Before the Feminine Mystique and the #Metoo Movement Part Four

It’s A Girl, And The Today Show Years

Barbara Walters (left) interviewing Gerald Ford (center) and Betty Ford (right) at the White House in 1976. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

1968

Lee Gruber and Barbara took part in the oddest of private adoptions facilitated by Roy Cohn in 1968. After adopting a healthy baby girl a few years earlier, a wealthy couple wanted to adopt a tall, blonde boy whose parents had no known hereditary diseases. Their lawyer was interviewing mothers-to-be, and they had chosen a woman who was 19 years old. Nevertheless, they only wanted a boy and were not flexible about the gender.

The couple would adopt a boy, if it were a girl Barbara and Lee would be able to adopt her. Barbara got off The Today Show on June 14, 1968, when Lee called her with the news that the baby was a girl and she was theirs.

Barbara was being interviewed by Carole Kramer, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, at the time of the call. As Barbara spoke, she had been bubbling with joy and told her, “Congratulate me, I just became a mother.”

Barbara and Lee flew to the hospital four days after the call to pick up their newborn daughter. They paid for the lawyer’s fee and the medical expenses of the birth mother.

Barbara named her daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber after her sister who could not have children and her mother Dena. Barbara’s cousin Lorraine who owns…