President Ford Dies At 93

Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006

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Gerald Rudolf Ford, the only man to reach the White House without ever being elected president or vice president, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage, Calif. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

He died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, his office said in a statement. No cause of death was released. Funeral arrangements were to be announced today.

Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments -- including an angioplasty and a pacemaker implant -- in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his administration," President Bush said in a statement Tuesday night.

"We mourn the loss of such a leader, and our 38th president will always have a special place in our nation's memory." Ford was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

"I was deeply saddened this evening when I heard of Jerry Ford's death," former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement. "Ronnie and I always considered him a dear friend and close political ally.

"His accomplishments and devotion to our country are vast, and even long after he left the presidency he made it a point to speak out on issues important to us all," she said.

The genial, unassuming Ford was widely credited with helping the nation regain its balance after teetering on the edge of constitutional crisis during the uncertain days of the Watergate scandal.

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," Ford said after being sworn in to replace President Richard M. Nixon on Aug. 9, 1974.

Eight months before historic events propelled him into the presidency, the Republican congressman from Michigan had become the nation's first unelected vice president when Spiro T. Agnew stepped down in disgrace in a separate bribery scandal.

In a nationally televised speech, the new president immediately set out to heal the wounds of Watergate.

"I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans," he said. "This is an hour of our history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts ....

"I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers."

Only a month after taking office, though, Ford stirred a national outcry when he granted Nixon "a full, free and absolute pardon" for all "offenses against the United States" during his tenure.

Adopted child

The 38th president was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Neb. A few days later, according to biographer James Cannon, his father threatened little Leslie and his mother with a butcher knife.

Soon after, Dorothy Gardner King obtained a divorce and moved with her son to Grand Rapids, Mich.

There she met and married a paint salesman named Gerald R. Ford. Her new husband adopted 2-year-old Leslie, and the boy took his name, becoming known as Jerry Ford, Jr.

At 6 feet tall and nearly 200 pounds, young Jerry became an outstanding football player, winning all-state honors in high school. He went on to the University of Michigan, where he played center. In 1932 and 1933, the team went undefeated and won the Rose Bowl and national championship. In 1934, his senior year, he was named the team's Most Valuable Player.

The Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions offered him contracts, but in an era before million-dollar paydays for professional athletes, he chose instead to go to Yale Law School. He paid his way by working as an assistant football coach and freshman boxing coach.

In 1941, Ford went into practice with a friend in Grand Rapids, but his fledgling law career was soon interrupted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. During World War II, Ford served as an aviation operations officer aboard two aircraft carriers in the South Pacific. In 1944, he was nearly swept off the deck of the USS Monterrey by a typhoon.

He left the Navy in 1946 and returned to the law. In 1948, he ran for Congress and won. Eighteen days before the election, he married Elizabeth Bloomer Warren, a divorced former dancer, model and fashion coordinator. They went on to have four children — sons Michael, John and Steven, and daughter Susan.

The voters in Ford's Michigan district returned him to the House of Representatives every two years — 12 times in a row —until he assumed the presidency in 1974. He moved through the party ranks and became the top Republican in a House dominated by Democrats.

A regular guy

As president, Ford was regarded by the world as an everyday, regular guy.

While he was in the White House, Lyndon Johnson had once cracked, "Jerry Ford is a nice fellow but he played too much football without a helmet."

"I had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am," Ford would cheerfully concede.

Being ordinary was not bad in Ford's world.

"It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation," he said. "It's a quality to be proud of. But it's a quality that many people seem to have neglected."

He promised blunt honesty in the aftermath of the dishonesty and dirty tricks of his predecessor.

"Truth is the glue that holds government together," he said.

Ford's tenure was brief, however, and touched by the bizarre.

Although he was probably the most athletic president ever — an accomplished golfer, swimmer and skier long after his football career ended — he gained a comical reputation for clumsiness while in the White House.

He fell down the stairs of Air Force One, and once hit an errant golf shot that struck a spectator.

Some of Ford's brushes with the bizarre, though, weren't funny.

Within a single month, two women tried to assassinate him. On Sept. 5, 1975, Ford was walking from his hotel room to the California State Capitol in Sacramento when he was approached by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of mass murderer Charles Manson, who pointed a .45 caliber pistol at the president at point-blank range. A Secret Service agent grabbed the gun and wrested it from her.

Although the gun had no bullet in the chamber, and Fromme, 26, claimed she didn't intend to kill Ford, she was later convicted of attempted assassination.

Just 17 days later, a 45-year-old political revolutionary shot at Ford as he was leaving a hotel in San Francisco.

The would-be assassin was Sarah Jane Moore, a one-time FBI informant whose cover had been blown and who was trying to regain her status in the militant radical community by shooting the president.

As the 1976 election drew near, Ford beat back a challenge from Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. He couldn't, though, fend off his Democratic rival, Jimmy Carter. Georgia's former governor was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1977, and began his inaugural remarks by thanking his predecessor "for all he's done to heal our land."

 

The Fords retired to Palm Springs, Calif., where they both wrote memoirs. The title of his: "A Time to Heal." Ford briefly considered running for president again in 1980, but instead chose to concentrate on opening his library in Ann Arbor and museum in Grand Rapids.

Betty Ford, meanwhile, was working to establish a treatment center for alcohol and drug addicts. Mrs. Ford had earlier spent time in rehab for her own addiction to alcohol and pills, a struggle she shared with the public.

The Fords, over the years, formed close friendships with the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Despite their partisan differences, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter spoke at conferences together and co-authored papers and editorials.

"We have almost complete harmony of minds and private opinions," Carter told the Journal-Constitution in 2005. "I think that President Ford is one of the most admirable public servants and one of the most admirable human beings that I've ever known."

In 2005, Ford talked to many about his wish to be remembered as a healer.

"I hope and trust that historians in the future will consider my action as president constructive and healing, and it was," he said. "We inherited a serious problem economically and on foreign policy and the bitterness over the Nixon actions, and I assumed the problems and I healed them, and I'm proud of it."

The Associated Press contributed material on statements from Mrs. Ford, President Bush and Nancy Reagan and on President Ford's recent medical issues.

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