Farewell, President Ford

TWIT's tribute to President Gerald Ford is written by my dear friend and eloquent writer, MP.  I've asked him to become a recurring guest writer in TWIT.

After finishing a frantic bout of Christmas cleaning and packing the turkey roaster, dutch ovens, crock pots and stock pots to rest for another holiday, I settled back to prepare a pot of 15 bean soup with the leftover ham bone while watching Jay Leno.  A somber yet aged looking NBC News Special Report façade interrupted the show with a 20 second delay of silence.  I was surprised but not shocked when the late night NBC news correspondent announced that former President Gerald Ford had passed away a few hours earlier at age 93.   President Bush, who personally expressed his condolences in a phone call late Tuesday night with former first lady Betty Ford, called the former president a "man of integrity" who devoted the best years of his life to the nation.  "On Aug. 9, 1974, he stepped into the presidency without ever having sought the office," Bush said. "He assumed power in a period of great division and turmoil. For a nation that needed healing and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most." 

According to USA Today, Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on July 14, 1913, in Omaha. His father, an alcoholic, threatened his mother with a knife just after his birth, and she moved her 2-week-old son to Grand Rapids, Mich., to live with her parents.  Three years later, she married Gerald Ford, a paint salesman. The Fords called their son Gerald, and in 1935, Leslie King changed his name to Gerald Ford.  During summers, he filled paint cans at his father's store. And in his college years at the University of Michigan, Ford held a variety of jobs, including summer stints as a park ranger at Yellowstone National Park and as a model. Ford played football and basketball and ran track in high school, earning all-city and all-state honors as a star center in football. He went on to star on national championship football teams at the University of Michigan in 1932 and '33. He received offers to play professionally from the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions but turned them down.

I was 13 years old at the time when my parents beckoned me into the den to watch a tired and beleaguered President Nixon relinquish the presidency amid the never ending Watergate scandal that had endured after interrupting months of regularly scheduled television daytime programming.  I noticed that Pat Nixon was stoic and confident although deflated while daughter Patricia wept in silence.  Soon after, they were all swept away in a military helicopter to exile shortly after the powers were transitioned over to Ford.  I am probably older than most of the readers in this forum but will try to put a timeline on the significance of this event in that very turgid time in our lives.  JFK had just been assassinated 11 years before, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy six years before, forced desegregation plans in Louisville and Boston was being mapped out amid bitter opposition, the Vietnam War had ended a year earlier in miserable defeat, and our region had just been devastated by the infamous April 3rd tornado.  A plethora of civil rights relieving the massive racial and women’s marches were being enacted and even though the mandatory military draft had been discontinued, another round of talks to reinstate a water downed version of the draft was in the works.

USA Today reports that as the 38th president, Ford, who enjoyed a reputation for integrity on both sides of the political aisle, immediately tried to soothe the wounded nation. "The long national nightmare is over," he said as he was sworn in on Aug. 9, 1974. "Our Constitution works."  Although Ford's approval ratings initially soared, he would lose the 1976 presidential contest to former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter — largely, in the view of historians and his biographers, because he pardoned Nixon just months after being sworn in to office.  The pardon ignited a political firestorm and prompted Democrats to question whether Nixon had made a deal with Ford to protect him from prosecution. Ford resolutely denied that there was any quid pro quo.  Ford remains the only unelected U.S. president. He said he did not regret his decision to pardon Nixon.  "There was such venom toward Nixon for Watergate that the public just didn't understand there was something (to be considered) over and above Nixon's personal problems," Ford said in 2003. "My problem was trying to restore public confidence across the board."  Nixon was rather reserved and conspiratorial while Ford exuded openness and genuineness that the nation hungered for.  Hisfriends, family and staffers contend that the former star football player and son of Michigan possessed the right blend of heartland decency and reverence for his country to be able to steady the nation after the morass of Watergate and the reverberations of the Vietnam War.

And with that, I do remember the venom that Americans were stewing in at that time.  I have immense respect for Ford for moving us in a new direction during the trying 1970s and especially for escaping two assassination attempts.  Heartfelt condolences and buckets of love are extended to the Ford family as they prepare for the upcoming presidential funeral that will transition Gerald Ford, the longest living US president, to his final resting place.