Victim Oliver Sipple

A husky ex-Marine named Oliver "Billy" Sipple saw his personal life go down the drain in the strangest way.

In September 1975 he joined a crowd outside San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel, hoping to get a glimpse of President Gerald Ford, who was there giving a speech.

When the president emerged, Sipple noticed next to him in the crowd a hand holding a gun that was pointed at the president. The would-be assassin, deranged woman Sara Jane Moore, got off a shot, which missed its target, but Sipple's quick intervention very likely saved the president's life.

When such things happen, one expects to see the hero on every talk show, his face on every cover. Yet these things did not happen.

The press very quickly learned that Sipple was gay, and that his family and employer did not know this fact. At first the media sat on the story. Then gay rights activists, including Harvey Milk, wanting to destroy the stereotype of gay men as limp-wristed sissies, wanted his homosexuality made public. Finally the story broke in a column by gossip columnist Herb Caen.

The upshot was that Sipple was fired, and his own father refused ever to speak to him again. (Keep in mind that this was a time when gays were very nearly all still in the closet.)

Sipple, who lived on disability checks from his service in Vietnam, became morbidly obese and despondent. He died alone and broke in 1989.

How sad that someone who did a heroic act that saved the life of a U.S. president would come to such a sorry end.