Chapter 1: The First Rocky Year
September 5, 1975...The Time is 1:13 Eastern Standard Time. We are getting reports from Sacramento, California saying President Ford has been shot just a few minutes ago while walking to the California State Capitol...CBS is getting reports from its Sacramento affiliate that the President has been shot twice, once in the stomach and once in the leg. He has been rushed to Mercy General..."I got news that morning, it was a Friday. I was sipping coffee and I heard Jerry got shot in the gut by some wilded-eye gal in red. I thought to myself, 'that weak son of b*tch isn't gonna last. Kennedy could've had, if he took it in the gut. But not Jerry--wasn't hard enough for it."
-Former President Richard Nixon, Yorba Linda, 1988.
"I'll never forget flying out that afternoon on the back-up Air Force One. I couldn't stop thinking about Jackie Kennedy--every time I had met her I always found that grief she carried to be so hard to relate to. I was petrified I was going to find out what it was like soon enough."
-Former First Lady Betty Ford, Ford School of Public Policy, Ann Arbor September 1995
...President Ford has been said to be in a coma and physically incapacitated, according to doctors at Mercy General this morning. The Cabinet will be convening in Washington soon to invoke the 25th Amendment, which will make Vice President Rockefeller Acting President for the time being...Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, Acting President of the United States