[His Mother's House 1974 Movie Fr
Amancio Mccrae
Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the school's football team before eventually attending Yale Law School. Afterward, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as the House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after Spiro Agnew's resignation, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After the subsequent resignation of President Nixon in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.
Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession.[2] In one of his most controversial acts, he granted a presidential pardon to Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. Foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the president.[3] Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move toward dtente in the Cold War. With the collapse of South Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War essentially ended. In the 1976 Republican presidential primary, Ford defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic challenger, Jimmy Carter.
Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party, but his moderate views on various social issues increasingly put him at odds with conservative members of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also set aside the enmity he had felt towards Carter following the 1976 election and the two former presidents developed a close friendship. After experiencing a series of health problems, he died in Rancho Mirage, California in 2006. Surveys of historians and political scientists have ranked Ford as a below-average president,[4][5][6] though retrospective public polls on his time in office were more positive.[7][8]
Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on July 14, 1913, at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his parents lived with his paternal grandparents. He was the only child of Dorothy Ayer Gardner and Leslie Lynch King Sr., a wool trader. His paternal grandfather was banker and businessman Charles Henry King, and his maternal grandfather was Illinois politician and businessman Levi Addison Gardner. Ford's parents separated just sixteen days after his birth and his mother took the infant Ford with her to Oak Park, Illinois, where her sister Tannisse and brother-in-law, Clarence Haskins James lived. From there, she moved to the home of her parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Gardner and King divorced in December 1913, and she gained full custody of her son. Ford's paternal grandfather paid child support until shortly before his death in 1930.[9]
Ford later said that his biological father had a history of hitting his mother.[10] In a biography of Ford, James M. Cannon wrote that the separation and divorce of Ford's parents was sparked when, a few days after Ford's birth, Leslie King took a butcher knife and threatened to kill his wife, infant son, and Ford's nursemaid. Ford later told confidants that his father had first hit his mother when she had smiled at another man during their honeymoon.[11]
Ford was involved in the Boy Scouts of America, and earned that program's highest rank, Eagle Scout.[14] He is the only Eagle Scout to have ascended to the U.S. presidency.[14] Ford attended Grand Rapids South High School, where he was a star athlete and captain of the football team.[15] In 1930, he was selected to the All-City team of the Grand Rapids City League. He also attracted the attention of college recruiters.[16]
During Ford's senior year, a controversy developed when Georgia Tech said that it would not play a scheduled game with Michigan if a Black player named Willis Ward took the field. Students, players and alumni protested, but university officials capitulated and kept Ward out of the game. Ford was Ward's best friend on the team, and they roomed together while on road trips. Ford reportedly threatened to quit the team in response to the university's decision, but he eventually agreed to play against Georgia Tech when Ward personally asked him to play.[19]
Throughout life, Ford remained interested in his school and football; he occasionally attended games. Ford also visited with players and coaches during practices; at one point, he asked to join the players in the huddle.[22] Before state events, Ford often had the Navy band play the University of Michigan fight song, "The Victors," instead of "Hail to the Chief."[23]
Ford graduated from Michigan in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He turned down offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers of the National Football League. Instead, he took a job in September 1935 as the boxing coach and assistant varsity football coach at Yale University[24] and applied to its law school.[25]
Ford hoped to attend Yale Law School beginning in 1935. Yale officials at first denied his admission to the law school because of his full-time coaching responsibilities. He spent the summer of 1937 as a student at the University of Michigan Law School[26] and was eventually admitted in the spring of 1938 to Yale Law School.[24] That year he was also promoted to the position of junior varsity head football coach at Yale.[27] While at Yale, Ford began working as a model. He initially worked with the John Robert Powers agency before investing in the Harry Conover agency, with whom he modelled until 1941.[28]
While attending Yale Law School, Ford joined a group of students led by R. Douglas Stuart Jr., and signed a petition to enforce the 1939 Neutrality Act. The petition was circulated nationally and was the inspiration for the America First Committee, a group determined to keep the U.S. out of World War II.[29] His introduction into politics was in the summer of 1940 when he worked for the Republican presidential campaign of Wendell Willkie.[24]
Following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Ford enlisted in the Navy.[30] He received a commission as ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve on April 13, 1942.[31] On April 20, he reported for active duty to the V-5 instructor school at Annapolis, Maryland. After one month of training, he went to Navy Preflight School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he was one of 83 instructors and taught elementary navigation skills, ordnance, gunnery, first aid, and military drill. In addition, he coached all nine sports that were offered, but mostly swimming, boxing, and football. During the year he was at the Preflight School, he was promoted to Lieutenant, Junior Grade, on June 2, 1942, and to lieutenant, in March 1943.[32]
After Ford applied for sea duty, he was sent in May 1943 to the pre-commissioning detachment for the new aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26), at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. From the ship's commissioning on June 17, 1943, until the end of December 1944, Ford served as the assistant navigator, Athletic Officer, and antiaircraft battery officer on board the Monterey. While he was on board, the carrier participated in many actions in the Pacific Theater with the Third and Fifth Fleets in late 1943 and 1944. In 1943, the carrier helped secure Makin Island in the Gilberts, and participated in carrier strikes against Kavieng, Papua New Guinea in 1943. During the spring of 1944, the Monterey supported landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok and participated in carrier strikes in the Marianas, Western Carolines, and northern New Guinea, as well as in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.[33] After an overhaul, from September to November 1944, aircraft from the Monterey launched strikes against Wake Island, participated in strikes in the Philippines and Ryukyus, and supported the landings at Leyte and Mindoro.[33]
After the fire, the Monterey was declared unfit for service. Ford was detached from the ship and sent to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Saint Mary's College of California, where he was assigned to the Athletic Department until April 1945. From the end of April 1945 to January 1946, he was on the staff of the Naval Reserve Training Command, Naval Air Station, Glenview, Illinois, at the rank of lieutenant commander.[24]
After Ford returned to Grand Rapids in 1946, he became active in local Republican politics, and supporters urged him to challenge Bartel J. Jonkman, the incumbent Republican congressman. Military service had changed his view of the world. "I came back a converted internationalist", Ford wrote, "and of course our congressman at that time was an avowed, dedicated isolationist. And I thought he ought to be replaced. Nobody thought I could win. I ended up winning two to one."[16]
During his first campaign in 1948, Ford visited voters at their doorsteps and as they left the factories where they worked.[35] Ford also visited local farms where, in one instance, a wager resulted in Ford spending two weeks milking cows following his election victory.[36]
Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for 25 years, holding Michigan's 5th congressional district seat from 1949 to 1973. It was a tenure largely notable for its modesty. As an editorial in The New York Times described him, Ford "saw himself as a negotiator and a reconciler, and the record shows it: he did not write a single piece of major legislation in his entire career."[37] Appointed to the House Appropriations Committee two years after being elected, he was a prominent member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Ford described his philosophy as "a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy."[38] He voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,[39][40] 1960,[41][42] 1964,[43][44] and 1968,[45][46] as well as the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[47][48][49] Ford was known to his colleagues in the House as a "Congressman's Congressman".[50]
795a8134c1