Betty Ford: First Lady Read online

  When Jerry Ford returned to Grand Rapids in February 1946 after being honorably discharged from the navy as a lieutenant commander, he was a much-changed man.

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  A Courtship and a Campaign

  Ford’s former partner, Phil Buchen, had by this point joined another law firm, Butterfield, Keeney, and Amberg, and when Jerry returned, the senior partners there invited him into their practice too. Jerry flung himself into work, happy to be back in the career for which he’d studied and worked so hard. At the same time, he became active in numerous civic organizations around the county.

  A year and a half later, Jerry was thirty-four years old, and most of the women he’d known before the war were already married. After Phyllis Brown, after seeing the world and war from the deck of an aircraft carrier, Jerry Ford wasn’t going to settle for just any woman. He needed someone special. One night in August 1947, he was at the home of friends Frank and Peg Neuman for a cancer drive planning meeting. When everyone else had gone, he mentioned that his mother had been pestering him about when he was going to settle down.

  “Who’s around that a bachelor my age can date?” he asked. “You have any ideas?”

  Peg Neuman immediately thought of her good friend Betty. The two had been friends since high school, and they saw each other frequently through their work with the Mary Free Bed Guild.

  “How about Betty Warren?” Peg suggested.

  Jerry knew the name. He recalled meeting her briefly at one of the Kent Country Club Saturday night dances, and what stuck in his mind was how very attractive she was—and that she was married.

  “She’s getting a divorce,” Peg added with a glint in her eye.

  Jerry’s interest was sparked. “Well, would you give her a call?” he asked. “I’ll get on the phone and see if I can convince her to have a drink.”

  Betty was at her apartment with a stack of notecards, writing out the script for a fashion show she was hosting at Herpolsheimer’s the next day. It was past dinnertime and surprising to hear the phone ring at such a late hour.

  “Hello, Betty,” Peg said on the other end of the line. “We’re here working on the cancer drive, and Jerry Ford’s here. He wants to know if you’ll have a drink with him.”

  Jerry was standing close to Peg, and she held the phone to his ear so he could hear Betty’s reply.

  “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly. I’m working on a style show for tomorrow, and I expect I’ll be working until two in the morning,” she said.

  Jerry grabbed the phone and said, “Hi, Betty, this is Jerry Ford. You know, it would do you good to take a break for a few minutes. I’d really like to take you out for a drink.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,” Betty repeated. Her divorce wasn’t yet final—it was a sixty-day process—and even though Bill Warren wasn’t contesting, she didn’t want to take any chances. Besides, it just wasn’t proper.

  Jerry persisted. “I’ll just come by and get you, and we can go around to a place I know and have a beer. You’ll feel refreshed.”

  “Jerry, you know, I’m in the process of getting a divorce.” She thought that would stop him, but he wasn’t ready to give up.

  “We’ll just go to some quiet little spot where nobody will know us,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s quite cricket,” she said. “You’re a lawyer; you ought to know better,” she teased. Truth be told, she was intrigued.

  “Just for an hour or so,” Ford promised.

  Finally, she agreed. “All right. But I can only be gone twenty minutes.”

  A short while later, Jerry knocked on her apartment door. He had expected she might be standoffish or distant, but she greeted him with enthusiasm and a warm smile. They drove to an out-of-the-way bar on the corner of Hall Street and Division Avenue, and settled into a quiet booth in the back. The conversation flowed, and the next time Betty looked at her watch, an hour had passed.

  “I can’t say love at first sight,” Betty would say later, “but it certainly was ‘I wonder if maybe it wouldn’t work if we got together.’ ”

  There was attraction on both sides, but because of the circumstances, neither of them was ready to jump into anything serious. The next day at work, Betty found herself thinking about Jerry and wondering if he’d call again. He left her hanging for a few days, but then he did call and ask her out again. They were both busy with work, and cautious about being seen, but over the course of the next several weeks, they began to go out to dinner and an occasional movie. One night, they were waiting in line to buy tickets for a nine o’clock movie when Betty’s mother and stepfather came walking out of the theater, having just seen the earlier show. Betty could tell that her mother was “quite shocked,” to see her with a man, obviously on a date. Betty shrugged it off, acted casual, and introduced Jerry to her parents.

  On September 22, 1947, Betty was officially and legally divorced from Bill Warren, based on grounds of incompatibility. She was given a token settlement of $1 and the furnishings of their Grand Rapids apartment. Finally, she was once again a free and independent woman.

  Over the next few months, Betty and Jerry began spending more time together, but not exclusively. She had told him marriage was the last thing on her mind, and he had assured her that he wasn’t interested in getting serious either. Admittedly, Betty had always liked handsome blond men, and she found Jerry physically attractive, but after experiencing such disappointment in her marriage, she was interested only in having a male companion with whom she could relax and go out.

  One night, Jerry stopped by Betty’s Washington Street apartment and found three other young men sitting with her in the living room drinking beer and hanging out. Betty invited Jerry in, but immediately it became clear that he wasn’t happy about the situation. He “plunked himself down on the couch and opened up the evening paper—like a stern father,” she recalled.

  Eventually two of the three men got up and left, but the other one stayed. He and Jerry were both vying for Betty’s attention, and, finally, Betty said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve got to work in the morning, so I’m going to bed.”

  Betty’s apartment was on the ground floor, and with her bedroom window open, she heard them talking outside.

  “What are your intentions with Betty?” Jerry asked pointedly.

  “I’m very interested,” the other young man said.

  “Fine,” Jerry replied. “I just wanted to find out.”

  Betty never let on that she had overheard the conversation, and at the time, she felt it was “pretty nervy” of Jerry to be asking about the other’s intentions. He had told her about his four-year relationship with Phyllis, and Betty wasn’t so sure that he didn’t still hold a torch for her.

  That fall, they went to Michigan football games in Ann Arbor, and when Thanksgiving came, Jerry invited her to dinner with his parents, brothers, and their families. Betty felt immediately at ease, charming them with her quick wit and sparkling smile as she bounced his brothers’ babies on her knee. They were still uncommitted, but Betty was beginning to realize she felt something more than just a friendship with Jerry.

  “I wondered if I was going to ruin everything by falling in love with a man who didn’t want me to love him,” she wrote.

  Jerry wasn’t very demonstrative, which wasn’t unusual—in those days, people didn’t show a lot of open affection—but he was falling in love too. “Betty just lit me up,” Jerry would later say. “She touched me in a way no other woman ever could. She made me laugh and also feel protective of her.” Still, they were each afraid to admit to the other what they were feeling.

  At Christmastime, Jerry had planned a two-week ski vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho, with some friends. The separation would put their relationship to the test.

  Jerry Ford was the most eligible bachelor in Grand Rapids, and Betty had seen how ladies followed him wherever he went. She “knew darn well he would have a good time” out there in Sun Valley, a
nd, admittedly, she was jealous. She had to find a way to subtly let him know that her feelings had deepened, with the hopes that he’d think of her while he was gone. So before Jerry left, Betty had one of the Herpolsheimer’s seamstresses make up an elegant red corduroy Christmas stocking with a black velvet cuff, and she filled it with “silly” presents that each sent a message: a pair of argyle socks she’d knitted, to keep him warm; a pair of sunglasses to which she’d fastened blinders on the sides, to keep his eyes from wandering; and the most daring gift of all: a gold lighter for his pipe onto which she had engraved “To the light of my life.” She gave him the stocking to take with him, and off he went.

  As part of her job at Herpolsheimer’s, Betty was scheduled to go to New York City for a buying trip on January 2. She’d gone out New Year’s Eve with another man, celebrating with a group of friends at the Blythefield Country Club, but all she could think about was Jerry. She got home around four in the morning and decided to call him at his hotel in Sun Valley to wish him a Happy New Year. The phone rang and rang with no answer. She left a message with the operator and promptly fell asleep.

  A few hours later, he called her back. It turned out that Jerry was missing her just as much as she was missing him. He had written her letters every day. With her about to leave for New York, he suggested she get together with Bradshaw Crandell, a friend of his. Crandell was somewhat of a celebrity, as the artist who painted models for magazine covers, and Betty knew that he and his wife had been close friends with Jerry’s former girlfriend Phyllis Brown.

  “If you think I’m going to call him up, you’re crazy,” she said. “If you want me to meet him, you can call him yourself.”

  When she arrived in New York—she was staying at the Waldorf Towers, where the Junior League offered discounted rooms to its members—there were already several messages from Brad Crandell. Jerry had indeed called him, and Brad invited Betty over to his apartment for cocktails one evening.

  As it turned out, Betty’s childhood friend Mary Adelaide’s brother, Walt Jones, was living in New York, so she asked him to accompany her to Crandell’s apartment. She was feeling quite chic, wearing a maroon-colored suit with a matching blouse and taffeta petticoat, and a hat perched at an angle on her head. Crandell was very cordial as he invited them in and offered drinks in the living room. They hadn’t been there more than fifteen minutes, when the doorbell rang.

  “Darling, what a surprise!” Crandell said as he opened the door. And there she was—“gorgeous, blonde, skinny as a rail”—Phyllis Brown.

  Betty was fuming. Phyllis and Brad Crandell made it seem as if Phyllis’s dropping by was a surprise visit, but Betty knew Crandell must have told her that Jerry Ford’s new girlfriend was in town, and Phyllis wanted to check her out. Phyllis slinked in wearing a mink coat, which she casually slung onto a chair, revealing a low-cut, black satin dress that left nothing to the imagination. She proceeded to interrogate Betty about Jerry’s friends and family in Grand Rapids, making it clear how close to all of them she had once been.

  “How is his mother? Do they still have barbecues up at the cottage?”

  “At the same time she was staking out a prior claim to Jerry,” Betty noted, “she was somehow managing to vamp Walt Jones.” The evening was a total disaster. The final humiliating blow was when Walt invited Phyllis out to dinner—he said he’d come back and pick her up after he dropped off Betty at the Waldorf.

  Betty and Jerry had been writing to each other daily, and when Betty got back to her room, she sat down and wrote him a scathing letter. She didn’t think he was behind Phyllis’s surprise visit, but she had been so put off by Brad’s and Phyllis’s phoniness that she told Jerry if he wanted to associate with these kinds of people, he could count her out. As soon as she finished, she folded up the letter, sealed and stamped the envelope, marched down the hall, and dropped it in the mail chute.

  When she awoke the next morning, she was filled with regret. She wished she could take back her words, but there was no way to retrieve the letter. She’d just have to wait and see how Jerry reacted. Hopefully, she hadn’t ruined everything.

  When she returned to Grand Rapids, Jerry greeted her warmly. He’d brought her a present—a hand-tooled leather belt with a silver buckle—and chatted amiably about his vacation. Not one word about the letter. Finally, Betty couldn’t stand it any longer. “Listen,” she said, “did you by any chance get a letter from me that mentioned your artist friend and the model?”

  “Yes, I did,” he said. Betty held her breath. Oh no.

  “I gather you didn’t care much for them,” he said with a smile. The subject never came up again, and “everything moved very fast after that.”

  There were ski weekends in northern Michigan at Caberfae Peaks, with friends Phoebe and Jack Stiles, and two other couples, where they stayed in a primitive cabin that had eight cots, a potbelly stove, and a one-hole outhouse. They’d ski all day and then go out to dinner at a nearby tavern, dancing to the music on the jukebox until the place closed.

  “It was our big Saturday bash,” Betty recalled, “and we reveled in it.”

  After six months of dating, Jerry Ford had no doubt that Betty Bloomer Warren was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. She was beautiful, intelligent, adventurous; she had a great sense of humor, was fun to be around, and unafraid to speak her mind. They’d both been in previous relationships from which they’d learned and matured, and now Jerry, at age thirty-five, and Betty, nearly thirty, knew what they wanted in a lifetime partner.

  One cold February night, they were sitting together on the couch in Betty’s apartment, when Jerry looked into Betty’s eyes and said, “I’d like to marry you.”

  “He didn’t tell me he loved me,” Betty said. “He just told me he’d like to marry me.” That was enough for her. “I took him up on it instantly,” she recalled, “before he could change his mind.”

  But there was one more thing. “We can’t get married until next fall,” Jerry added. “And I can’t tell you why.”

  “A fall wedding will be fine,” Betty said. She trusted him with all her heart. She knew if he told her they needed to wait, there must be a good reason. She loved him, and she knew he loved her, even if he couldn’t say it out loud.

  And that letter? It may well have been that letter she’d written in a moment of anger that cemented it for him. He knew Betty would always tell him the truth; would always speak her mind. And just as a reminder—perhaps a reminder not ever to take her love for granted—Jerry put the letter in a safe-deposit box.

  The secret he was keeping from her—the reason they couldn’t marry until the fall—would set a course for their lives that neither of them could have imagined.

  You will be meeting kings and queens. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.

  Betty’s mother and stepfather were fixing up a lake house in Wabaningo on Lake Michigan, getting it ready for summer visitors, and at that time, before texts and emails, when long distance phone calls were a luxury expense reserved for emergencies, Betty and Hortense stayed in touch with frequent letters back and forth. Shortly after Betty’s thirtieth birthday, Hortense wrote:

  Bets darling,

  Your letter just arrived, and we do so hope the package arrived for your birthday . . . it was grand to hear how well you do your job . . . how proud I would have been to be at the show—you are a great gal—and I can’t wait to get home to see you.

  She wrote about all the goings-on, the various visitors at the house, and clearly, she was happy about Betty’s fiancé:

  We do wish you two could run in and see us—we can always tuck you in. And tell Jerry we want him to think of this as his home too.

  Bye my little darling. Must get this in the mail—all our love,

  Mother

  For two months, Betty had wondered what the secret could possibly be that Jerry was keeping from her. Those close to Jerry at the time have said it wasn’t that he didn’t trust her to ke
ep his secret; it was only that he hadn’t completely made up his mind yet, and it was just his nature to keep his thoughts to himself until he had reached a decision.

  Finally, in late April, Jerry was ready to reveal what he’d been holding inside. Betty could tell it was something very serious by the look in his eyes as he asked her to sit down.

  “Betty,” he said, “I’ve decided I’m going to run for Congress.”

  “Okay,” Betty replied. She didn’t know what running for Congress meant, but if Jerry wanted to do it, that was fine with her.

  He explained that he was going to run against incumbent representative Bartel “Barney” J. Jonkman for the Fifth Congressional District seat in Michigan’s September primary elections. Jonkman, a senior Republican on the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, was an ardent isolationist and was opposed to helping the nations of Europe rebuild. Jerry had seen firsthand how critical it was for America to maintain strong relationships with our allies, and he felt so fervently that Jonkman’s views were bad for the country, he couldn’t stand by and do nothing, even though the odds were heavily stacked against him.

  In Grand Rapids’s conservative, largely Dutch community, Jonkman, himself Dutch, was enormously popular. In 1946 he faced no Republican opposition at all and had swamped the Democrat for his fourth consecutive term. Jerry had been discussing his plans with close friends Phil Buchen and Jack Stiles, and while they were enthusiastically supportive of his decision to run, they stressed that it was important to keep it under wraps until the last possible moment, largely because his engagement to Betty was potentially a problem. While it would be beneficial for voters to know that he was planning to marry, some might not approve if they knew his wife-to-be was a divorcée—and there was a good possibility that Betty’s past could cost him the election. Jerry’s biggest advantage would be to catch his opponent off guard, declaring his candidacy just before the filing deadline.