Praise is Fine, but Bury Him Already

Yesterday, a week after his death, the state funeral was held for President Gerald R. Ford, who is being remembered as a thoroughly decent man over thirty years after his pardon of President Nixon met with such a firestorm.

Although I was one of the Americans who voted for Jimmy Carter in the election of 1976 (my first presidential election as a voter,) I’m glad to see Gerald Ford remembered with such fondness. I don’t believe that Presidents should be exempt from prosecution any more than any other citizen, so I didn’t agree with the pardon then, nor has time reversed my stand. But Gerald Ford seemed to be a fairly decent and likeable fellow, Nixon pardon aside. I never heard any rumors about him tomcatting around with other women. Nor do I recall hearing any stories about wild behavior on the part of any of his children.

I thought that the behavior of the Ford offspring (calling four adults, ages 49 through 56, “children” doesn’t seem appropriate) and their offspring as they thanked the thousands who came to pay respects to their father and grandfather at the Capitol was commendable. I think it’s safe to say that there will be no “Daddy Dearest” books written by any of the Ford children. It’s nice to see such familial love.

I couldn’t help noticing just how peaked the family members looked at yesterday’s services. I was especially surprised at the frail, bent appearance of Betty Ford, who is now 88 years old. Mrs. Ford did not go into the Capitol with her children for one last look at her husband’s coffin on this extremely windy morning, and I have to wonder how she managed to get in there on previous days. I can’t imagine her getting up all those stairs. Hopefully there’s an elevator.

Of course, in the days following the death of a loved one, people tend not to look their best, even if the deceased, like the President, has been in failing health and the death did not really come as a surprise. Then I realized that these folks have been through a lot. There was the viewing of the flag-draped coffin prior to the private service for the family in the California desert city where President and Mrs. Ford lived. Then the family accompanied the coffin to Washington, D.C., for two days of public viewing (of the flag-draped coffin, not of President Ford himself.) Yesterday, after the state funeral, the family flew to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the President was raised, for yet more public viewing and a final service before burial later today. Now, that’s a lot of services. All that stress can make anyone haggard, and can be dangerous in a woman of Betty Ford’s age and somewhat unstable history.

I’ve always respected Betty Ford’s frank attitude, particularly in regard to her breast cancer, which prompted thousands of women to get checkups, and her candid admissions about her addiction to alcohol and pills and about her face lift (I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand it when women like Ivana Trump and Janet Jackson insist they’ve never undergone surgical improvements when anyone with eyes can spot the differences between before and after.)

But I remember thinking it odd that someone so open never corrected anyone when, prior to the 1976 election, she was asked if her husband planned to run for re-election (Gerald Ford was appointed, not elected, to his Vice Presidential post after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew, moving into the Presidency after the resignation of Richard M. Nixon.) But it's the reason she gave for her substance abuse made her credibility take a nosedive for me, and which I can't help but being concerned about now. Her husband was frequently away during his congressional career, and she felt so overwhelmed that she turned to drink.

Give me a break. This was a woman living in a lovely home in Alexandria, Virginia, with a maid (a black woman, natch) to do all the cooking and cleaning for herself and her four children. How many women lived in less affluent surroundings, who had to do all the cooking and cleaning for their families with no household help? Hell, my own mother had five children, the first four in a five-year period, and spent ten years living in a housing project, hardly the garden spot of the world. Our apartment was always spotless, our cupboards always full, because of her tireless cleaning and shopping. My earliest memories of her are her sitting behind the ironing board, an overflowing basket of folded rough-dry laundry on the floor nearby. Ironing gave her a rare opportunity to sit down.

Plenty of women of that era and now as well didn’t have husbands to bring home a paycheck while they kept house. That meant they had to do all that cooking and cleaning and food shopping and laundry and ironing themselves . . . after they worked to bring home the bacon, usually at jobs that paid nowhere near the amount men earned. These women had it toughest of all.

I know that people are made unhappy by different situations, but I feel that being literally driven to drink because your husband – who provided a comfortable life for you – did a lot of traveling and left you at home to care for your children is just plain lame. This hardly sounds like the same woman who after her marriage in 1948 agreed to keep a low profile until her new husband’s first Congressional election out of fear that her self-described background as a “divorced ex-dancer” might not sit well with conservative Midwestern voters.

The claim of the stress of raising children alone would sound more befitting if it came from a woman raised in wealth. (Anyone who believes that women like Jacqueline Kennedy, whose stepfather Hugh Auchincloss was a millionaire back in a time when it really meant something; and Nancy Reagan, whose neurosurgeon stepfather was hardly a pauper, even if he didn’t have the Auchincloss millions, got out of bed in the middle of the night to feed a screaming infant or who regularly bathed their babies themselves, raise your hand.) But Betty Ford did not come from this type of privileged background, and I never understood her whining.

Betty’s husband is gone now, after 58 years of marriage. Fortunately, she has the support of a large, loving family of children and grandchildren who will surely keep a close watch on her.

And I’m glad, for I suspect she’s going to need it. Dealing with the loss of her husband at this point in her life will likely be a lot more difficult than, half a lifetime ago, making sure her four young children are in bed by eighty-thirty or handing the housekeeper a shopping list.