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Former President Gerald Ford died as the oldest living former President at the age of 93. President Bush has released the following statement.

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

Laura and I are greatly saddened by the passing of former President Gerald R. Ford.

President Ford was a great American who gave many years of dedicated service to our country. On August 9, 1974, after a long career in the House of Representatives and service as Vice President, he assumed the Presidency in an hour of national turmoil and division. With his quiet integrity, common sense, and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the Presidency.

The American people will always admire Gerald Ford’s devotion to duty, his personal character, and the honorable conduct of his administration. We mourn the loss of such a leader, and our 38th President will always have a special place in our Nation’s memory. On behalf of all Americans, Laura and I offer our deepest sympathies to Betty Ford and all of President Ford’s family. Our thoughts and prayers will be with them in the hours and days ahead.

I will always remember President Ford through the eyes of a 12 year old, immortalized as a klutz on Saturday Night Live by Chevy Chase. Ironically though President Ford was a star football player in college at The University of Michigan and was considered a tremendous natural athlete. The media penned the stereotype and it stuck. But I did not think of that as anything detrimental to a President at the time who was also criticized by many for pardoning President Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. To me it just seemed like good natured political satire for a nation that probably needed a good laugh after Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Unfortunately I also believe now that this opened up the media floodgates for those who have had a deep disrespect for the government ever since. President Ford was the first person in Hollywood’s distrustful sights but not the last. The nation is worse off for the lack of respect given to Presidents on all sides of the aisle.

Former First Lady Betty Ford issued a statement on the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library Website

Mrs. Betty Ford issued the following statement from her home in Rancho Mirage, California:

“My family joins me in informing you that Gerald R. Ford - our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather - has passed away at 93 years of age. His was a life full of love for God, family, and country.”

Funeral details for the 38th President of the United States will be provided by the Joint Force Headquarters-National Capitol Region and the U.S. Army Military District of Washington Public Affairs Office to both the public and the media as they become available. Any media requests are to be directed to the U.S. Army Military District Public Affairs Office at (202) 685-4644. For information and press releases, visit the Gerald R. Ford Memorial site at www.GeraldFordMemorial.com

President Ford’s family requests that contributions be made to the Gerald R. Ford Foundation Memorial Fund. This request includes donations in lieu of flowers. Information about the memorial contributions and the way you can send a message of condolence to the Ford family can be found at www.GeraldFordMemorial.com

The AP is also reporting that friend and former First Lady Nancy Regan issued a statement.

Ford was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

“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.

“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,” she said.

President Ford was only in office for 2 short years and has characteristically shunned the limelight unlike some other former Presidents who shall remain nameless (at least the meddling kind, although he worked closely with President Ronald Reagan).

President Ford will be remembered for grace and poise as he filled the most important role in U.S. government at a time when the nation was divided. He was welcomed by most in a nation that was in turmoil after Watergate and the war.

The AP article I read covered the former President with respect.

Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

Minutes after Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal and flew into exile, Ford took office and famously declared: “Our long national nightmare is over.”

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, it was widely believed, cost Ford 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 also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.

He 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, the presidency of Jerry Ford 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 Richard 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.

They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy - in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.

And she remained one of the country’s most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.

Blue Star Chronicles notes that the former President and first lady both received the Congressional Gold Medal:

When Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, he declared, “I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances…. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.”

It was indeed an unprecedented time. He had been the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment and, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, was succeeding the first President ever to resign.

Ford was confronted with almost insuperable tasks. There were the challenges of mastering inflation, reviving a depressed economy, solving chronic energy shortages, and trying to ensure world peace.
The President acted to curb the trend toward Government intervention and spending as a means of solving the problems of American society and the economy. In the long run, he believed, this shift would bring a better life for all Americans.

Ford’s reputation for integrity and openness had made him popular during his 25 years in Congress. From 1965 to 1973, he was House Minority Leader. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1913, he grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He starred on the University of Michigan football team, then went to Yale, where he served as assistant coach while earning his law degree. During World War II he attained the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy. After the war he returned to Grand Rapids, where he began the practice of law, and entered Republican politics. A few weeks before his election to Congress in 1948, he married Elizabeth Bloomer. They have four children: Michael, John, Steven, and Susan.

Our prayers go out to Betty Ford and her family. Read more about the life of the honorable former president at the Gerald R. Ford memorial library.

Others: Michelle Malkin, Captains Quarters, Wizbang, Flopping Aces, Blue Crab Boulevard, Outside The Beltway, Say Anything, Hot Air, The Political Pit Bull

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