Gerald Ford, born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on 14 July 1913, was the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He is the only person to serve as both vice president and president without being elected to either office.
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on 14 July 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska, the only child of Dorothy Ayer Gardner and Leslie Lynch King Sr., a wool trader. His parents separated just sixteen days after his birth, and his mother took the infant to her family and eventually to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she gained full custody when the couple divorced in December 1913. He later said his biological father had a history of hitting his mother. He was raised in Grand Rapids.
He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the football team and won two national championships, and graduated from Yale Law School with a Bachelor of Laws. He served in the US Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. In 1948 he was elected to the House of Representatives from Michigan’s 5th district and served nearly twenty-five years, the last eight as House minority leader. He was also a member of the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
After Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, Ford was appointed vice president in December 1973, becoming the first person appointed to the office under the 25th Amendment. When President Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.
Domestically he presided over the worst economy in four decades, with growing inflation and a recession, and his presidency was overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. In one of his most controversial acts, he granted Nixon a presidential pardon for his role in Watergate on 8 September 1974. In foreign policy, Congress played an increased role and curbed presidential powers, and he signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move towards détente. With the collapse of South Vietnam eight months into his presidency, US involvement in the Vietnam War essentially ended.
In the 1976 Republican primary he narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the nomination, but he narrowly lost the general election to Jimmy Carter. After leaving office in 1977 he stayed active in the Republican Party, though his moderate views on social issues put him at odds with conservative members in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also set aside the enmity he had felt towards Carter after the 1976 election, and the two former presidents became close friends.
After a series of health problems he died at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, on 26 December 2006. Surveys of historians and political scientists rank him as a below-average president, although retrospective public polls on his time in office have been more positive. He served as the 40th vice president from 1973 to 1974, and his paternal grandfather, a banker, paid child support until shortly before his death in 1930. His mother’s sister and brother-in-law hosted them for a time in Oak Park, Illinois, before she moved the infant to her parents’ home in Grand Rapids.
Image: Gerald Ford testifying before a House subcommittee in October 1974 (file photo). Photo: Thomas J. O'Halloran / Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
