President Gerald R. Ford who helped the country heal the wound’s of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.
Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House in 1974 as the 38th president and the only one never elected to nationwide office, "died peacefully" late Tuesday, December 26, his office said. He was 93.
He died at his home home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles (208 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, his office said in a statement. No cause of death was released, however 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, Minnesota.
Ford passed away after having fulfilled his family legacy "Love of God, Love of Family, Love of Country," instilled over 90 years ago in a Grand Rapids household.
"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," former first lady Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
UN-ELECTED PRESIDENT
Gerald R. Ford became America’s first un-elected vice president in 1973, when he was appointed to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew, who had been forced from office by revelations of financial corruption.
Less than one year later, on August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon was forced to resign in the wake of the Watergate scandal, a series of events named after the wire tapping and burglaries of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC.
As the nation was reeling from two resignations and a scandal that seemed to shake the U.S. government to its very foundation. President Ford’s first act on assuming the presidency was to reassure the public. "My Fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," said President Ford, shortly after seeing off his former boss, flying into exile on August 9.
"Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule." He said he realized he had not been chosen by ballots at the ballot box, but asked the American people to confirm him as president "with prayers." The next morning after
that historic speech, he was reportedly still making his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.
Said a ranking Democratic congressman: "Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous."
REVIVING DEBATE
But he revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous move act that allowed the nation to move on, analysts say.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for America during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds."
The man who would one day be President Jerry Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. Ford on July 13, 1913, in Omaha. He was named after his biological father, a wool dealer who divorced his mother, the former Dorothy Ayer Gardner, two years later. Dorothy King took her young son to Grand Rapids, Michegan. where she married paint salesman Gerald Rudolff Ford, who adopted the boy and gave him his name. Young Jerry grew up believing Ford was his father.
Both parents were active in the Episcopal Church, and his father was a Boy Scout leader and prominent local Republican Party member. Jerry Ford followed his father’s lead, becoming an Eagle Scout and inheriting his fondness for Republican politics.
STRONG INFLUENCE
"Dad was the strongest influence on my life," Ford once said. "I’ve often thought, even nowadays: now how would he have done this?" Ford was an ace student and star of South High School’s Trojans football team, making all-state squads. With money tight at the height of
the Depression, he worked at a local restaurant for carfare and lunch money.
He was at work one day when Leslie Lynch Sr. strolled into the eatery and introduced himself as the teen’s father. "I was tempted to ask why he had waited 15 years to see me, but I bit my tongue, I didn’t want to be impolite," Ford once told an interviewer. Seven decades later,
however, Ford described him as "an evil man" who had shown no interest in his son for most of his childhood years.
Despite the emotional difficulties, he worked his way through college, went to law school, and then off to fight in World War II. In 1948, he was elected to the US Congress, for the first time, from his hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He never sought to become president.
But Nixon eventually hand-picked him to take over, saying he was the most trusted man he knew. Ford’s White House Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld said President Ford’s main goal was to restore trust in the nation’s leadership.
"The reservoir of trust had been drained when Jerry Ford came into office," noted Rumsfeld. "His major task was to heal the nation, to refill that reservoir of trust so that government could function in a manner that was successful."
LOSING PRESIDENCY
In 1976, Ford lost the presidency to Democrat Jimmy Carter in a very close election. Ford later said he felt confident that, despite his defeat, he had delivered on his promise to restore faith in the government. "I still feel good about turning the country over to President Carter in a much better shape than it was when I came on watch," he said, "and sorry that I didn’t have another four years to improve my on-the-job training skills."
Ford was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. "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."
She said, "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." (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos and reports from the United States).
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