DeFrank reminisces about years with Ford

By: Rick Rojas

Posted: 11/14/07

Thomas M. DeFrank says President Gerald R. Ford, the man he had the opportunity to cover as a journalist and know as a friend, was an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

"He was a common man in the good sense of the phrase," said DeFrank, the Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News and a White House correspondent for Newsweek for more than 25 years.

DeFrank discussed his book, Write It When I'm Gone, which covers 16 years of off-the-record interviews with Ford, Tuesday night at the George Bush Presidential Library Complex.

He first met Ford when he was a 28-year-old writer at Newsweek in the magazine's Washington bureau during the time of the Watergate scandal. President Richard M. Nixon was under constant scrutiny. The reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was breaking news every couple of days in the Washington Post. Vice President Ford, a reserved man from Michigan, was widely considered the president in waiting.

"My boss came into my office and said, 'Nixon is finished,'?" DeFrank said. "?'Ford is going to be the next president.'?"

From that point, DeFrank said, his job was to cover Ford. The vice president was traveling the country in an attempt to avoid the contentious environment of Washington and DeFrank went with him. They flew in Air Force Two, a very puny plane, he said, because they would have to stop and refuel on a trip from Washington to California.

At every stop, DeFrank said, Ford would have a press conference - which meant he faced difficult questions and had to defend Nixon day-in and day-out for months.

One of those trips was to College Station in 1974, where Ford gave the commencement address at Texas A&M. DeFrank said a reporter from The Battalion called and asked about the potential of a Ford presidency. His answer: "He was equipped to be president." The headline the next morning in The Battalion: "DeFrank predicts Ford presidency."

Another person traveling with them gathered dozens of copies of The Battalion issue and put it out for everyone to see. "There was a copy of The Battalion on every seat of Air Force Two," he said.

Ford saw the paper, he said, and later joked with him about it.

"He autographed a copy of that Battalion across the headline, and it was probably the most terse autograph I received from him," DeFrank said. The autograph read: "Thanks, Gerald R. Ford."

Spending so much time with Ford, he said, he realized the president had a very reserved demeanor and took the challenges of public life in good humor.

"The truth was he was a good sport, as he was a good sport about everything," DeFrank said.

Given the situation in which he was placed, DeFrank said, that calm temperament could sometimes give way. DeFrank was in the middle of a face-to-face interview with then-Vice President Ford when his press secretary sitting in had to leave to take a phone call and did not return. "A reporter's dream happened," he said: He got to speak to a politician without any "handlers" in the room.

The normally reserved man had fumed for five days after reading an opinion column by William Saffire, a former Nixon aide who became a columnist for the New York Times. Saffire wrote in the piece, published under the headline "Et tu, Jerry," accusing the vice president of trying to take the presidency from Nixon.

"It bugs me that people think I want to be president," Ford said to DeFrank in the conversation. "Dick Nixon knows I've been damn loyal to him."

"He thought he was bending over backwards to defend the man that picked him to be vice president," DeFrank said.

Ford ranted about President Nixon and the press. Then, DeFrank said, Ford realized what he had said to a reporter and tried to backtrack - qualifying his statements, saying it was off the record.

DeFrank remained silent. He said Ford thought the silence meant he disagreed with Ford's words being off the record, probably picturing a piece in the next edition of Newsweek. Instead, DeFrank said, he was scared: Vice President Ford, a tall, athletic man who could have played professional football, was looming over him.

Ford walked around the table, DeFrank recalled, gently grabbing his tie. He told DeFrank, "Write it when I'm dead."

He did.

"I gave him my word," he said. "I didn't want to surrender my good name and good word, so I kept to my word."

Seventeen years ago, DeFrank approached Ford about doing an obituary interview. "Hundreds of thousands of [obituaries] are prewritten at most news organizations," he said. In the process of writing them, reporters from the organizations will request an interview with the subject, often saying, "You'll like it, [though] you won't be able to see it."

Ford agreed to the interview, and one interview became 16, with the last taking place the summer before Ford's death at 93 on Dec. 26. In the course of the introspective and wide-ranging interviews, DeFrank said Ford discussed everything from taking over the presidency after Nixon's resignation to grasping new-fangled technology, such as personal computers.

"I think the pardon cost him the election of 1976, he always thought it was Reagan," DeFrank said, referring to then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan who sought the Republican presidential nomination in the 1976 election.

Ford also spoke about Vice President Richard Cheney, who was an aide to Ford during his presidency. The man he once praised, he later became unsure about. "He was biting his lip about Dick Cheney before the end of his life," DeFrank said.

He said Ford talked about growing old - and all that aging entails - quite a bit.

"I saw him dealing with the juggernaut of old age," DeFrank said.

He said Ford rebelled against the doctors after they told him he could no longer swim or travel to Colorado to see the mountains - and to lay off his favorite treat: butter pecan ice cream.

"He was in full-revolt against what I call the medical Torquemada," DeFrank said.

The last time DeFrank saw the president, though, wasn't for an interview. It was November 2006, a little more than a month before Ford died. He entered the same house he had for the past 16 years and walked down the same hallway to the same study. But Ford's chief of staff told him to brace himself, he said, because he may not be able to handle seeing the once vital man in such a weak state.

"I thought I'd be prepared for this, but I wasn't," DeFrank said.

Inside the study, Ford wasn't standing up to welcome him in or sitting behind his desk, DeFrank said. He was propped up in a hospital bed, looking gaunt, weak and clearly near the end of his life. He said the two had a brief conversation.

"It was very clear that he was in no shape to do an interview," he said.

As the conversation ended, he said, Ford's last words to him were as gracious and genuine as always - though they would be unfulfilled: "Come back again."