In 1986, when going through his late mother Betty Ford's papers in her basement, her son Michael Aquino discovered a mouldering suitcase filled with the disintegrating manuscripts of poems she had written between ages 11-17, which she had never bothered to even mention. Along with them was an Introduction written by her Stanford mentor Professor Lewis Terman, for an intended publication entitled Pegasus in Pinfeathers.
Astounded by these poems, Michael carefully pieced the fragments together, and so Pegasus is finally flying: 256 poems totaling over 35,000 words in this 366-page collection.
Far from what one would normally expect in juvenilia, Betty's verse explores not only the natural universe about her, but stunning metaphysical and magical visions of her own creation.
This edition includes Professor Terman's original 1929 Introduction, and a 2014 Foreword by Michael.
About the Author: Betty Ford, the daughter of San Francisco physician Campbell Ford and his wife Sophie, was born in 1912. The Fords soon realized they had a very unusual daughter: She was walking at 7 months, talking with the alphabet memorized at 9 months, and by age 3 was easily devouring books of adult literature (over 750 in the next three years), resulting in a shower of media mentions including Ripley's "Believe It or Not".
Betty came to the attention of Stanford's Psychology Professor Lewis Terman in his study of unusual children; he tested her I.Q. as 188 - about 1/100,000. She was the youngest student ever to enter Stanford at 14, and completed her B.A. in only three years.
She then studied sculpture with the renowned Georg Kolbe in Germany in the 1930s, returned home to give her own exhibitions at art museums, and worked with Lewis Hill to found listener-sponsored KPFA in Berkeley, then with his successor Hal Winkler to create KPFK in Los Angeles. Her own program "The Bookmark" introduced such discoveries as Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago to American audiences.
In San Francisco she was a principal member of SPUR, the Commonwealth Club, the World Affairs Council, Inter Nationes, and the Book Club of California.
