Betty Ford still refers to it as "the time when the roof caved in"—the time when an unassuming Middle American political family suddenly had to move from a modest four-bedroom suburban Virginia home into the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "I really didn't want to come here," the First Lady told TIME Washington Correspondent Bonnie Angelo in the White House last week. "I was afraid because of the social demands, and I didn't think of it as a meaningful position for me." Adds her daughter Susan: "At first the idea of the presidency scared us, especially the kids. We were afraid we would become too public, that everyone would get wrapped up in their own things and we wouldn't be a family any more." Her stoutest encouragement came from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 91, who still remembers when she herself moved into the White House at the age of 17. Said she to Susan: "Have a helluva good time!"
Since Ford took office, the entire family has been together in the White House only once—last month, when the President insisted on a reunion. On that occasion the picture was taken that appears on TIME's cover; the First Lady presented it to her husband as a birthday gift. Yet as far-flung as the Ford children are, the family's solidarity remains its chief feature, along with a freewheeling independence of mind that all the Fords—including the President —nurture and relish.
That is one way the family surmounts crises: each member faces problems headon. Betty Ford has been the most badly hit, during the past year, by the discovery of a cancerous tumor that required removal of her right breast last September. But aside from a regimen of daily pills for one week out of every six, she has been able to ignore the disease and it has made no reappearance since her operation. She also suffers from a painful arthritic back, but even that rarely darkens her spirits. Despite her husband's mammoth work load, she finds that it has not come between them. "Evenings we usually spend together, both working while we sit in the den or maybe watch TV," she says. She also has unique occasions to lobby the President. "You might call it 'pillow talk,' " she says with a grin. "I definitely think I have influenced him on women's issues. There's a woman in the Cabinet—and I suggested that. Now if I can get a woman on the Supreme Court, I'll be batting 1.000."
She has been a forthright spokeswoman for the Equal Rights Amendment and liberalized abortion laws, and has calmly brushed aside the criticism she knew would be coming. "When somebody asks you how you stand on an issue, you're very foolish if you try to beat around the bush—you just meet yourself going around the bush the other way." On the other hand, she admits that when she occasionally disagrees with her husband, she "wouldn't want to embarrass him by opposing his position [in public]. That I'll do in the privacy of our own sitting room."