Mrs Ford choosing her own staff

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33611, 13 August 1974, Page 6

Mrs Ford choosing her own staff

tN.Z. Press Assn —Copyright) WASHINGTON, Aug. 12. The new First Lady of the United States, Mrs Betty Ford, will visit the White House family quarters today to make plans for moving into her new home. The wives of outgoing; Presidents usually show their, successors around the Executive mansion and introduce them to the household staff. But this transition was so' extraordinary that there was no opportunity for that and;

the chief usher, Mr Rex Scouten, will take Mrs Ford on a tour of the third-floor family suite where the Nixons lived until last Friday. The Fords are expected to remain at their Colonial brick and white frame home in suburban Alexandria, Virginia. until the end of this week, and when they move out they will rent it. The Fords have lived in the ;house, built to their specifications in 1955 in the quiet middle-class neighbourhood of Seminary Hill, and they promised their four children that they would not sell it. Mrs Ford must supervise her packing, and order whatever redecorating she wants in the family rooms, and also faces the problem of selecting her official staff. The President intends to

let Mrs Ford choose her own staff, said the White House press secretary, Mr Jerry Terhorst. Mrs Ford said she had not made any decision yet, but she is expected to announce some of her appointments by the end of the week. Mrs James Howe, wife of a professor of foreign languages at New Jersey State College, has been serving as her personal secretary and handling her press information. Mrs Ford and her daughter, Susan, aged 17, accompanied the President to church yes-! terday and appeared to be accepting with ease and com-; posure their new role in the national limelight. Susan, a student at a private girls’ school in the Maryland suburbs, will be' the only child living at the White House with the Fords. Their three sons will be attending school or working this autumn in other parts of the country.