Gerald Ford It’s personal EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Listen to Presidential at http://wapo.st/presidential This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: What's a memory from your dad's presidency that comes back to you often? One that, just for some reason, has stuck with you the most? STEVEN FORD: I have a funny story that's a great memory. It was the first time we had dinner in the White House. And you have to remember that we didn't get to move into the White House for seven days, because, when Nixon left, they weren't able to pack up all their belongings quick enough. Their daughter and son-in-law, I think, stayed and packed all their clothes. So, we had to go back to our little house in Alexandria, Virginia, and for the first seven days of dad's presidency, and I remember that first meal after Dad became president -- after he got sworn in that day, we're sitting around the dinner table, and my mother was cooking and my mother looked over at Dad. She was at the stove, and she goes, 'Jerry, something's wrong here. You just became president. And I'm still cooking.' And that was the memory that sticks out the most of what a strange time that was -- that, for seven days, we had to live in our little house in suburbia and Dad would commute to the Oval Office. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: This is Steven Ford, the youngest son of President Gerald Ford who took over when Richard Nixon resigned from office. I'm Lillian Cunningham with The Washington Post, and this is the 37th episode of “Presidential.” PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Gerald Ford's presidency wasn't just rare because he took over for the only president, Nixon, who had ever resigned from office. It was also rare because Ford had never even been on the campaign ticket. Nixon's original vice president was Spiro Agnew. But in 1973, Agnew had to resign over criminal charges of money laundering and tax evasion. So, Nixon had to nominate a new vice president, and he picked Gerald Ford who, at that point, was the Republican House minority leader. The Congress confirmed Ford, but then less than a year later, in August 1974, Nixon also had to resign. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 And that thrust Gerald Ford into the presidency, making him the only American president to never have been elected to any national office by voters [across the U.S.]. He became both vice president and then president through these extraordinary constitutional backup plans. So, we have some really neat guests for this episode. Berkeley professor Daniel Sargent will discuss some of the most notable foreign and domestic events during Ford's brief time in office, including the end of the Vietnam War. And I'm also going to talk with David Hume Kennerly, who was Ford's White House photographer. Ford was actually one of the first presidents to have one. And Kennerley has some amazing stories of being such a close observer, quite literally close, to Ford's time as president. But before all of that, President Ford's youngest son Steve was kind enough to talk on the phone with me about his father's life. And I thought: Why not shake things up a little and instead of a biographer for this first portion, we'll have someone really close to Gerald Ford talk about his character traits and his path to the presidency? So, Steve, it's an honor to have you on this podcast. STEVEN FORD: Thank you very much. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, well, thank you. Tell me about your dad's childhood, maybe starting with the fact that he wasn't actually born with the name Gerald Ford. STEVEN FORD: Yeah, I think Dad's childhood is one of the key things that drove him into the success he got to in the public service area, in that, you're right, he was born with a different name -- Leslie King. And his mother had married a man who was physically abusive, who literally beat her on her honeymoon. And Dad was born shortly after that -- nine, 10 months later. And so, he came up in a physically abusive situation with a father, but thank God he had a wonderfully strong mother. His mother, Dorothy, -- one night her husband came at her with a butcher knife, and Dad was just a baby. And she fled in the middle of the night and left Omaha, Nebraska, and went across the bridge, across the river to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and she hid out for two or three days with Dad, who was just a young child. And she waited for her father to come down on the train from Illinois to pick her up and take her back home. She filed for divorce. And you think about how strong a woman she must have been because, you know, back in 1914, 1915, women didn't leave marriages. And here was a woman that was willing to take the shame of a single mother with a child back then. She eventually moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan and met a wonderful man, and his name was Gerald R. Ford, Sr. And he took my dad in when he married Dorothy, and that was the man that invested in dad's life. That was a man that, Gosh, made sure he had the right school teachers, the right football coach, the right church pastor, the right Boy Scout leader. He was 16-years old and Dad didn't know that Grandpa Ford was not his real father. Dad was Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 working at lunchtime when he was going high school to make some money flipping hamburgers at a burger joint across the street from the high school. And a man walked in and said, 'Is there a Leslie King here?' And my dad had never heard that name, and then he said, 'Is there a Jerry Ford here?' And my dad said, 'Yeah, that's me.' And this man who was his biological father said, 'I'm your real father.' And dad was shocked. He did not know the story. Grandma and Grandpa Ford had never told him. And he sat down with this man, and he said he'd just come from Detroit, bought a new Cadillac, had a new wife and was headed to a new ranch he bought in Wyoming. And he wanted Dad to join him, and my dad was shocked. He thought he was crazy. You know, 'You've not been a part of my life.' And he went home and told his mother, and they sat down at the kitchen table. And they told him the real story and that's how he found out, And he never heard from his real dad ever again. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Wow. So, one question I always ask in these podcast episodes is: What would it be like to go on a blind date with this president -- which feels like an inappropriate question to ask you, but maybe you can just give us a sense at least of your dad's character. If someone were to meet him for the first time, what sort of traits they would notice most about him? STEVEN FORD: You know, he was kind of the athlete, the square -- the guy that always did it the right way and probably wasn't the smartest guy in the room or the most intellectual, but he had the most common sense. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: What's the story that you always heard of how he and your mother met? STEVEN FORD: I think they were set up on a blind date. Dad had seen her, and asked a friend, you know, 'Who's that gal?' And they said, 'That's Betty Bloomer.' So, someone arranged for them to meet and have cocktails with some other folks. And that's how they met. And when he was dating my mother, he told her, he said, 'Betty, I want to marry you, but I have a secret, and I can't tell you yet.' And that was that he was going to run for Congress. And she swears that if she knew he was going to go into politics, she never would have married him, but it worked out pretty good. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, he does win that congressional seat, and then he spends 25 years as a congressman -- from 1949 to 1973 -- and he's even House minority leader for those last nine years of it. So, what did you see of how your dad operated as a congressman? STEVEN FORD: His best friend in Congress was Tip O'Neill, the Democratic speaker of the House. They would fight on the floor of Congress about legislation and get something hammered out -- a compromise. And then, that night, Tip O'Neill would be at our house for dinner. And that was the difference between politics back then and today -- they knew how to work together, not to be enemies, and find compromises. It would hurt Dad to see how toxic politics has gotten. I remember Dad talking to me and saying, 'How am I going to work out something in Congress with someone on the other side of an issue if I can't break bread with them, if I don't know where their sons are going to college or what their dog's name is?' It's relational, and we don't see that today.