It was September 1975, and Vietnam and Watergate were sort of behind us. There was talk of a recession. Gerald Ford was president, and Nelson Rockefeller was VP. They stepped into those roles after President Nixon and Vice President Agnew resigned. Yes, I mean the Nixon-Agnew ticket, which carried 49 states in 1972, was out less than two years after sweeping the country.
As for Mr. Ford, he was the House Minority Leader, hoping to get a shot at being Speaker someday. I understand that he was also contemplating retirement.
As for Rockefeller, he was once governor of New York, failed to win the GOP nomination a couple of times, and was remembered for a nasty divorce.
Then the unthinkable almost happened twice. We had two assassination attempts against President Ford:
On September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, California, a woman named Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme had also attempted to shoot Ford. Fromme, a drug-addled Charles Manson follower, and Moore, a mentally unstable former FBI informant and accountant who fell into fringe revolutionary politics, both targeted Ford as a symbol of their hatred for the political establishment.
And then again:
On September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore aims a gun at President Gerald Ford as he leaves the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco, California. The attempt on the president’s life came only 17 days after another woman had tried to assassinate Ford while he was on his way to give a speech to the California legislature in Sacramento.
Moore’s attempt was thwarted by a bystander, Oliver Sipple, who instinctively grabbed Moore’s arm when she raised the gun. She was able to fire off one shot, but it failed to find its target. Secret Service agents quickly hustled Ford into a waiting vehicle and sped him to safety.
I remember driving in my car, and there was a breaking news flash of an assassination attempt. It was disturbing.
Thankfully, nothing happened, and we can write a post about it. I can only imagine the shock of another presidential assassination, a mere 12 years after Kennedy’s assassination, and Nelson Rockefeller being sworn in as the 39th president of the US.
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