Presidential House Visit: Hail to the Victor

Other than Abraham Lincoln, no president came into the office at a more chaotic time than Gerald R. Ford. Watergate and the ensuing Nixon resignation plunged the nation into turmoil and made people distrustful of the government and the presidency in particular.

It says a lot about Gerald Ford that in three years he restored confidence in the government and the presidency. Known for his honesty and integrity, President Ford cleared the White House of bugs, swept away the pall of Nixon’s paranoia, and started afresh while still maintaining a sense of stability. I have always thought of Ford as a blandly likeable president, notable only for his lack of scandal, but now I can appreciate what that meant at the time. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Gerald Ford led our nation back from the brink of ruin.

It could have been otherwise. Born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha, his mother left his abusive father shortly after he was born. The young mother eventually made her way to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she remarried a painter named Gerald Ford and had three more sons. Gerald Ford, Sr. welcomed his young stepson into his family, giving him his own name. The family had three rules: tell the truth, work hard, and come to dinner on time.  

Although he was mocked on Saturday Night Live after stumbling while getting off a plane, Gerald Ford was one of our most athletic presidents. He played football at the University of Michigan and was offered a position on the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers. He turned them both down, opting to attend Yale Law instead. He ran for Congress in 1949, and eventually reached his goal of becoming the Speaker of the House before being appointed Vice President in 1973. He is still the only president not to be elected into his office. Because of this, he never played “Hail to the Chief,” but instead had the band play the University of Michigan fight song “Hail to the Victors.” You could take the man out of Michigan, but you couldn’t take the Michigan out of the man.

“Jerry” Ford, as he was known back home in Grand Rapids, moved around a lot as a child, and many of the houses still stand, although they are all privately owned. This led to some difficulties as it was harder to get a good sense of the man; there’s really only so much you can tell from the outside of a house. Visiting the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum helped, but I still wanted a more personal connection.

Luckily, I had a Michigan connection. My uncle is from Grand Rapids, and his family members had the opportunity to meet with Jerry Ford several times. They declared him to be a “very nice man,” far too nice to be in politics today. There is a photograph of my uncle with his parents and siblings at Congressman Ford’s office in Washington, DC. Apparently they made the trip down from Grand Rapids to the capital to see all the sights, but they left home just as the news of President Eisenhower’s death broke. The capital was entirely closed down for the funeral, and Ford felt bad that they couldn’t see anything, so he handed them a few passes to the ropeline at Eisenhower’s funeral. Instead of seeing the usual Washington tourist sites, they witnessed a state funeral and all the pomp and circumstance that accompanied it.

But that was just Jerry Ford for you. As an honorary Michigander, I recognized a lot of qualities in President Ford that I see in a lot of people from Michigan: approachability, lack of pretentiousness, and plain old kindness. There was also integrity. When people questioned whether Ford pardoned Nixon as part of a deal to become president, he went to Congress and made himself available to answer all questions that could be asked of him; he could do that because he had nothing to hide. I think that speaks volumes about his character at a time when the country so desperately needed a leader free of the taint of dishonesty.

But that was just Jerry Ford from Grand Rapids, the unlikely, but sorely needed, president.