Former President Ford passed away

[Bigdogjim]

Gerald Ford dies at 93.

Passed away late last night.

God Bless the USA and his Family.

[Breadfan]

Wow, I had not heard that...

Couldn't say it better, "God Bless the USA and his family"

[SID210SA]

And any one with flags......half staff for 30 days

[Bluerauder]

Gerald Ford dies at 93.

Passed away late last night.

God Bless the USA and his Family.
R.I.P. President Ford .....

One of his most famous quotes was made on the day that he took office ... "Remember ... I am a Ford not a Lincoln". That says alot about his character and his personality. He will be remembered as the Great Healer. He was the right man for that time.

[Haggis]

God Bless another American President. :flag:

[jimlam56]

R.I.P. President Ford .....

One of his most famous quotes was made on the day that he took office ... "Remember ... I am a Ford not a Lincoln". That says alot about his character and his personality. He will be remembered as the Great Healer. He was the right man for that time.

Very true Sir.
Reading his obit reminded me of the turbulent times those were.
I didn't like that he pardoned Nixon at the time, but now it seems like the right thing to do.
A Presidential trial woulda tore this country up...

[Vortex]

Voted for him in 76 over Carter. A good, honest politician who was not one of those right or left wing "true believer" idiots we have now who dont know how to make a deal or get anything done in congress.

[GAMike]

Its interesting now, looking back on his time in office and President Carters....... At the time Americans wanted Ford out of office so fast it would make your head spin.

As most look back now, they realize what a mistake that was.

Rest in peace Mr. President:flag:

[GreekGod]

My father, Arthur Zalaoras, knew Gerald Ford, Betty Bloomer, and Arthur Vandenberg, all mentioned in the short biography that follows.

A lifelong voter for Democrats, dad knew (then) Republican U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, through working as a night-time security guard at a downtown Grand Rapids office building. Dad carried an unloaded .38 caliber revolver ("for show"), and ran the elevator (it was manually operated) for the Senator, when the Senator visited after hours, and the building was closed.

I asked dad if he ever talked to the Senator. He thought for a second and replied "yes, I mentioned to him that my name was also Arthur".

Dad (and mom) knew of Betty Bloomer Ford from attending Central High School in Grand Rapids. Betty was older than both of my parents, and mom recalls Betty being among the upper class society of the school. Betty's photos occur in my parents high school annuals, mostly in group photos of organizations and clubs she belonged to.

Dad recalled knowing Jerry Ford from working at "Universal Ford", in downtown Grand Rapids. Dad worked the parts counter, and Jerry would visit with my father while getting his car worked on. He said that Jerry was a very nice guy. Jerry must have driven Fords! It seems anyone that knew Jerry Ford had nothing bad to say about him.

I'm told, years ago, there were many Greek restaurants in Grand Rapids. The bio mentions Jerry Ford worked in a Greek restaurant his senior year of high school. Dad's father, Nicholas Zalaoras, was a cook in many restaurants of Grand Rapids. I can't help but wonder if Jerry Ford ever worked with my grandfather in that Greek restaurant, or ate food prepared by him.

It was a much smaller world in the 1930's, and it is still a small world today.

My eye doctor, J Gregory Ford, is Jerry Ford's nephew, the son of his brother. He has a photo he took, hanging in his exam room, of a golf course in Las Vegas, Nevada. I recognized the horizon in the photo the first time I saw it, because it is the mountain range to the west of my brother's 2nd Las Vegas house.

Dr. Ford went to Forest Hills High School with the surgeon that implanted a lens in my father's eye.

[GreekGod]

Former President Ford Dies at 93

<NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>
LOS ANGELES (Dec. 27) - Former President Gerald R. Ford, who declared "Our long national nightmare is over" as he replaced Richard Nixon but may have doomed his own chances of election by pardoning his disgraced predecessor, has died. He was 93.

The nation's 38th president, and the only one not elected to the office of the vice presidency, died at his desert home at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.
"His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country," his wife, Betty, said in a statement.

Ford was the longest living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004, by more than a month.

Ford's office did not release the cause of death, which followed a year of medical problems. He was treated for pneumonia in January and had an angioplasty and pacemaker implant in August.

Funeral arrangements were to be announced Wednesday.

"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.

Ford was an accidental president. A Michigan Republican elected to Congress 13 times before becoming the first appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew left amid scandal, Ford was Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office moments after Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate and went into exile.

"My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."

And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."

He revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president.

That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. 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."

Ford was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, his presidency remained open and plain.

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process - despite the fact that it occurred without an election.
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president - and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he "built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal - a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own."

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

So Ford became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made 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"...continued in part III...

[GreekGod]

...continued from Part II...

In 1976, he survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter's record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.

Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.

"Ronnie and I always considered him a dear friend and close political ally," Nancy Reagan said in a statement Tuesday.

At a joint session after becoming president, Ford addressed members of Congress as "my former colleagues" and promised "communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation." But his relations with Congress did not always run smoothly.

He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as president. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson.

In his memoir, "A Time to Heal," Ford wrote, "When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed."

Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, "There was no deal, period, under no circumstances." The committee dropped its investigation.

Ford's standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do.

The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, "The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough."

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon "an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest."

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.
Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

Both women are serving life terms in federal prison.

Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: "We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government."

As to his failings, he responded, "I will leave that to my opponents. I don't think there have been many."

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home - unpretentious except for a swimming pool - that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

Ford spent most of his boyhood in Grand Rapids, Mich.

He was born Leslie King on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Neb. His parents were divorced when he was less than a year old, and his mother returned to her parents in Grand Rapids, where she later married Gerald R. Ford Sr. He adopted the boy and renamed him.

Ford was a high school senior when he met his biological father. He was working in a Greek restaurant, he recalled, when a man came in and stood watching.

"Finally, he walked over and said, 'I'm your father,'" Ford said. "Well, that was quite a shock." But he wrote in his memoir that he broke down and cried that night and he was left with the image of "a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son."

Ford played center on the University of Michigan's 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach.

Ford got his first exposure to national politics at Yale, working as a volunteer in Wendell L. Willkie's 1940 Republican campaign for president. After World War II service with the Navy in the Pacific, he went back to practicing law in Grand Rapids and became active in Republican reform politics.

His stepfather was the local Republican chairman, and Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg was looking for a fresh young internationalist to replace the area's isolationist congressman.

Ford got twice as many votes as Rep. Bartel Jonkman in the Republican primary and then went on to win the election with 60.5 percent of the vote, the lowest margin he ever got.

He had proposed to Elizabeth Bloomer, a dancer and fashion coordinator, earlier that year, 1948. She became one of his hardest-working campaigners and they were married shortly before the election. They had three sons, Michael, John and Steven, and a daughter, Susan.

Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.