One Life For Another

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

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In many of the obituaries for Sarah Jane Moore last week, there was little more than a mention of Oliver Sipple. However, his story is compelling. My thanks to Kassandre Dwyer of thecollector.com for some of the following information.

After the attack on Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, there were no further attempts to assassinate a former or sitting U.S. president until 1975 – when there were two tries to kill the same chief executive.

On September 5, 1975, on the northern grounds of the California state capitol, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, drew a Colt .45 caliber pistol on President Gerald Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. She had four cartridges in the pistol’s magazine but none in the firing chamber, and as a result, the gun did not fire. She was quickly restrained by Secret Service agents. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison but was released from custody in 2009.

Only 17 days later, in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet away. A bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore’s arm and the shot missed Ford, striking a building wall and slightly injuring a taxi driver. Moore was tried and convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison. She was paroled in 2007. In a way, the man who saved President Ford’s life was never paroled.

Born Oliver Wellington Sipple in November 1941 in Detroit, the young man who became known as “Billy” dropped out of high school and joined the Marine Corps. In the Vietnam War, Sipple was injured twice, the most serious being a shrapnel wound to the head that led to his discharge. The wound left him permanently disabled and with a lifetime disability pension. He was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and struggled with what is now known as PTSD. He spent his Fourth of July holidays at VA hospitals, where he knew he could avoid the sounds of firecrackers.

Adding to Sipple’s emotional stress was the fact that he was a closeted gay man. In the 1970s, homosexuality was far from being accepted in mainstream America. However, in some areas of the country, people were working to change that. Sipple decided to head to San Francisco, where openly gay communities existed and activists were working daily to undo the stigma around homosexuality. He began a new life in the city’s Mission District. Sipple was known as a friendly man who was always willing to help others, active in local causes, and well-known at local bars.

On September 22, 1975, President Gerald Ford was visiting San Francisco. Sipple decided to try to catch a glimpse of Ford with about 3,000 other people outside of the St. Francis Hotel. Ford exited the building and headed toward his limousine, waving to the cheering crowd. As Sipple watched, he noticed a woman in front of him, later identified as Sara Jane Moore, lift and level a .38 caliber pistol at the president. Just as her finger squeezed the trigger, Sipple reacted, lunging for her arm. He pushed Moore, causing her shot to miss the president. Instead, the bullet ricocheted off the front of the hotel and struck taxi driver John Ludwig. The escapee of Nazi Germany and the Japanese occupation of Shanghai was heavily bruised, but the bullet did not penetrate his skin.

Sipple and Ludwig both received letters of gratitude from the president but were never invited to the White House or further acknowledged by Ford or anyone associated with him. Both later admitted feeling disappointed and angry about their treatment, as if they had been brushed off.

Within days, someone tipped off the media that Sipple was gay. The gay community was working hard to show the world that homosexuality wasn’t a crime and that gays and lesbians were just regular people. A perceived hero like Billy Sipple, a veteran, was the perfect poster child for such an effort. However, he was largely in the closet when it came to his family and friends back home in Detroit and preferred his privacy. Unfortunately, he wasn’t given a choice in retaining his anonymity.

Billy Sipple was outed in the press when The San Francisco Chronicle reported on his sexuality. If his parents had known that their son was gay before the press coverage, they had never acknowledged it. His father and two brothers endured taunting from coworkers, and his mother was bothered incessantly by neighbors, harassed on account of her son’s sexual orientation. They quickly went from being the family of a hero to the family of a gay man. Reporters contacted the family repeatedly but they didn’t want to talk about Billy’s military history or even his effort to save the president—they were focused on the drama of his sexuality.

Sipple flew to Detroit to try to explain that he had never intended for the situation to unfold the way it had. Unfortunately, his arrival only caused more tension, and he ultimately ended up estranged from his parents. When his mother passed away in 1979, his father made it clear that he was not welcome at the funeral.

Back in San Francisco, Sipple decided to take a stand against the media. He felt that it was his right to keep his sexual orientation private and that members of the media had violated that right. He filed a $15 million lawsuit against seven news organizations, accusing them of invasion of privacy. The lawsuit dragged on for five years and was eventually dismissed on appeal. The court held that since Sipple had become a news item, his sexual orientation was part of the story and could be reported.

As his fame slowly receded, Sipple was left with a broken life. His mental and physical health declined over the following years. He drank heavily and his once-military physique ballooned to almost 300 pounds. On February 2, 1989, Oliver Sipple was found dead in his bed by a friend who went to check on him. The letter from President Ford was still framed on the wall of his rundown apartment.

His cause of death was listed as pneumonia, and he had visited a VA hospital for breathing troubles recently. Sipple was only 47 years old. He was laid to rest at Golden Gate National Cemetery south of San Francisco.

When asked about her crime in an interview, Moore stated, “I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try.” Upon her release from prison, Moore changed her name and moved to North Carolina. She was later married to psychologist Philip Chase until his death in 2018. The following year, at age 89, she was arrested for failing to tell her parole officer about a trip she took outside the country. She was released six months later.

Moore died at a nursing facility in Franklin, Tennessee, on September 24, 2025, at the age of 95. Her death occurred two days after the 50th anniversary of her attempt on Ford’s life.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books. The next one, Running Deep: Bravery, Survival, and the True Story of the Deadliest Submarine in World War II, will be published on October 21 by St. Martin’s Press. To pre-order a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.