NASHVILLE BANNER – Sara Jane Moore, the would-be assassin of President Gerald Ford, died Wednesday at a nursing facility in Franklin. She was 95.
Moore’s death came two days after the 50th anniversary of her attempt to kill Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in 1975. Her actions followed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme’s attempt to assassinate Ford just 17 days earlier in Sacramento.
Moore had been radicalized by the revolutionary politics of the day and the Patricia Hearst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
She was arrested by police on a gun charge the day before her attempt, and booked for having a .44 caliber handgun and 113 rounds of ammunition.
In a 2009 interview, Moore said her aim back in the ’70s was to overthrow the government.
The gun was confiscated, a fact which proved crucial the next day as authorities said the sight on the .38 caliber handgun she fired at Ford was faulty. She fired one shot at Ford before being tackled by Oliver Sipple, a former Marine.
In 2022, she moved to Bellevue and then, after a fall, spent her remaining years in rehabilitation facilities in Williamson County. She was married five times and had four children …
Oliver Sipple, A Reluctant Hero
June 13, 2024, Dr. Richard Weld
On September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate President Ford as he left the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Unlike in the attempt on Ford’s life 17 days earlier by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, Moore’s gun did not misfire.
Moore simply missed on the first shot, but then attempted a second. As she pulled the trigger, her arm was grabbed by bystander Oliver Sipple, and her shot missed the President. It ricocheted and hit a local taxi driver instead (who was okay, by the way).
Moore was then arrested before she could make any more attempts.
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Sipple was a former U.S. Marine who was wounded in Viet Nam. When he was released from the Veteran’s Hospital in 1970, he moved to San Francisco, where he became an active member of the LGBTQ+ community.
After Sipple saved the President’s life, Ford returned to Washington, and soon sent a personal letter of thanks.
Had the story ended there, it would have been a happier one. Instead, Sipple was outed to a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle by multiple members of the LGBTQ+ community, including activist and politician Harvey Milk.
Milk stated that he wanted the country to see a gay man as a heroic figure. However, Sipple had not yet gone public with his sexuality outside the gay community, nor had he told his family back in Michigan.
The resulting attention, especially regarding his sexuality, caused Sipple no small amount of personal problems, but there was no way for him to go back into the closet.
He attempted to sue the Chronicle and other papers for invasion of his privacy, but he lost the suit when a judge ruled that his sexuality was a newsworthy part of the story. In later years, he struggled with mental health issues, and passed away in 1989.
Over the years, many people, ironically including Harvey Milk (who “helped” out Sipple in the first place), questioned why President Ford never invited his savior to the White House to recognize his heroics. What most people don’t know is that this was because Ford had received a letter from Sipple about the problems the attention was causing.
Unfortunately, we are unable to find any evidence that President Ford made that call in his phone records. We simply know that, having seen this letter, President Ford stopped shining a national spotlight on the man for whom the attention brought by an act of bravery created so much trouble …
