IT'S JUST CITIZEN FORD NOW

Outwardly, at least, there was no gloom in the White House during Gerald Ford's final days there. The shock of his election loss was over, and Ford left with the sense that the American people appreciated what he had achieved during his 2 1/2 years in the presidency. TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angela was present during those last days and filed this report:

For a week, the Fords lived through the same kind of unsettling chaos that every family endures as it packs to move. Vans pulled in and out of the White House, grounds. The family's cold-weather clothes were ticketed for their condominium in Vail, Colo., their warm-weather togs for a rented house in Palm Springs, Calif., and presidential documents and memorabilia for the University of Michigan. At one point, surveying all that remained to be done, Betty Ford joked to an aide, "I think I'm going to have to call Mrs. Carter and say I just can't make the deadline and would she mind staying a few more days at Blair House." One evening the President searched fruitlessly through his bureau drawers for a turtleneck shirt for an informal buffet dinner. Settling for a white dress shirt and tie, Ford explained to his host, Photographer David Kennerly, "I know I was supposed to dress casually, but this is all that was left."

During dinner, Betty sat on the floor, while her husband regaled the other guests--mostly photographers assigned to the White House--with a story about the night when he walked his golden retriever Liberty on the South Lawn at 3 a.m. and discovered that he was locked out. Wearing only a bathrobe and slippers, the President tried three entrances and, finding all of them locked, had resigned himself to spending the night in an entrance hall until a guard discovered him and saved his dignity.

The dinner was partly a cover to allow more than 100 guests to slip into the White House for a surprise party that Ford had engineered, with great delight, for his wife. It was their last evening of dancing in the marble foyer. It was merry but laced with nostalgia.

The Fords made the most of their last days in other ways. With temperatures hovering around zero, he dashed each evening from his office to the steaming swimming pool. One night he invited a middle-aged White House elevator operator to join him; the man could not swim, but he plunged in anyway, stood shoulder deep in the water, and can now tell his friends about the time he splashed around in the pool with the President. With four other couples, all old friends, the Fords spent their final weekend at snow-covered Camp David, where a log fire crackled in the huge stone fireplace and Navy stewards scurried around at their beck and call.

Some staff members gratified long-suppressed desires during the week. Sheila Weidenfeld, the First Lady's press secretary, sat in the President's chair at the Cabinet table, closed her eyes and made a wish, just as she had in 1958 when her father, Ike's Cabinet secretary Maxwell Rabb, was leaving office. Said she: "I was nine years old, and I wished I could come back to the White House, and I did." Sheila and Husband Edward spent a night in the elegant Queen's Bedroom; next morning, a White House operator phoned to ask, "What would you like for breakfast, Your Highness?" On Wednesday the Rockefellers came for dinner and also spent the night in the Queen's Bedroom; Sons Nelson Jr., 12, and Mark, 9, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.

In the White House workrooms, the staff labored overtime, performing tasks for both the outgoing Fords and the incoming Carters. Calligrapher John Scarfone turned out photographs inscribed with Ford's signature and reception invitations with Carter's name. Pastry Chef Heinz Bender fretted over Ford's Wednesday night farewell party --then had to bake 18,000 cookies for Carter's Friday receptions.

In the West Wing, offices were piled high with boxes--more than 100 cartons in the Situation Room alone--but Ford tried to give the appearance of carrying on business as usual. On his last full day in power, he telephoned Senators, Congressmen, old friends and several foreign leaders: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Soviet Communist Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Ford ate his usual cottage-cheese lunch in his little private hideaway; stripped bare of photographs and mementos, the office seemed as impersonal as a motel room. In the Oval Office, Ford exclaimed, "Look at this! My desk has never been so clean in my life."

Just behind the movers who carried out the Fords' personal belongings were household workers who put the presidential living quarters in perfect order for the Carters. With each day, the Ford presence shrank, until there was nothing left but their luggage and their bed. At breakfast with 75 aides and Cabinet members on the final morning, Ford circulated around the State Dining Room, thanking each person individually. When Vice President Nelson Rockefeller declared that "this is the proudest moment of our lives," a wave of applause washed over the room. Said Ford in response: "You all contributed to an Administration I think was good--and which history will treat kindly."

After Carter's Inauguration, Jerry and Betty Ford, both private citizens for the first time in 28 years, boarded a Marine helicopter on the West Lawn of the Capitol. At Ford's request, the chopper circled low over the heart of Washington for a last look at the White House and Capitol, symbols of the power that he held for so long. Then the helicopter swooped toward Andrews Air Force Base, where a presidential jet waited to take the Fords on their long journey to California and retirement.

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