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The independence of the Ford children has not been curbed by their father's new position. They go their own way—with occasionally bewildered Secret Service men in tow. In many ways the strongest family member seems to be the youngest, Susan, who turned 18 this month. With private quarters to herself on the third floor of the White House, Susan has artfully and unassumingly adjusted to the demands of a life more scrutinized—and more pampered—than any that most teen-agers ever know. "But we clean our own rooms," she says. "That's orders from Mother, and it always has been that way."
Susan is currently established, however, in a motel in Topeka, Kans., for a six-week summer internship as a staff photographer for the Topeka State Journal and Daily Capital. For $115 per week, she is learning the essentials of photographic journalism from Picture Editor Rich Clarkson, who last week took her on her biggest assignment so far: shooting the Apollo launch at Cape Canaveral. After creditably snapping such routine newspaper subjects as a local Girl Scout painting exhibition, a county land auction, and a full-page spread on marriage counseling (some scenes of which had to be reshot in a second session), Susan seemed to Clarkson to be ready for the tougher Canaveral assignment. Calling her work there "much more disciplined," Clarkson ran three of her better pictures in the paper.
Since she arrived in Topeka two weeks ago, her sole out-of-town visitor has been Brian McCartney, 26, a ski patrolman from Northbrook, Ill., whom Susan met during a Ford family ski outing at Vail, Colo., in December. After she puts in her 7½-hr. day, Susan usually spends her evenings alone, cooking her own dinner, which she sometimes shares with Secret Service men. When her internship is over, Susan will join her parents at Vail for a family vacation before entering Mount Vernon College in the fall. She would like a car, but since there is no money for one in her parents' budget, she will be driven from the White House to school by the Secret Service.
As single-minded as Susan is Jack, 23, who moved into the White House last month after earning a B.S. degree in forestry from Utah State University. He has become a full-time aide in the presidential campaign (TIME, July 21), and in private conversations with his father he has not hesitated to disagree.
Outspoken as he knows his son to be, even the President may be somewhat taken aback by a recent expression of Jack's feelings on a subject that he feels very strongly about: the environment. When Columnist William V. Shannon grumbled in the Washington Star that a recent Ford speech on pollution "thickened the air with additional noxious materials," an infuriated Jack fired off a reply to the paper: "I can't help but feel that armchair conservationists like Mr. Shannon only cloud the water and do damage to an important effort."