Gerald
R. Ford Biography
Gerald R. Ford
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Gerald Rudolph Ford, the 38th President
of the United States, was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.,
the son of Leslie Lynch King and Dorothy Ayer Gardner
King, on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents
separated two weeks after his birth and his mother took
him to Grand Rapids, Michigan to live with her parents.
On February 1, 1916, approximately two years after her
divorce was final, Dorothy King married Gerald
R. Ford, a Grand Rapids paint salesman. The
Fords began calling her son Gerald R. Ford,
Jr., although his name was not legally changed until
December 3, 1935. He had known since he was thirteen
years old that Gerald Ford, Sr., was
not his biological father, but it was not until 1930
when Leslie King made an unexpected stop in Grand Rapids
that he had a chance meeting with this biological father.
The future president grew up in a close-knit family
which included three younger half-brothers, Thomas,
Richard, and James.
Ford attended South High School
in Grand Rapids, where he excelled scholastically
and athletically, being named to the honor society
and the "All-City" and "All-State" football teams.
He was also active in scouting, achieving the rank
of Eagle Scout in November 1927. He earned spending
money by working in the family paint business and
at a local restaurant. |
From 1931 to 1935 Ford attended The
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he majored
in economics and political science. He graduated with
a B.A. degree in June 1935. He financed his education
with part-time jobs, a small scholarship from his high
school, and modest family assistance. A gifted athlete,
Ford played on the University's national
championship football teams in 1932 and 1933. He was
voted the Wolverine's most valuable player in 1934 and
on January 1, 1935, played in the annual East-West College
All-Star game in San Francisco, for the benefit of the
Shrine Crippled Children's Hospital. In August 1935
he played in the Chicago Tribune College All-Star football
game at Soldier Field against the Chicago Bears. |
He received offers from two professional football teams,
the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose instead
to take a position as boxing coach and assistant varsity football
coach at Yale hoping to attend law school there. Among those
he coached were future U.S. Senators Robert Taft, Jr. and
William Proxmire. Yale officials initially denied him admission
to the law school, because of his full-time coaching responsibilities,
but admitted him in the spring of 1938. Ford earned his LL.B.
degree in 1941, graduating in the top 25 percent of his class
in spite of the time he had to devote to his coaching duties.
His introduction to politics came in the summer of 1940 when
he worked in Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign.
After returning to Michigan and passing his bar exam, Ford
and a University of Michigan fraternity brother, Philip A.
Buchen (who later served on Ford's White House staff as Counsel
to the President), set up a law partnership in Grand Rapids.
He also taught a course in business law at the University
of Grand Rapids and served as line coach for the school's
football team. He had just become active in a group of reform-minded
Republicans in Grand Rapids, calling themselves the Home Front,
who were interested in challenging the hold of local political
boss Frank McKay, when the United States entered World War
II.
In April 1942 Ford joined the U.S. Naval Reserve receiving
a commission as an ensign. After an orientation program at
Annapolis, he became a physical fitness instructor at a pre-
flight school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the spring
of 1943 he began service in the light aircraft carrier USS
MONTEREY. He was first assigned as athletic director and gunnery
division officer, then as assistant navigator, with the MONTEREY
which took part in most of the major operations in the South
Pacific, including Truk, Saipan, and the Philippines. His
closest call with death came not as a result of enemy fire,
however, but during a vicious typhoon in the Philippine Sea
in December 1944. He came within inches of being swept overboard
while the storm raged. The ship, which was severely damaged
by the storm and the resulting fire, had to be taken out of
service. Ford spent the remainder of the war ashore and was
discharged as a lieutenant commander in February 1946.
When he returned to Grand Rapids Ford became a partner
in the locally prestigious law firm of Butterfield,
Keeney, and Amberg. A self-proclaimed compulsive "joiner,"
Ford was well-known throughout the
community. Ford has stated that his
experiences in World War II caused him to reject his
previous isolationist leanings and adopt an internationalist
outlook. With the encouragement of his stepfather, who
was county Republican chairman, the Home Front, and
Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Ford decided
to challenge the isolationist incumbent Bartel Jonkman
for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of
Representatives in the 1948 election. He won the nomination
by a wide margin and was elected to Congress on November
2, receiving 61 percent of the vote in the general election. |
During the height of the campaign Gerald Ford
married Elizabeth Anne Bloomer Warren, a department store
fashion consultant. They were to have four children: Michael
Gerald, born March 14, 1950; John Gardner, born March 16,
1952; Steven Meigs, born May 19, 1956; and Susan Elizabeth,
born July 6, 1957.
Gerald Ford served in the House of Representatives
from January 3, 1949 to December 6, 1973, being reelected
twelve times, each time with more than 60% of the vote. He
became a member of the House Appropriations Committee in 1951,
and rose to prominence on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee,
becoming its ranking minority member in 1961. He once described
himself as "a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist
in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy."
As his reputation as a legislator grew, Ford
declined offers to run for both the Senate and the Michigan
governorship in the early 1950s. His ambition was to become
Speaker of the House. In 1960 he was mentioned as a possible
running mate for Richard Nixon in the presidential election.
In 1961, in a revolt of the "Young Turks," a group of younger,
more progressive House Republicans who felt that the older
leadership was stagnating, Ford defeated sixty-seven year
old Charles Hoeven of Iowa for Chairman of the House Republican
Conference, the number three leadership position in the party.
In 1963 President Johnson appointed Ford
to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy. In 1965 Ford co-authored,
with John R. Stiles, a book about the findings of the Commission,
Portrait of the Assassin. President Ford
is the last living member of the Warren Commission.
The battle for the 1964 Republican nomination for president
was drawn on ideological lines, but Ford
avoided having to choose between Nelson Rockefeller and Barry
Goldwater by standing behind Michigan favorite son George
Romney.
| In 1965 Ford was chosen by the Young
Turks as their best hope to challenge Charles Halleck
for the position of minority leader of the House. He
won by a small margin and took over the position early
in 1965, holding it for eight years.
Ford led Republican opposition to
many of President Johnson's programs, favoring more
conservative alternatives to his social welfare legislation
and opposing Johnson's policy of gradual escalation
in Vietnam. As minority leader Ford
made more than 200 speeches a year all across the
country, a circumstance which made him nationally
known. |
In both the 1968 and 1972 elections Ford was
a loyal supporter of Richard Nixon, who had been a friend
for many years. In 1968 Ford was again considered
as a vice presidential candidate. Ford backed
the President's economic and foreign policies and remained
on good terms with both the conservative and liberal wings
of the Republican party.
Because the Republicans did not attain a majority in the
House, Ford was unable to reach his ultimate
political goal--to be Speaker of the House. Ironically, he
did become president of the Senate. When Spiro Agnew resigned
the office of Vice President of the United States late in
1973, after pleading no contest to a charge of income tax
evasion, President Nixon was empowered by the 25th Amendment
to appoint a new vice president. Presumably, he needed someone
who could work with Congress, survive close scrutiny of his
political career and private life, and be confirmed quickly.
He chose Gerald R. Ford. Following the most
thorough background investigation in the history of the FBI,
Ford was confirmed and sworn in on December 6, 1973.
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Gerald R. Ford is sworn in as the
38th President of the United States by Chief Justice
Warren Burger as Mrs. Ford looks
on, August 9, 1974.
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The specter of the Watergate scandal,
the break-in at Democratic headquarters during the 1972
campaign and the ensuing cover-up by Nixon administration
officials, hung over Ford's nine-month tenure as vice
president. When it became apparent that evidence, public
opinion, and the mood in Congress were all pointing
toward impeachment, Nixon became the first president
in U.S. history to resign from that office. Gerald
R. Ford took the oath of office as President
of the United States on August 9, 1974, stating that
"the long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution
works." |
Within the month Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller for vice
president. On December 19, 1974, Rockefeller was confirmed
by Congress, over the opposition of many conservatives, and
the country had a full complement of leaders again.
One of the most difficult decisions of Ford's presidency
was made just a month after he took office. Believing that
protracted impeachment proceedings would keep the country
mired in Watergate and unable to address the other problems
facing it, Ford decided to grant a pardon
to Richard Nixon prior to the filing of any formal criminal
charges. Public reaction was mostly negative; Ford
was even suspected of having made a "deal" with the former
president to pardon him if he would resign. The decision may
have cost him the election in 1976, but President
Ford always maintained that it was the right thing
to do for the good of the country.
President Ford inherited an administration
plagued by a divisive war in Southeast Asia, rising inflation,
and fears of energy shortages. He faced many difficult decisions
including replacing Nixon's staff with his own, restoring
the credibility of the presidency, and dealing with a Congress
increasingly assertive of its rights and powers.
In domestic policy, President Ford felt
that through modest tax and spending cuts, deregulating industries,
and decontrolling energy prices to stimulate production, he
could contain both inflation and unemployment. This would
also reduce the size and role of the federal government and
help overcome the energy shortage. His philosophy is best
summarized by one of his favorite speech lines, "A government
big enough to give us everything we want is a government big
enough to take from us everything we have." The heavily Democratic
Congress often disagreed with Ford, leading
to numerous confrontations and his frequent use of the veto
to control government spending. Through compromise, bills
involving energy decontrol, tax cuts, deregulation of the
railroad and securities industries, and antitrust law reform
were approved.
In foreign policy, Ford and Secretary
of State Kissinger continued the policy of detente with
the Soviet Union and "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle
East. U.S.-Soviet relations were marked by on-going
arms negotiations, the Helsinki agreements on human
rights principles and East European national boundaries,
trade negotiations, and the symbolic Apollo-Soyuz joint
manned space flight. Ford's personal diplomacy was highlighted
by trips to Japan and China, a 10-day European tour,
and co-sponsorship of the first international economic
summit meeting, as well as the reception of numerous
foreign heads of state, many of whom came in observance
of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. |
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President Ford and Soviet General
Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev sign a Joint Communique
following talks on the limitation of strategic offensive
arms in the conference hall of the Okeansky Sanitarium,
Vladivostok, USSR, November 24, 1974.
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With the fall of South Vietnam in 1975 as background, Congress
and the President struggled repeatedly over presidential war
powers, oversight of the CIA and covert operations, military
aid appropriations, and the stationing of military personnel.
On May 14, 1975, in a dramatic move, Ford
ordered U.S. forces to retake the S.S. MAYAGUEZ, an American
merchant ship seized by Cambodian gunboats two days earlier
in international waters. The vessel was recovered and all
39 crewmen saved. In the preparation and execution of the
rescue, however, 41 Americans lost their lives.
On two separate trips to California in September 1975, Ford
was the target of assassination attempts. Both of the assailants
were women -- Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore.
During the 1976 campaign, Ford fought off
a strong challenge by Ronald Reagan to gain the Republican
nomination. He chose Senator Robert Dole of Kansas as his
running mate and succeeded in narrowing Democrat Jimmy Carter's
large lead in the polls, but finally lost one of the closest
elections in history. Three televised candidate debates were
focal points of the campaign.
Upon returning to private life, President and Mrs.
Ford moved to California where they built a new house
in Rancho Mirage. President Ford's memoir,
A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R.
Ford, was published in 1979.
After leaving office, President Ford continued
to actively participate in the political process and to speak
out on important political issues. He lectured at hundreds
of colleges and universities, on such issues as Congressional/White
House relations, federal budget policies, and domestic and
foreign policy issues. He attended the annual Public Policy
Week Conferences of the American Enterprise Institute, and
in 1982 established the AEI World Forum, which he hosted for
many years in Vail/Beaver Creek, Colorado. This was an international
gathering of former and current world leaders and business
executives to discuss political and business policies impacting
current issues.
In 1981, the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, and the Gerald R. Ford Museum in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, were dedicated. President
Ford has participated in conferences at either site
dealing with such subjects as the Congress, the presidency
and foreign policy; Soviet-American relations; German reunification,
the Atlantic Alliance, and the future of American foreign
policy; national security requirements for the ‘90s; humor
and the presidency; and the role of First Ladies.
The former President is the recipient of numerous awards and
honors by many civic organizations. He is the recipient of
many honorary Doctor of Law degrees from various public and
private colleges and universities.
Last Updated: August 8,
2006
Retrieved from "www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov"
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