The First Family's First Days

The day before the presidential inauguration last week, Betty Ford met with a fashion designer; nonetheless, she quickly dismissed the idea of buying a new dress for the occasion. The new First Lady decided instead that a sky-blue outfit already in her closet would serve just as well. When Ford's eldest sons Jack and Mike, accompanied by Mike's new wife Gayle, were about to enter the White House grounds to attend the swearing-in ceremony, a guard stopped them and demanded that they show him some identification. Taken aback, they simply looked at one another in dismay. Finally, the Fords' longtime family chauffeur, Richard Frazier, stepped up and told the guard, "These are the President's kids." They were immediately let in.

Both episodes provide something of a clue to the unassuming, uninsistent style of the Fords. They also help to explain why the First Lady says that the Fords are simply "a normal American family." They will shortly move into the White House, but their neighbors of 15 years marveled at their calm. At the height of last week's disruption of her household, Betty Ford, pointing to a prayer book she held in her hand, told a visitor, "This is what helps me to get through it all."

Close-knit and wise in the ways of the capital, they took last week's events in stride. Although Washington was swept by rumors that her husband might soon become President, Betty Ford relaxed over tea, answered letters, and played with a neighbor's child at their four-bedroom home in Alexandria, Va. Daughter Susan, 17, went off to a nearby secretarial school; she is taking a typing class there in preparation for the fall term at Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Md., which she attended as a boarding student last year. Steve, 18, came home from the last day of his summer grass-cutting job to find reporters camped on the front steps. They were the first to tell him that Nixon's televised resignation announcement was imminent.

Meanwhile, Jack, 22, was working at his summer job as a forest ranger in Yellowstone National Park when he was quietly summoned home by his mother. Mike, 24, and Gayle, 23, who were married only last month, had just arrived at their home in Beverly, Mass., prior to his resuming his studies this fall at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in nearby South Hamilton. Mrs. Ford reached Mike by telephone to notify him of his father's impending succession, and the couple flew back to Washington.

Thus the new First Family assembled to take part in a ceremony that marked the entrance of their modest, unaffected grace into the White House. At 56, Betty Ford is trim and auburn-haired, with a model's high cheekbones and blue-gray eyes. She has steadfastly borne the major child-rearing responsibilities throughout Ford's active political career, and still prefers an evening at home with her husband and children to a night out. She admits that she is not a good cook, and has an unsettling tendency to be late for appointments. Her lissome figure and smart eye for clothes should earn her plaudits in her role as official hostess. Mrs. Ford has encouraged her daughter to study modern dance and ballet as she herself did, and is an enthusiastic supporter of the performing arts, a love that she will doubtless continue to nurture as First Lady.

The strain of being a politician's wife has taken its toll. She has suffered from a pinched nerve in her neck in recent years caused, say her doctors, by emotional stress. After several years of various forms of physical therapy to relieve the pain, she began to see a psychiatrist and take tranquilizers to steady her nerves. "I tried to be everything," she admits, "and I completely lost my sense of self-worth." Now she declares that "I feel better than I have in years," and no longer relies on tranquilizers.

Aside from the expanded role that the Secret Service is bound to play in their lives, the Ford children are not likely to let their father's new responsibilities chill their ardent sense of independence. Blonde and graceful, Susan has already shown that she is in the tradition of perky presidential daughters; last week she brought along to the inaugural ceremonies Current Beau Gardner Britt, 17, who will enter Virginia Polytechnic Institute this fall. Steve was admitted not long ago to Duke University, but before settling down in college, he has opted to take a year off to work on a cattle ranch in Utah.

Tall, wryly humorous and, like all the Ford boys, a good athlete, Jack begins his senior year at Utah State this fall as a forestry major, then plans to enter graduate school to study watershed management. Mike, the most serious and introspective of the four, is working on his doctorate in theology but has yet to decide on his career plans.

Last week the reality of becoming the nation's new First Family had still not quite taken hold. After her father had taken the oath of office and her parents were busy greeting guests at a reception, Susan Ford roamed wide-eyed through the White House. "Would anybody mind if I looked around?" she politely asked a military aide in the Red Room. "Not at all," he replied with a smile. "This is where you live."

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