“My dad had assassination attempts on him so that really hit me.”
Susan Ford Bales vividly remembers those two attempts in 1975, just 17 days apart.
September 5, in Sacramento California, Ford was greeting a crowd outside his hotel when Secret Service stopped a woman known as Squeaky Fromme after she pulled a gun. Fromme was a member of the murderous Charles Manson family.
September 22, again in California leaving a hotel, a woman named Sara Jane Moore fired a shot that missed Ford by inches. A bystander grabbed her arm and a second shot hit another person in the crowd who survived.
Now, Susan Ford Bales can imagine what the Trump family went through waiting for word he was ok.
“My heart really goes out to his family because there’s hours of uneasiness. Of course, technology is way better today than it was when my dad had his attempts, but it still doesn’t change the uneasiness that the family goes through.”
She spoke of the ugly political rhetoric that has grown in recent years.
“It makes my heart really sad because that’s not the way I grew up in the household I grew up in.”
Ford referred to her father’s leadership as president during another time of great division in the country and hopes the events at the Trump rally encourage change.
“Stop focusing on what we disagree on and let’s start focusing on what we agree on and that I think will help bring us back together.”
