that Nixon had lied to them, and yet, instead of being angry, Jerry would remember that her immediate reaction was compassion. She was terribly sad for President Nixon, Pat, and their family. They had been friends for so many years, and Betty’s first thoughts were how this was going to affect them, not her.

  But then, the totality of it finally hit her, and in her soft voice, she said, “My God, this is going to change our whole life.”

  “Neither she nor her husband were emotionally prepared to ascend to the White House,” David Kennerly confirmed.

  Despite the mounting pressure against Nixon, the Fords had believed him; they couldn’t fathom that he would lie to them. Some might say they were naive, but, really, it was just one more example of their characters: lying wasn’t something they could do any more than cheat, steal, or kill. A person’s word was his or her honor. Knowing that Nixon had betrayed not only them but also the entire country was devastating.

  Jerry told Betty about the various scenarios Haig had presented for Nixon’s departure and asked what she thought.

  “You should not get involved in making any recommendations at all, Jerry,” Betty said firmly. “Not to Haig, not to Nixon, not to anybody.” Jerry agreed. With the weight of the world hovering over his shoulders, Betty was his pillar.

  “I really think he got a lot of strength from her,” Mike Ford said. “And I think he gave strength to her as well.”

  It was one thirty by the time Jerry and Betty went to bed and turned out the lights. Lying there in the darkness, each of them silent in thought, their hands reached out and touched. And then, together, they began to pray.

  “God give us strength, give us wisdom, give us guidance as the possibility of a new life confronts us.

  “We promise to do our very best, whatever may take place.

  “You have sustained us in the past.

  “We have faith in Your guiding hand in the difficult and challenging days ahead.

  “In Jesus’s name, we pray.”

  And then Jerry recited from the book of Proverbs the prayer that throughout his life had always been a source of strength during times of crisis: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”

  The next day, Betty wrote a letter to her friend Mary Lou Logan in Connecticut, thanking her and her husband for coming to the party they’d had in honor of Mike and Gayle in Washington, and also politely declining Mary Lou’s invitation for Betty to chair a bicentennial ball.

  In closing, Betty wrote, “right now I am quite involved in trying to furnish the Admiral’s house with as little money as possible, since it is only being considered as a temporary residence for the vice president. I must admit it is a great challenge for me.”

  Even with what had transpired the day before, it seemed that Betty still did not fully comprehend how quickly and dramatically her life was about to change.

  “I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to see it,” she wrote in her memoir. “I think the possibility so terrified me that I was blocking it out.”

  The phone rang and rang and rang. Cameras and reporters swarmed onto Crown View Drive. “Every time you went in and out of the house, they were shouting questions at you,” Steve recalled. “Mom was really getting the most of it, but we kids would go through the same thing.”

  Yes, Betty was right. This was going to change their whole lives. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  On Thursday, August 8, Jerry called Betty from his office. He’d just had a seventy-minute meeting with the president.

  “Nixon is going to announce his resignation to the nation on live television tonight,” he said. “I’ll be sworn in at noon tomorrow.”

  “Up until then,” Betty wrote, “I’d kept hoping that something would happen which would save the president, save the office, save all of us, hoping it wouldn’t end the way it ended.”

  But it was happening, and fast. “From Thursday night through Friday, I was like an actor on a set, being told where to go and what to do,” she recalled.

  Mike and Gayle were in the process of moving to Boston, trailering a U-Haul full of wedding presents, and when they got there, the Secret Service met them and gave them tickets to fly back to Washington.

  Jack Ford was on horseback working as a ranger in Yellowstone National Park. The Secret Service had to send in a helicopter so they could break the news that his father was about to become president of the United States, and then lift him out so he could get back to Washington in time to witness the swearing-in.

  Steve Ford was at work mowing lawns for the US National Park Service. The Fords had always required their children to have summer jobs in a variety of occupations. That afternoon, he and his crew were picking up trash along the George Washington Memorial Parkway going out to Mount Vernon. “Here I was working with all these guys, long-term government employees working for the Park Service, and they’re wondering if my dad’s going to becom
e president of the United States and become their boss.”

  Betty was going through the motions. What would she wear? What about Gayle and Susan and the boys? It was picking out clothes, figuring out logistics, and the telephone just kept ringing and ringing. “I was numb,” she recalled.

  When Jerry got home at around eight thirty that evening, Mike, Gayle, and Jack still hadn’t arrived. At nine, Jerry, Betty, Susan, and Steve gathered in front of the television in the small family room and watched, in stunned silence, as President Nixon announced, “I will resign the presidency, effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as president at that hour.”

  It was surreal.

  Mike, Gayle, and Jack finally arrived a bit later. Upon seeing his mother, Mike recalled, “She was not particularly well at that time. Her pinched nerve, and all the wear on her from him being away. She was not very strong.”

  Jerry, too, was concerned about how Betty was handling all of this, but it was out of their hands. There was no choice but to move forward. Tomorrow he’d be giving the most important speech of his life. It was up to him, and him alone, to reassure the nation that everything was going to be okay. And yet, he was honestly concerned that his emotions would get the best of him. He couldn’t afford to break down.

  So, before he and Betty went to bed that night, Jerry practiced his speech in the privacy of their bedroom at 514 Crown View Drive in front of the one person whose opinion, to him, mattered most.

  The morning of August 9, 1974, Jerry went to his office early, accompanied by Phil Buchen and former congressman John Byrnes—two close friends turned advisors—while the rest of the family scurried to get ready. Two limousines took them to Jerry’s office in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House complex, where they had been directed to wait while Nixon gave a private farewell to his Cabinet members and staff in the East Room. Jerry was going over his speech while Betty and the children watched Nixon’s remarks on the television set in Jerry’s office.

  Just before nine thirty, Secret Service agents and a military aide escorted Jerry and Betty to the Diplomatic Reception Room on the ground floor of the White House. President Nixon had finished his remarks, and now he and his wife, Pat, were waiting there to walk outside with the Fords.

  All the people had filed out of the East Room, joining military personnel and staff—two hundred or more—on the South Lawn. Dozens of White House employees, many of whom had worked for three, four, or five presidents, came out onto the first-floor balcony and the second-floor Truman Balcony to witness this unprecedented scene. From maids and butlers, to secretaries, sergeants, and men in dark suits, there was barely a dry eye to be found. Just beyond the crowd, an army helicopter, olive green with a white top, which denoted it as one of the presidential fleet, was waiting to take the disgraced chief executive away from the White House for the last time.

  “People were crying,” Betty recalled, “and it still seemed impossible to me that this was happening.” Somehow, Betty managed to put on a brave smile as she walked out the door to face the crowd and the cameras. The powder-blue skirt and jacket with white piping she had chosen to wear was subdued—she hadn’t wanted to stand out or appear to be overshadowing Pat Nixon—and while the clothes hung a bit loose over her thin frame due to the weight she’d lost in the stress of the past few weeks, what everyone watching would notice was the way she held herself with such grace. She pulled Pat Nixon close on her left side, and Jerry on her right, wrapping her arms around each of them, as President Nixon walked alongside his wife, hands by his sides. Nixon smiled at the crowd in a broad, awkward grin, while the man who was about to replace him looked straight ahead, a pained look on his face.

  The two couples walked from the White House toward the helicopter, through a cordon of uniformed military personnel holding rifles at attention in salute. “My heavens, they’ve even rolled out the red carpet for us,” Pat said. “Isn’t that something?” It was a peculiar thing to say. But everything about this juncture was extraordinary. There was no script for a moment like this.

  And then Pat added, “Well, Betty, you’ll see many of these red carpets, and you’ll get so you hate ’em.”

  “The moment was terribly painful for all of us,” Jerry recalled. “We were trying to put up the bravest, strongest front.”

  When they reached the helicopter, its rotors just beginning to spin, Jerry leaned over and kissed Pat on the cheek.

  “We wish you the best. Health and happiness,” he said.

  Pat turned toward Betty, and the two ladies, friends for a quarter century, both realizing this might be the last time they would see each other, put their cheeks together, and kissed in sad farewell.

  President Nixon turned to Jerry, stuck out his hand, that awkward smile still plastered across his face, and said, “Goodbye, Mr. President.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. President,” Jerry replied. He shook Nixon’s hand, but still there was no smile.

  Richard Nixon walked up the few steps to the door of the helicopter and then turned around to face the crowd, as he flung his hands high up into the air, his fingers formed into his trademark V for victory sign.

  There was no cheering, no applause. Clint Hill, the assistant director of the Secret Service, responsible for all protection, remembered standing on the lawn watching and thinking to himself, What does he think he has won?

  “We couldn’t help but feel sorry for a very dear friend and his wife,” Jerry would say years later. “But at the same time, to be honest, I was anxious to turn around, walk in, and get started on my new responsibilities.”

  Jerry grabbed Betty’s hand and whispered, “We can do it. We’re ready.”

  They turned around and walked back toward the White House, along the red carpet, their hands clutched together tightly, with fingers intertwined. No more words needed to be said. The only thing they knew for sure in that moment was that, whatever lay ahead, they would get through it. They had their faith and each other.

  Just before noon, Betty and Jerry were escorted to the East Room, where the swearing-in would take place. It was the same room where, under three glittering crystal chandeliers, less than three hours earlier, President Nixon had made his farewell speech; the same room where Betty and Jerry had knelt and prayed alongside the casket of President John F. Kennedy, nearly eleven years earlier. Those walls held a lot of history. And now the people that filled the room—the Fords’ children; other family and friends from Michigan; congressional friends, both Democrats and Republicans; members of the Cabinet; and the press—were there to witness yet another unforeseeable, unthinkable, historic moment.

  “Most presidents get nominated, win an election, get sworn in, and then there are galas and balls, parties, celebrations. This time there was no celebration. It was a dark moment hanging over the White House,” Steve Ford recalled.

  As soon as Jerry and Betty entered the room, everyone rose, clapping with somber appreciation. The clapping continued as they walked to the front of the room and stepped up onto the low stage, joining Chief Justice Warren Burger, who approached from the opposite side.

  Jerry recalled feeling a sense of awe. “At that historic moment, I was aware of kinship with my predecessors. It was almost as if all of America’s past presidents were praying for me to succeed.” He looked across the room and saw two hundred people who believed in him—none prouder than his four children, who were seated in the front row.

  A military aide handed Betty the Bible, the same one on which Jerry had taken the oath of office ten months earlier as vice president. This time, however, they had decided to open it to the Book of Proverbs: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. There was no doubt in their minds; their lives were in God’s hands.

  As soon as the clapping had ceased, Chief Justice Burger looked at Jerry and said, “Mr. Vice President, are you prepared to take the oath of office as president of the United States?”

  “I
am, sir,” Jerry said. He raised his right hand and placed his left hand on the Bible.

  Betty’s face revealed all the emotions swirling inside: disbelief, shock, terror, profound love, and immense pride, as her husband stood next to her and repeated the words spoken by the chief justice.

  “I, Gerald R. Ford, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

  “The words cut through me, pinned me to the floor,” she recalled of that moment. The audience stood and clapped. For the first time that day, Jerry smiled, and then turned to Betty and kissed her. They stood together for a few moments as cameras clicked and flashed, and then Chief Justice Burger went to the podium and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”

  Betty looked as though she might faint. Thank God there was a chair, and it was time for her to sit. Jerry went to the podium, looked out at the audience, fully aware that the entire world was watching. He gave the speech as he had practiced, in a measured voice, each word chosen carefully.

  “Mr. Chief Justice, my dear friends, my fellow Americans. The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every president under the Constitution. But I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts . . .”

  He held his emotions, his voice cracking just twice: first, when he said, “I am indebted to no man and to only one woman, my dear wife, as I begin this difficult job,” and when he asked for prayers for Richard Nixon and his family.

  It was not a long address, but for years to come, the passage that all would remember was when he declared, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”