Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (July 14, 1913–December 26, 2006) was the 38th President (1974–1977) and 40th Vice President of the United States (1973–1974).
Gerald Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He was originally named Leslie Lynch King, Jr., after his biological father. His parents divorced when he was less than a year old, and when his mother remarried, he was given the name of his step-father, Gerald Rudolff Ford. He later changed the spelling of the middle name.
Ford obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, where he was a football star. He went on to obtain a law degree from Yale University before serving in the United States Navy during World War II. Returning from the war Republican Ford defeated the incumbent in the party primary and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1948, representing the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area. He was elected House Minority Leader in 1963 and served in the House until 1973. When Spiro Agnew resigned, Ford was appointed Vice President of the United States at the height of the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to Richard Nixon‘s resignation. When Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Ford assumed the presidency.
Faced with an overwhelmingly Democratic majority in Congress, the administration was hampered in its ability to pass major legislation, and Ford’s vetoes were frequently overridden. Ford was criticized by many for granting a pre-emptive pardon to Nixon, and was subsequently defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election. But 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.”
Ford died December 26, 2006, at the age of 93, at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
The Gerald Ford Presidential Library website is at www.ford.utexas.edu.
Gerald Ford, Leslie Lynch King, Republican, Richard Nixon, Democrat, Jimmy Carter, Rancho Mirage
