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By Perry Deane Young (published in the December 31, 2006 Chapel Hill News) I am seated to his right in even more casual jeans and shirt, gesturing toward my friend David Kennerly who was then serving as Ford’s official White House photographer. Kennerly and I had both covered the Vietnam War for UPI; he had won the Pulitzer Prize for his war photographs at age 21. “Youngest person ever to win a Pulitzer,” he was quick to tell anybody who would or would not listen. The brash young photographer had been one of Ford’s first appointments. It was, to say the least, a peculiar move and an odd match of personalities. The first and only unelected President was famous for his taciturn demeanor. Kennerly was the opposite, outspoken to the point of rudeness. Famous for his involvement with a succession of beautiful women, he lived in a Georgetown townhouse and gadded about in a chocolate Mercedes convertible. You couldn’t picture Ford had ever gadded about in anything. There had been photographers assigned to very routine White House duties before, but there had never been anybody like Kennerly. A lot of people wondered what in the world was going on here and Esquire editor Nora Ephron assigned me to find out. That particular Sunday in the early summer of 1975, Kennerly and I had been out in the Virginia countryside to a brunch among some National Geographic pals of his when we realized we were about to be late for my appointment with the President. We zoomed back into Washington; Kennerly waved at the security guard and zipped on into a parking space underneath the Executive Office Building beside the White House. We scrambled on up to the Oval Office where I was introduced to the President. Kennerly took a few snaps and quickly left. And I was left almost speechless, overwhelmed by the historic setting itself—and the very plain ordinary man who sat facing me. Why would you need a personal photographer? I asked. Ford answered in slow measured sentences; it became obvious that this was not some spur of the moment casual decision. Without casting aspersions on the sinister reign of his friend Richard Nixon, he explained that it was important for people to see that an “ordinary, normal family” was now living in the White House. In the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon, his family was strictly off limits; his wife and daughters were treated like royalty by the staff and only staged formal photos were allowed. In Nixon’s final days, millions of us feared our President had become seriously deranged and we were under the control of a madman. Gerald Ford set about changing all that. “You are getting a Ford, not a Lincoln,” he quipped in one of his first interviews. He had a calculated program to show that normality—and sanity—had returned to the White House. And Kennerly’s pictures provided the vital link to the public. “I can’t remember when I’ve read a whole book,” Ford confessed to me. His point was that pictures got through where no amount of words ever could. And he was right. From his little basement office, Kennerly churned out hundreds of pictures every day and—because he was a pro, not a hack—they were reprinted in magazines and newspapers every single day. They showed the Fords in private moments together, and with their lively sons, Steve and Jack, and teenaged daughter, Susan. Although her private melancholy was often obvious, Betty Ford was seen as a partner, never as a subservient fixture in the household. She chose to talk about her mastectomy at a time when women just didn’t do that. The young photographer followed her and the family into and out of the hospital and Americans shared in her ordeal because of his incredibly intimate photographs. Ford explained that Kennerly’s pictures had served him well. And, besides, he loved having the guy and his wisecracks around. After Ford was shot at in San Francisco, Kennerly greeted him on Air Force One: “Other than that, Mister President, how was your day.” At the end of Ford’s term, Kennerly submitted a one-line resignation letter: “It’s been real.” And Ford responded with a loving note saying Kennerly had been the one who helped keep it real. But there was one final question I had to ask that day, even though it had nothing to do with my story. “Why did you do it, Mister President? Why did you pardon Nixon?” “Well,” he said, “it was obvious that if I hadn’t done that, Watergate would have stayed on the front pages and we wouldn’t have been able to do anything. It was important to put all that behind us.” It was a matter of good old-fashioned American common sense I—who had wanted to see Richard Nixon convicted and imprisoned—suddenly understood. Ford never regretted that decision and would live long enough to be honored for it as a “Profile in Courage” at Harvard. Maybe we didn’t appreciate the kind of down home integrity he brought to the office then but we most certainly yearn for it now more than ever. HOME • COMMENTARY • BOOKS • PLAYS • CONTACT |