Many years ago, some 50 or 55, Congressman
Ford went to Detroit, and while there he came to do a talk show at WDET,
which was the radio station I managed for the university. Here was this
tall, well-built, 40-year-old whom everyone had told me was a football
All-American at the University of Michigan. Frankly, when I met this
former jock I was shocked to find him exceptionally bright, articulate,
well-read and well-mannered. He didn’t fit the jock stereotype!
Some 20 years later I met him again through my Wisconsin Congressman
Melvin Laird, who represented our area in Stevens Point. By then Ford
and Laird had become the power duo for the Republicans in the House. I
found that none of that or the Washington scene had changed this man one
bit. In fact, he didn’t even look 20 years older. I figured he must
work out to stay in such good shape. He was still affable and humble,
quite willing to stay in the background and let Laird be the center of
attention in his own district’s media.
By the 1980s I was governor and asked the former president to come to
Milwaukee and do a major fund-raiser for our party. It was on that
occasion that he and I and Joyce were able to sit backstage and just
chat for about a half hour, after which I had to go out front to get
things started. He offered to look after Joyce until she and he were
finally brought onstage. That afforded Joyce another half hour of just
sitting and talking with him.
Joyce will tell you that he clearly was not self-impressed like most
of the national political power figures that crossed our paths while we
were in office. He was much like Ronald Reagan, though Mrs. Reagan had
enough of that trait for both of them and then some. However, President
Ford actually frightened Joyce so badly by what he said that she wanted
me to resign! The president never knew that or he would have felt just
terrible about the conversation.
Just what were they talking about? About the Mansonesque cult that
dogged us every day of my time as governor. The cult leader’s name was
Jack Pickens, and he was in our prison at Waupun. He had inherited money
and owned a farm in Walworth County where he and a small group of mostly
young women lived in a commune-like fashion.
Pickens cut his dark hair and beard so that he looked quite a bit
like the infamous cult leader who had been convicted, along with several
female followers, of carrying out a bloody and savage murder rampage in
California. Charles Manson was his idol, and Pickens openly said so.
Some of his young ladies, two in particular, followed us everywhere,
both in and out of the state.
They drove a van which declared me a liar and the devil. I was
keeping an "innocent Christian" in prison because I wouldn’t
pardon Pickens. They came on every radio interview I had if it were open
to listener’s questions. They were outside the governor’s mansion
every day and attended our church any time we worshipped, with signs on
their backs letting the parishioners know what an evil person I was.
Joyce was scared to death of them and told Ford so.
The president unwittingly frightened her by recounting the two
instances when Manson’s girls tried to shoot him. That did it! On the
way home she was so hysterical that she wanted me to resign and go back
to Point where we would be safe. The president never knew this since we
never told him.
What a privilege for us to spend time with him. Joyce loved him,
despite the frightening conversation!
(Lee Sherman Dreyfus is a former Wisconsin governor who lives in
Waukesha. His column runs Thursdays in The Freeman.)
