The news of President Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon hit TIME staffers when most were just beginning to recover from closing the magazine. At 9:15 a.m. Sunday, Washington Correspondent Bonnie Angelo was alerted to the pending announcement. Correspondents from Los Angeles to Boston went into high gear, while from backyards and boats, beaches and in a few cases beds, some 45 researchers, reporters, copyreaders, production and layout specialists, photographers and editors headed for midtown Manhattan, many in blue jeans. Senior Editor Marshall Loeb had been asleep only a few hours when he was called in from Westchester to write the cover story. Reporter-Researcher Regina Cahill was about to leave for an antiques fair when she was summoned; Associate Editor Burton Pines had also planned to go to the fair. Operations Manager Eugene Coyle had to fight his way through crowds at the same fair when he arrived at Grand Central. Staff Writer Richard Bernstein, who detailed legal implications of the story, had to race to the bus terminal and tell a visitor that she would have to fend for herself for the rest of the day.

Within hours, millions of already printed covers were discarded and replaced by a cover on Nixon, and most of the Nation section was rewritten. The task was made easier by the fact that a number of staffers brought their children, who were put to work running copy, answering telephones and getting sandwiches.

There was a curious aptness about the youngsters' being pressed into service, since the cover that had been due to run was about the declining U.S. birth rate and the evolving role of children. The story (not the cover, which pictured a winsome baby) survives as a major piece in the Behavior section. In writing "Those Missing Babies," which was edited by Senior Editor Ruth Brine and researched by Mimi Knox and Gail Perlick, Associate Editor Peter Stoler relied on a thick stack of reports from TIME'S bureaus. Correspondents talked to couples with two, one or no offspring. For contrasting views, Atlanta Stringer Joyce Leviton tried to find a family with eight children. One mother she spoke to had only five. "I told her that was insufficient," says Leviton. Replied the mother: "That's the first time I've ever been told I didn't have enough children."

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