Great Lakes Trip 2019 Day 7

Michigan State Capitol

Senate chamber

House of Representatives chamber

House chamber ceiling

George Romney, Governor of Michigan 1963-1969. He was the father of current Utah Senator Mitt Romney.

Portrait of President Gerald Ford. We are going to his Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids later this morning.

Looking up at the rotunda.

Farm in rural Michigan

President Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids MI.

Mary Jean with First Lady Betty Ford.

Statue of President Gerald R. Ford, our 38th President. He became president upon the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon on August 9, 1974. I remember watching President Nixon announce his resignation on August 8, 1974. Ford had become Vice President when Nixon nominated him upon the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was under investigation for political corruption (bribes, etc.). Thus President Ford is the only person who became president without a national presidential election. He ran for election in the 1976 presidential election against Jimmy Carter. I was a senior in high school that year, and I was eligible to vote for the first time, and President Ford received my first ever vote for president. Unfortunately, he lost to Carter.

Astronaut statue

President Ford was born as Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha NE (Nebraska’s only president), but his father severely abused his mother, so she divorced him and moved to Grand Rapids MI, where she met and married Gerald R. Ford. The child’s name was legally changed to Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. The quote in this picture is referring to his adoptive father.

Ford grew up in Grand Rapids MI

President Ford was perhaps our most athletic president. He was a star football player in high school, and went on to be a star lineman for the University of Michigan!

Ford was an Eagle Scout.

Ford served in the Navy during World War II.

His boat, the USS Monterey’s biggest challenge was when it was hit by a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean.

Prior to his presidency, Gerald Ford was a Congressman from Michigan. He rose through the ranks to become majority leader in the House. In 1972, President Nixon won re-election in a landslide, but oddly the Republicans did not win the house, which would have elevated Ford to Speaker of the House. If that would have happened, Ford likely would not have been nominated Vice President to replace Agnew, and thus would not have become president when Nixon resigned.

President Nixon’s resignation letter.

President Nixon was forced to resign because of his role in the Watergate scandal, which started in 1972 when some Nixon supporters broke into the Democrat headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC, and they were caught. Nixon become involved later, primarily to cover up the break in. As the scandal mounted, Nixon likely obstructed justice in blocking investigators.

When President Ford assumed office, he inherited a deeply divided and uncertain government and country. He had earned a very strong reputation for honesty and decency.

President Ford issued a pardon for President Nixon, in an effort to close the book on Watergate. Most likely, this pardon was the primary reason he lost in 1976 to Jimmy Carter.

President Ford’s Oval Office

President Ford’s Oval Office

The ceiling in President Ford’s Oval Office

Replica of President Ford’s Cabinet Room. Mary Jean is sitting in the chair for the Secretary of Interior…

… and I am sitting in the President’s chair.

President Ford worked full steam, even though many people of the left tried to paint him as an “illegitimate” president.

State dinner clothes and table settings.

President Ford authorized leaving the US Embassy in Saigon in 1975, thus ending our involvement in the Vietnam War.

The campaign of 1976.

This is what 1976 looked like! The United States celebrated our 200th birthday all year – lots of patriotic events all year, all over the country! JM’s Monroe Singers performed patriotic concerts several times throughout the year.

The Freedom Train came to Fredericksburg and set up at the FMC plant. I went though the displays on the Freedom Train, and the thing that I still remember most after all these years was seeing NBA star Bob Lanier’s size 21 shoes!