Michigan's only President

Gerald R. Ford: balm to the nation

Former President Gerald R. Ford will be remembered for restoring honor and dignity to the highest office in the land. His honesty, principled leadership and fundamental decency-- values that reflected the Midwestern city that called him its own -- offered a badly-needed balm to a bitterly disillusioned nation.

Mr. Ford displayed character when the notion of it in high government had become a punch line. He insisted that conviction trump opinion polls. He provided a steady hand through a roiling tempest. For that leadership, the nation owes President Gerald R. Ford its deepest gratitude and an honored place in history.

Mr. Ford, who died Tuesday at the age of 93, never aspired to be president. He wanted to lead a Republican majority as speaker of the House of Representatives, where he served for a quarter century. When that majority failed to materialize in the 1972 elections, he seemed bound for retirement after 1976. The Grand Rapid Press

The only president to not be elected, whose name wasn't 'really' Ford, and who was Michigan's only president, but wasn't born there, died late yesterday at his adopted desert home in California.

He pissed a lot of us off once, but most of us later realized, he did what had to be done. Gerald R. Ford was a decent and honorable man.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age. His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
—Betty Ford, former First Lady