50 Years After Nixon Resigned, Ford’s Chief Photographer Reflects on His Own Role in History

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 9, 1974, I stood on the South Lawn at the White House, taking photos for TIME Magazine as President Richard Nixon and first lady Patricia Nixon walked out of the Diplomatic Reception Room of the Executive Mansion to his waiting helicopter.

It was an historic turning point for the country. But it was also a turning point for me.

That night, Gerald R. Ford, who had only been president for a few hours, invited me to his modest home in Alexandria, where he and his family were having a quiet celebration with a small group of friends. Mrs. Ford and her husband toasted one another: “Here’s to our new life,” she said with a smile. “God help us.”

I photographed the occasion at their place before they moved into the White House a few days later. But it turned out the freshly sworn-in president had another reason for inviting me.

He asked me to stay after the other guests left. We sat together on the living room couch, and he puffed on his pipe as he asked me a question that would change the course of my life.

How would you like to come and work for me?

I felt like I had awakened in the middle of a Twilight Zone episode. After all, I was only 27 and from a little Oregon lumber town. Shouldn’t Kissinger be sitting here? I thought.

But the offer to become his chief White House photographer wasn’t completely unexpected. I had grown close to the Fords and their family while covering him for TIME after he was named vice president following Spiro Agnew’s resignation. He and I had bonded over our mutual experience of risking our lives in war — him on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific during World War II, me as a combat photographer in Vietnam. I was the only news photographer covering him full time, and even though he was older than my dad, we clicked.

But I was conflicted about the offer. I knew what it was like to be a White House photographer under Nixon and worried it could remain the same with Ford. I couldn’t imagine myself in that restricted role. Nixon’s photographer, Ollie Atkins, had very limited access to the president. Just the day before, the president kicked Atkins out of the Oval Office during the recording of his resignation speech. “Only the CBS crew now will be in this room during this, only the crew,” Nixon told him — I found it on tape at the Nixon Library. “No, no, there will be no picture after the broadcast. No. You’ve taken your picture.”

There was no way I would sit outside the Oval Office waiting for some aide to tell me to go in, “but only for a minute.” Like my hero, Yoichi Okamoto, President Lyndon Johnson’s photographer and the first civilian to hold the position, I wanted the run of the joint.

I summoned up my courage and told the president my misgivings. I would love to do it , I said, but I have two requests: I report directly to you, and I need total access to everything that’s going on in the White House.

Ford took the pipe out of his mouth mid-puff. Here I was making demands of the President of the United States. What would I tell my parents? “The president offered me a job, and I basically told him to shove it.” Good going, kid.

But then Ford laughed and cracked a joke: “You don’t want Air Force One on the weekends?”

Ford told me that full access was exactly how he wanted me to roll. I’d be walking in Okamoto’s unrestricted footsteps. He said he’d talk to his chief of staff, Al Haig, to make sure Atkins got the news before we finalized the deal — that was the kind of stand-up guy Ford was.

But he had one reservation.

“Dave,” he said, “if you work for me, won’t it be viewed badly by your colleagues? I mean, after what’s happened the last few years.” He was looking out for me. Part of my job as a photojournalist was holding power to account in the Watergate era. Would working for the “other team” get me blacklisted after he left office?

“Mr. President,” I said, “if you’re the kind of president I know you’re going to be, my friends in the business, most of whom you know, will be proud to have me work for you.”

The following morning I photographed Ford leaving his home for his first full day at the White House before I headed back to the TIME offices. I was sitting in the mail room with my feet on the desk, telling my good friend and fellow photographer Dave Burnett what had happened the night before, when the phone rang.

The switchboard operator said in a quavering voice, “It’s the president for you, Dave.”

I jokingly told her to have him call back.

“He’s on the line!” she practically screamed.

It was him all right, still making his own calls. “How’d you like to come to work for me?" Ford asked.

“When do you want me to start?” was all I could think to say.

“Get over here right away,” he said, “you’ve already wasted a half a day of the taxpayers’ money.”

I jumped up and yelled to Burnett, “Holy shit, it’s happening!”

I hurried across Lafayette Square to the White House, where I would serve as President Ford’s chief photographer for the next two and a half years, the third civilian in that position. Ford was good to his word: I had the run of the place, from the Family Quarters to the West Wing. I rode in the motorcades, flew as senior staff on Air Force One and traveled with Ford to 19 countries. I was “in the room where it happened” — when he pardoned Nixon, when he ended the Vietnam War, when he freed the crew of the USS Mayaguez and when he met with dozens of world figures, including Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and Japanese Emperor Hirohito.

After President Ford conceded the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, he and I and his close personal aide Terry O’Donnell walked back to the Oval Office. He put his arm around Terry and said that he had never properly thanked him for everything that he had done, asking if there was anything he needed. It reminded me of that moment at his house, when he worried about what might happen to my career if I became his White House photographer. Here was yet another example of what a thoughtful, generous man Ford was.

I shot the photo of him and Terry through my tears.