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But Jack has few reasons to fume during his current stay. He has thoroughly enjoyed being on the stump with his father. To make certain his son looks his part, the President has suggested that Jack purchase a tuxedo ("You'll be needing it now") and start teeing off, as the President frequently does, at Burning Tree golf club in Maryland. Jack has begun to taste the pleasures of such perks as flight in the presidential helicopter. Recently, in fact, Jack slung his 6-ft. 1-in. frame into the helicopter seat that is normally reserved for the Commander in Chief. A moment later his father boarded the craft, looked down at his son, and growled affectionately, "You're not the President yet." Jack sheepishly gave up his seat as a Ford aide on board quipped, "It's all yours for only 270 electoral votes."
The Ford child who most shuns life in official Washington is Steve, 19, who is currently off in Montana's Scapegoat Mountains, studying grizzly bears with John Craighead, professor of forestry and zoology at the University of Montana. So remote is the group's location that supplies—and even letters from the White House—can only be carried in by mule and packhorse every ten days. The shyest of the four children, Steve may also be the most physically daring. Taking time off after high school to work at a ranch, he has spent recent months roping, riding, broncobusting, and wrestling wild steers. A lover of the outdoors like all the Fords, he will enter Utah State this fall, where, like his brother Jack, he will pursue his interests in forestry and environment.
The deepest inner resources in the Ford family seem to belong to Mike, 25, who has a year and a half of study to complete on his master's in theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Mike and Wife Gayle, 24, live a few miles away in tiny Essex, Mass. (pop. 2,899). When not immersed in the intensive summer Hebrew course he takes three nights a week, Mike is usually to be found studying at home, playing tennis with Gayle or tending the small garden plot lent them by a neighbor. Gayle, whose father is a junior high school principal in Catonsville, Md., met Mike when they were students at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. They both worship in an Episcopal church, and Mike is preparing himself for the Christian youth work he one day hopes to take up.
The only irritant that he and Gayle endure as relatives of the President is the constant presence of Secret Service men; at least two follow him everywhere. But that is the extent of his contact with officialdom. He and Gayle make only rare visits to Washington, although they talk to the President or Mrs. Ford at least once a week by telephone. Mike insists that the family's times together now, though rarer, are somehow more precious for being less frequent. "I've found we've really cherished our time together," he says, "just sitting around talking and showing each other pictures. I think the joy of those times has become intensified."