Gay men and women have made significant contributions to our Nation. Most of them have a happy ending. This one does not.
By all accounts, Bill Sipple enjoyed a quiet and closeted life in San Francisco. He was 33 years old and an ex-marine. That would change on September 22, 1975 when he left his home to go to Fisherman’s Wharf. As he walked in front of the St. Francis hotel he encountered two of three people that would change his life forever – President Gerald Ford and Sara Jane Moore.
Seeing the crowd of people outside the St. Francis, Bill Sipple asked one of the people why so many people were there. He was told that the President was inside the hotel.
If Bill Sipple had continued walking to Fisherman’s Wharf his life would probably never have changed. His name may never have been spoken in the media or the Halls of Congress. But the human curiosity that exists within all of us insisted that he remain in front of the St. Francis Hotel in order to get a glimpse of the President of the United States. This ex-marine wanted to catch a glimpse of the President, and really, who among us wouldn’t have been similarly curious?
After waiting outside the St. Francis for nearly 3 hours, Bill Sipple had worked his way to the front of the crowd in order to have a better view of the President. Next to him was a simply dressed middle-aged woman who had also been waiting for hours. Her name was Sara Jane Moore.
When President Ford and his entourage exited the St. Francis, Sara Jane Moore reached into her pocket and got her .38 caliber revolver that she had just bought that very day. She aimed the revolver at President Ford.
But when Bill Sipple noticed that she had pulled out the gun his instincts went to work. His military training paid off. He quickly shouted “Gun!” as loud as he could and grabbed Moore’s arm – just as the gun went off.
The bullet missed the President, ricocheted off of a wall, and hit a cab driver. President Ford’s security detail went into motion. The President’s Chief of Staff and two Secret Service Agents pushed President Ford into his car and headed to the airport. The San Francisco Police and other Secret Service Agents grabbed both Sara Jane Moore and Bill Sipple.
This was the 2nd assassination attempt on President Ford in 17 days. President Ford’s Press Secretary Ron Nessen was overheard saying “God damn California” as he lunged into his waiting car.
What many people still, to this day, don’t know, is that the Chief of Staff that heard Bill Sipple yell “Gun!” and in turn pushed President Ford to safety was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Yes, that Donald Rumsfeld.
The Secret Service interrogated Sipple and “roughed him up a bit” according to his own reports, but quickly stopped once his true accomplishment had emerged. Bill Sipple had just saved the life of President Ford.
The next day Bill Sipple told the Associated Press “I am not a hero.” After all, defending freedom was what this ex-marine had trained all of his life to do. And Bill Sipple knew a thing or two about that – he had been wounded in Vietnam and subsequently suffered from psychological difficulties. The war and the response of our Nation upon his return from war had screwed Bill Sipple up mentally. In fact, he was on full disability when he saved the President.
Even if the story ended here there might have been a happy ending to this story. But, remember, I said that there were three people that would change his life forever. Sara Jane Moore and President Ford he had met that day. The third person to change his life was Harvey Milk.
Harvey Milk knew Bill Sipple and knew that he was gay. Harvey Milk leaked his information to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bill Caen who in turn “outed” Sipple in his newspaper two days after the assassination attempt. Milk was even quoted as saying he was “proud – maybe this will help break the stereotype.” Newspapers across the country quickly picked up the story, which was slugged as “The Homosexual Hero.”
Bill Sipple’s family in Detroit did not know that he was gay. He had just been outed.
“My sexuality is a part of my private life and has no bearing on my response to the act of a person seeking to take the life of another. I am first and foremost a human being who enjoys life and respects life.” Sipple told the press.
Bill Sipple’s strict Baptist parents stopped talking to their newly outed homosexual son. The last words he ever heard from his mother were something to the effect that she could not step out of her house in Detroit because of the throngs of reporters asking her questions about her son being gay.
Over the course of the next few days the “story” changed from Sipple being gay. The press was now interested in the response of the White House in learning that a gay man had saved the life of President Ford. There had been no public “thank-you” from the White House, at least none made public to the press. Harvey Milk was not going to stand for that. Harvey Milk alleged publicly that President Ford was delaying his thanks because, in fact, that Sipple was gay. Ron Nessen, who now works at the Brookings Institution, disputes that.
“One of the things about those times were that they were far more civilized. People’s private lives were private lives.” Referring to President Ford, Nessen went on to say that Ford was not the type of person to discriminate against gays, “knowing him fairly well, it would not have been in his character to think about that.” And that was true.
In 2001, President Ford told the Detroit News that he never even heard about Sipple being gay until after he had written him a thank-you letter. “I don’t know where everyone got the crazy idea I was prejudiced and wanted to exclude gays.” Still, President Ford suffered in the polls because many people perceived that he should have invited Sipple to the White House for some public ceremony. But President Ford wasn’t the ‘flashy” sort of person. Ford thanked everyone that protected him – police, Secret Service, and Sipple – by writing a personal letter. And, in fact, President Ford had indeed written Bill Sipple a personal letter of thanks just three days after the attempted assassination attempt.
“Dear Mr. Sipple:
I want you to know how much I appreciated your selfless actions last Monday. The events were a shock to us all, but you acted quickly and without fear for your own safety. By doing so you helped to avert danger to me and to others in the crowd. You have my heartfelt appreciation.
Sincerely,
Jerry Ford”
Bill Sipple treasured this letter. He hung it on the wall of his small apartment. He even gave a copy of it, later on, to the person who had “outed” him, his longtime friend Harvey Milk.
But Bill Sipple’s life was never to be happy ever again. He sued the newspapers that had “outed” him and lost. Those cases would drag on to 1984. The Los Angeles Times is quoted from one of those cases as saying “reporting his connections to the gay community presented information contrary to the stereotype of homosexuals as lacking vigor.”
Bill Sipple resorted to alcohol to deal with the stress. His strict Baptist parents no longer spoke with him. And he turned to alcohol far too much.
In 1977 Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official in California. The next year he and Mayor Moscone were shot dead. Randy Shilts wrote in “The Mayor of Castro Street” That it had indeed been Milk who tipped off the San Francisco Chronicle on Sipple’s homosexuality.
Bill Sipple found work in various gay bars in San Francisco by mopping floors. His drinking had escalated and his weight quickly increased to around 300 pounds. Sipple sometimes spent his entire disability check on booze.
Every year on the anniversary of the assassination attempt some reporter would track him down for “his story.” He always turned them down.
In 1989 the local bartenders noticed that Sipple hadn’t been to the bars in several weeks. One of those bartenders called a friend of Sipple’s, Wayne Friday. Friday was a local District Attorney and did a “wellness check” on Sipple. He found Bill Sipple’s body, dead, in his apartment. He had been dead for several days. Bill Sipple was only 47 years old. Very few people showed up at his funeral. Everyone had seemingly forgotten Bill Sipple. Everyone except Gerald Ford.
When Former President Ford learned of Bill Sipple’s death, he did what was always his custom – write a personal letter. Ford sent a letter expressing his condolences to Sipple’s friends.
“I strongly regretted the problems that developed for him following this incident. It saddened me to learn the circumstances of his death.” The note was accompanied with flowers from the Ford Family and was sent on Valentine’s Day
Bill Sipple’s mother died in 1979, having never reconciled with her son being gay. Sipple’s brother and sister did attend his funeral.
Former President Ford is still alive, and is our oldest living President. During the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Ford appeared sluggish during a tribute to him. It was later learned that he had had a stroke. In December 2003 CNN’s Larry King interviewed Betty Ford who said that the Former President still swam and played golf.
Ford later appointed Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld brought a “rising star” of the GOP onboard as his assistant – Dick Cheney. Both Cheney and Rumsfeld urged President Ford to dump Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice Presidential candidate because he was “too liberal”, and Ford complied. As a result, Jimmy Carter was elected President, largely because the South solidly backed Carter. If, however, President Ford had kept Rockefeller as his Vice Presidential running mate he could very well have won Rockefeller’s home state of New York, which narrowly went for Carter. And Jimmy Carter would never have been President of the United States.
Outing is a horrible experience for people today. It remains controversial and a polarizing issue. Many gay people not living in the closet feel that it is a necessary tool to achieve some sort of equality.
Bill Sipple’s life might have been much different had Harvey Milk not “outed” Sipple all those years ago.
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H.RES.950 SPONSOR: Rep Goldwater (introduced 12/19/75 & 2/3/76) Resolution expressing the gratitude of the House of Representatives to Oliver Sipple for his selfless heroism in preventing the assassination of Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America.
Reference Cites:
Random House
94th Congress Bill Summary
Out Magazine
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