The disabled ex-marine who became a hero when he foiled an assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford in 1975 was found dead Thursday afternoon. Police discovered the body of 47-year-old Oliver Wellington Sipple in the bedroom of his Van Ness Avenue apartment, where the walls were decorated with Ford's framed letter of thanks and other commendations for bravery. Sipple, known to all his friends as Billy, apparently died of natural causes.

On Sept. 22, 1975, Sipple thwarted Sara Jane Moore's attempt to shoot Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel. The 224-pound, 6-foot-2 Sipple had been standing in a crowd waiting to see Ford. As the president emerged from the hotel, Sipple spotted Moore's outstretched arm pointing a revolver at Ford. Sipple lunged for the gun, knocking Moore's arm aside and causing her shot to go astray.

The modest Sipple, who was retired from the Marines on a full disability pension for wounds he had received during the Vietnam War, was a reluctant hero. He called news agencies in San Francisco and begged them not to use his name, where he lived "or anything about me." Subsequent articles disclosed that he was a homosexual, and he later filed an unsuccessful lawsuit, charging invasion of privacy against The Chronicle and six other major newspapers.

Although well known in the gay community, Sipple contended that publicity about his sexual orientation caused his relatives to stop speaking to him and exposed him to "great mental anguish, embarrassment and humiliation."

Oliver Sipple (1941)