President Ford Dies at 93

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by GeekyPenguin

Yes, although their staff attorney (Arlen Specter) is still around.

My brother hit me with that one, but as I told him, Mr. Magic Bullet was as you said, their staff attorney/flunkie.

[Sister Havana]

Originally Posted by dekeguy

Twice a brother, as a DEKE and a Mason!
Requiescat in Pace, Amicus et Frater, nunc et ad aeternum.
In war, in life, in times of crisis you always answered the nation's call.
Well done Mr. President. Farewell.

He was also an honorary Brother of the Gamma Pi Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega.

[GA-Beta]

A racial incident much closer to home affected the Olympic chances of another Michigan athlete. Willis Ward was one of the best all-around athletes ever to compete for Michigan. A high school football and track star in Detroit, Ward had decided to attend college at Dartmouth. He had not seriously considered Michigan because of its reputation for not accepting Black football players. No African-American had earned a varsity football letter since George Jewett in 1892. During Fielding Yost's tenure as coach several black students did join the football squad, but it appears that none of them ever saw game action and only one earned even a "reserve letter." In 1931, UM Regent James Murfin and football coach Harry Kipke wanted to change that. With Kipke's assurance that he would be given full opportunity to play football, Ward enrolled at Michigan. He quickly became friends with another freshman football player, Gerald Ford.


Ward earned six varsity letters in football and track. He starred at end on the 1932 and 1933 national champion football squads, and played both end and halfback in 1934. In track Ward won Big Ten titles in the 100 yard dash, 1933; high jump, 1933 and 1935; 400 meter dash, 1933; and long jump, 1934. On several occasions he beat Jesse Owens in the 100 yard dash and was also an outstanding hurdler. Because of his all-around skills, Ward was considered a likely contender for the U.S. decathlon team.




In the third game of the 1934 football season, Michigan was scheduled to play Georgia Tech in Ann Arbor. Ward's presence on the team posed a problem. At least as early as the fall of 1933, the Georgia Tech athletic director had written to Yost asking what was going to be done about Ward, asserting that his team would not take the field if Ward was playing for Michigan. As game day neared the issue became a major controversy on campus and mass meetings and demonstrations were held. Some students and faculty demanded that either Ward must play or the game should be canceled. Others argued that, as host team, Michigan must respect southern customs and hold Ward out of the game. Yost and Kipke did not publicly reveal their decision beforehand, but when kick-off came, Ward was not in uniform.

The incident left Ward angry and, in his view, it demoralized the team for the rest of the season. Ward recalled that Ford considered quitting the team in protest. The team finished with a 1-9 record, the only win coming against Georgia Tech. In later interviews Ward said the episode left him disillusioned with sports and sapped his competitive spirit. He took part in the Olympic trials, but having lost the burning ambition to win, Ward, in his own words, did not train to his peak and failed to make the U.S. team. Willis Ward went on to earn a law degree and had a distinguished career as a lawyer and judge.

[jon1856]

Just a few thoughts and a thread from the Op-Ed sections.
Just a few hours before President Ford passed on, I was looking at a new book about the typhoon that just about wrecked the Third Fleet near the end of the war.

President Ford was a on a Carrier and lead the damage control team that saved the ship from burning up from fuel from wrecked aircraft in hanger bay. And that was after he was almost swept overboard. He was interviewed for the book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/op...nt&oref=slogin
December 28, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors
How Lieutenant Ford Saved His Ship
By ROBERT DRURY and TOM CLAVIN
East Hampton, N.Y.
FOR Americans under a certain age, Gerald Ford is best remembered for his contribution to Bartlett’s — “Our long national nightmare is over” — or, more likely, for the comedian Chevy Chase’s stumbling, bumbling impersonations of him on “Saturday Night Live.” But there’s a different label we can attach to this former president, one that has been overlooked for 62 years: war hero.
In 1944, Lt. j.g. Jerry Ford — a lawyer from Grand Rapids, Mich., blond and broad-shouldered, with the lantern jaw of a young Johnny Weissmuller — was a 31-year-old gunnery officer on the aircraft carrier Monterey. The Monterey was a member of Adm. William Halsey’s Third Fleet, and in mid-December, Lieutenant Ford was sailing off the Philippines as Admiral Halsey’s ships provided air cover for the second phase of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” Philippine invasions.
The Monterey had earned more than half a dozen battle stars for actions in World War II; during the battle of Leyte Gulf, Lieutenant Ford, in charge of a 40-millimeter antiaircraft gun crew on the fantail deck, had watched as a torpedo narrowly missed the Monterey and tore out the hull of the nearby Australian cruiser Canberra. Two months later, in the early morning hours of Dec. 18, the Japanese were the least of the Monterey’s worries, as it found itself trapped in a vicious Pacific cyclone later designated Typhoon Cobra.
Lieutenant Ford had served as the Monterey’s officer of the deck on the ship’s midnight-to-4-a.m. watch, and had witnessed the lashing rains and 60-knot winds whip the ocean into waves that resembled liquid mountain ranges. The waves reeled in from starboard, gigantic sets of dark water that appeared to defy gravity, cresting at 40 to 70 feet. In his 18 months at sea, Lieutenant Ford had never seen waves so big. As breakers crashed over the carrier’s wheelhouse, he could just barely make out the distress whistles sounding about him — the deep beeps of the battleships, the shrill whoops of the destroyers.
After his watch Lieutenant Ford had strapped himself into his bunk below decks, and it seemed that his head had barely hit the pillow when the Monterey’s skipper, Capt. Stuart H. Ingersoll, sounded general quarters, calling all hands to their stations. Lieutenant Ford bolted upright in his dark sea cabin. He thought he smelled smoke amidships. Racing through a rolling companionway dimly lighted by red battle lights, he reached the outside skipper’s ladder leading to the pilothouse and began to climb. At that precise moment a 70-foot wave broke over the Monterey. The carrier pitched 25 degrees to port, and Lieutenant Ford was knocked flat on his back. He began skimming the flight deck as if he were on a toboggan.
Just as he was about to be hurled overboard, Lieutenant Ford managed to slow his slide, twist like an acrobat, and fling himself onto the catwalk. He got to his knees, made his way below deck, and started back up again.
By the time he reached the Monterey’s pilothouse, the fighter planes in its hangar deck had begun slamming into one another as well as the bulkheads — “like pinballs,” Mr. Ford recalled 60 years later — and the collisions had ignited their gas tanks. The hangar deck of the Monterey had become a cauldron of aircraft fuel, and because of a quirk in its construction, the flames from the burning aircraft were sucked into the air intakes of the lower decks. As fires broke out below, Lieutenant Ford remembered the smoke he smelled when he’d bolted from his bunk.
Admiral Halsey had ordered Captain Ingersoll to abandon ship, and the Monterey was ablaze from stem to stern as Lieutenant Ford stood near the helm, awaiting his orders. “We can fix this,” Captain Ingersoll said, and with a nod from his skipper, Lieutenant Ford donned a gas mask and led a fire brigade below.
Aircraft-gas tanks exploded as hose handlers slid across the burning decks. Into this furnace Lieutenant Ford led his men, his first order of business to carry out the dead and injured. Hours later he and his team emerged burned and exhausted, but they had put out the fire.
Three destroyers were eventually capsized by Typhoon Cobra, a dozen more ships were seriously damaged, more than 150 planes were destroyed, and 793 men lost their lives. It was the Navy’s worst “defeat” of World War II. But the Monterey and nearly all of its men survived to take part in the battle of Okinawa, and the future president ended his Navy stint in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant commander.
Like his fellow World War II veterans, Mr. Ford returned home and resumed his life, rarely speaking publicly of his heroism. But in contrast to the public’s image of him as a clumsy nonentity, Mr. Ford was a man whose grace under pressure saved his ship and hundreds of men on it.
Robert Drury and Tom Clavin are the authors of the forthcoming “Halsey’s Typhoon: The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm and an Untold Rescue.”

http://cagle.com/news/GeraldFord/main.asp

RIP

[KSigkid]

From all accounts, a very good man, and people never gave him enough credit for his intelligence. May he rest in peace.

[LaneSig]

On the news tonight, they showed that President Ford's children have been greeting and thanking the members of the public that have come to pay their respects to the president. Very classy.

[KSigkid]

Slight hijack, but the former rector of my church in Boston (Trinity Church), Sam Lloyd, was one of the church members who presided over the service at the National Cathedral yesterday. I knew he was the Dean of the Cathedral, but it was still interesting to see him on national television.

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by LaneSig

On the news tonight, they showed that President Ford's children have been greeting and thanking the members of the public that have come to pay their respects to the president. Very classy.

I thought so, too. When I was in school, Jack Ford was the associate pastor at the church I then attended. Whatever one feels about the Fords, they are definitely not short on class!

[Thrillhouse]

I went down to the museum here in Grand Rapids the night I learned of his passing and was among the tens of thousands who came downtown and waited four and a half hours to pay their respects last night.

R.I.P. Gerald "Our" Ford

Originally Posted by Thrillhouse

R.I.P. Gerald "Our" Ford

Thrillhouse, I'm assuming that you and I are about the same age-ish, so we weren't even born when President Ford was even in office.

(Mom remembers Steven on Y&R, and I kinda do...but then again I was still in pre-school)

Still, from watching the personal testimonies and flashbacks of this week, I've learned so much about him. I hear the stories from my parents on how he healed the nation, and so after watching the funerals and celebrations of his life, may we always remember him.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by OTW

Thrillhouse, I'm assuming that you and I are about the same age-ish, so we weren't even born when President Ford was even in office.

I think Thrillhouse's "our" referred to him being from Grand Rapids.

Though Ford and I were never of the same political persuasion, I've always had the greatest respect for him. He was truly a class act, and I think he did very, very well with the almost impossible mess he inherited from Nixon (and I am old enough to remember all of it). I remember wanting him to be re-elected just because I thought he had handled the situation so well. I was never one of those who thought that the pardon was a bad idea.

Plus, he was an Eagle Scout -- the only president to be an Eagle Scout. I remember the PSAs he did for the Boy Scouts when I was a Boy Scout and he was President. As an Eagle Scout and an adult Scouter, I was pleased to see Scout uniforms in the National Cathedral for the funeral and to hear that Mrs. Ford invited hundreds of Eagle Scouts to stand at the entrance to the Library when the coffin arrived.

May he rest in peace.

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I think Thrillhouse's "our" referred to him being from Grand Rapids.

Yeah, I figured that out despite the fact that it was midnight my time when I typed it.

I just think it's pretty cool how President Ford inspired and gained the respect of a generation who wasn't even born yet when he was in office.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by OTW

I just think it's pretty cool how President Ford inspired and gained the respect of a generation who wasn't even born yet when he was in office.

I agree completely.

[Thrillhouse]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I think Thrillhouse's "our" referred to him being from Grand Rapids.

Yep, there have been billboards around here with that saying. I wasn't around when Ford was in office but was always interested because of the Grand Rapids factor. It's nice to see that he tried to do good in almost everything that he did. I like how him and Jimmy Carter became great friends after the 76 election.

I agree with otw as well. There was a lot on his plate when he took office and to come out of it with grace and class wins my respect.

I was only 8 yrs old when he became president but later on in life i come to feel he did a lot to heal the country after Nixon. For someone who was ready to retire out of govt work he was thrusted into being president.
He i believe laid the ground work for Reagan's presidency and was very impressed by his devotion to family. I heard many times this week he is one of the last of the true good guys who made a difference in this world.
I watched the svcs from Grand Rapids like everyone else and was very moved how he and Carter were very close friends but how he talked about him and how politcal giants(rumsfield and kissinger) can be moved to sheer emotion with kind words spoken on behalf of a kind and wonderful president.
It is refreshing to see how close his family is. After watching Reagan's funeral and the way the children were very detached it was great to see how the Ford children and grandchildren loved their dad and grand dad and how they really cling to Betty. I still have this little crush on Steven from his Y&R days. for 50 he looks dang good to me.


RIP Mr President and god bless the Ford family and Mrs Ford in this time of grief.