Marriage and Children
On October 15, 1948, at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Ford married Elizabeth Bloomer Warren (1918–2011), a department store fashion consultant. Warren had been a John Robert Powers fashion model and a dancer in the auxiliary troupe of the Martha Graham Dance Company. She had previously been married to and divorced from William G. Warren.
At the time of his engagement, Ford was campaigning for what would be his first of thirteen terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. The wedding was delayed until shortly before the elections because, as The New York Times reported in a 1974 profile of Betty Ford, "Jerry was running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced ex-dancer."
The couple had four children:
- Michael Gerald, born in 1950
- John Gardner, known as Jack, born in 1952
- Steven Meigs, born in 1956
- Susan Elizabeth, born in 1957
Read more about this topic: Gerald Ford
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or children:
“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Children need people in order to become human.... It is primarily through observing, playing, and working with others older and younger than himself that a child discovers both what he can do and who he can become—that he develops both his ability and his identity.... Hence to relegate children to a world of their own is to deprive them of their humanity, and ourselves as well.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)