50 Fun Facts About Gerald Ford

Ford is the only US president who never won what?

National election. Ford was appointed vice president in 1973, became president when Nixon resigned eight months later, and then lost his only run for the White House in 1976.

What name was Ford given at birth?

Leslie Lynch King Jr. His mother left his violent father weeks after the birth, and he grew up under his stepfather's name, which he did not make legal until he was 22.

In which Nebraska city was Ford born, before his mother moved with him to Grand Rapids?

Omaha. He was born in his paternal grandparents' house there; it was torn down after a 1971 fire, and the lot became the Gerald R. Ford Birthsite and Gardens.

Ford is the only president to have earned which Boy Scout rank?

Eagle. He earned scouting's top rank in 1927, and when his casket came home to Grand Rapids in 2007, uniformed Scouts lined the streets to salute it.

Ford played center for which college football team in the early 1930s?

Michigan Wolverines. He played on the national champions of 1932 and 1933, then was voted most valuable player in 1934, a season in which the team won one game and lost seven.

Ford spent the summer of 1936 working as a seasonal ranger in which national park?

Yellowstone. The law school he wanted had first turned him down because he coached full time, and he spent that summer posted to the park's Canyon Station.

Ford turned down NFL offers from the Green Bay Packers and which other team?

Detroit Lions. He passed on pro football for a $2,400-a-year job coaching football and boxing at a university, hoping it would get him into its law school.

Where did Ford earn his law degree in 1941?

Yale Law School. It first rejected him because he was coaching Yale's football and boxing teams full time, then admitted him on a trial basis in 1938.

Ford served in the Pacific aboard which light carrier, named for a battle of the Mexican–American War?

USS Monterey. She was laid down as the cruiser Dayton and turned into a carrier before launch; Ford was in her crew from her commissioning in 1943 until the end of 1944.

What nearly swept Ford off his aircraft carrier in December 1944?

A typhoon. Typhoon Cobra sank three destroyers and killed some 790 sailors; on Ford's ship, planes tore loose and started a fire, and he came within inches of going over the side.

Ford said World War II turned him against which outlook, the creed of the congressman he unseated in 1948?

Isolationism. Ford came home from the Pacific "a converted internationalist" and beat five-term incumbent Bartel Jonkman, an avowed isolationist, two to one in the Republican primary.

Which job was Ford's ambition during his 25 years in Congress?

House Speaker. Republicans never won a House majority while he led them, and he had decided to serve one more term and retire when Nixon made him vice president instead.

Which president appointed Ford to the Warren Commission in 1963?

Lyndon B. Johnson. He chose Ford as one of two House members on the panel, a favour that soured: within a few years Ford was his chief Republican critic and the butt of his jokes.

Ford's 1965 book defending the Warren Report was titled what?

Portrait of the Assassin. Written with John R. Stiles, it backed the commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, a conclusion Ford was still defending in print in 2007.

The House Republicans who backed Ford to oust leader Charles Halleck in 1965 were nicknamed what?

Young Turks. After the 1964 election handed Democrats their biggest House majority since 1936, the rebels ran Ford against Halleck and won.

Ford's televised press conferences with Senator Everett Dirksen were nicknamed what?

The Ev and Jerry Show. Ford later said he had played straight man to Dirksen in the televised sessions, where the pair took turns picking apart the Great Society.

Whose resignation in October 1973 opened the vice presidency for Ford?

Spiro Agnew. He resigned and pleaded no contest to tax evasion the same day, and congressional leaders told Nixon that Ford was the one replacement they would confirm.

Before the 25th Amendment seated Ford, who filled a vacant vice presidency?

Nobody. The office stayed empty: sixteen vice presidents had died, resigned or moved up, leaving the job vacant more than a fifth of the time, and Ford was the first chosen under the new rule.

Which White House chief of staff warned Ford on August 1, 1974 to prepare for the presidency?

Ford told his wife Betty they would never live in the vice president's house.

Where in the White House did Ford take the oath of office on August 9, 1974?

East Room. Chief Justice Warren Burger swore him in there just after noon, and Ford asked a country that had not elected him to confirm him with its prayers: "our long national nightmare is over."

Whom did Ford nominate as his own vice president on August 20, 1974?

Nelson Rockefeller. Congress took four months to confirm the former New York governor, and within a year conservative anger had pushed Ford to drop him from the 1976 ticket.

Which early critic of the Nixon pardon honored Ford for it in 2001?

Ted Kennedy. Presenting Ford with the Profile in Courage Award, named for his brother's book, he said he had opposed the pardon in 1974 but that time had shown Ford made the right call.

In November 1974, Ford became the first sitting US president to visit which Asian country?

Japan. Dwight Eisenhower's planned 1960 trip was cancelled after violent protests in Tokyo, so the first presidential visit waited for Ford's state visit to Tokyo and Kyoto.

Which word completes Ford's 1974 denial to Congress about the Nixon pardon: "There was no ___, period, under no circumstances"?

Deal. Ford chose to go to Capitol Hill in person to answer the suspicion that he had traded the pardon for Nixon's resignation.

Ford privately justified pardoning Nixon with a 1915 ruling that accepting a pardon amounts to what?

A confession of guilt. Friends said Ford carried the passage from the Burdick ruling in his wallet, to show that Nixon had admitted wrongdoing simply by accepting.

Ford replaced every Nixon cabinet member except Treasury Secretary William Simon and which secretary of state?

Henry Kissinger. He kept the State Department through Ford's 1975 shake-up, the Halloween Massacre, but lost his second job as national security adviser to Brent Scowcroft.

Whom did Ford name the youngest-ever Secretary of Defense in 1975?

Donald Rumsfeld. He was 43 when he left the White House for the Pentagon, and his deputy Dick Cheney, then 34, took over his old job as Ford's chief of staff.

Ford made George H. W. Bush director of which agency in late 1975?

CIA. Ford called Bush home from his post as envoy to China to replace William Colby, who lost the job as congressional inquiries laid bare years of agency abuses.

Ford's 1974 WIN lapel buttons urged Americans to fight which economic problem?

Inflation. WIN stood for Whip Inflation Now; about 100,000 Americans wrote in to join, but the buttons soon became a joke, and by January Ford had switched to fighting recession with a tax cut.

Which paper ran the headline 'Ford to City: Drop Dead' in 1975?

New York Daily News. Ford never said those words: he had vowed to veto a bailout of the city, and within two months he reversed course and backed $2.3 billion in federal loans.

In 1976 Ford urged every American to get a shot against which illness?

Swine flu. The pandemic never came: more than 40 million Americans had the shot before the program was dropped that December, and several hundred of them developed a rare paralysing syndrome.

Which 1975 European security agreement did Ford sign, angering conservatives?

Helsinki Accords. Conservatives saw a giveaway to Moscow, but the human-rights pledges the Soviets signed gave dissidents a yardstick, and Helsinki Watch, set up to monitor them, grew into Human Rights Watch.

Ford hosted the 1976 economic summit in Puerto Rico where which country joined, turning the G6 into the G7?

Canada. The first summit, held in France in 1975, had six countries at the table; Canada's Pierre Trudeau took the seventh seat at the meeting Ford hosted the following June.

At which New Orleans university did Ford declare the Vietnam War "finished as far as America is concerned"?

Tulane. A week before South Vietnam fell, Ford reminded students that the Battle of New Orleans was fought after its war had ended, then said America could not regain its pride by refighting this one.

Operation Frequent Wind, which Ford ordered in April 1975, lifted Americans by helicopter out of which city?

Saigon. In under two days helicopters flew some 7,000 people from rooftops to ships waiting offshore, about 5,500 of them South Vietnamese, as the city fell.

Which American merchant ship did Khmer Rouge forces seize in May 1975?

Mayaguez. Marines stormed an island where the crew was not being held, just as the sailors were being released elsewhere, and 41 servicemen died for a crew smaller than that.

Which Manson follower pointed a pistol at Ford in Sacramento on September 5, 1975?

Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme. Her pistol did not fire, an agent wrestled it away, and she got a life sentence under a 1965 law that had made an attempt on a president a federal crime.

Which former Marine lunged at Sara Jane Moore as she shot at Ford in San Francisco in 1975?

Oliver Sipple. The disabled Vietnam veteran was hailed as a hero, then outed as gay in the press against his wishes, which estranged him from his family back home.

Whom did Ford appoint to the Supreme Court in 1975?

John Paul Stevens. He took the seat of William O. Douglas, the liberal justice Ford had tried to impeach as a congressman, then surprised conservatives by drifting to the court's liberal side himself.

Who challenged Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination?

Ronald Reagan. He beat the sitting president in a string of primaries from North Carolina to California and took the fight to the convention, where Ford scraped through on the first ballot.

Which Kansas senator was Ford's running mate in 1976?

Bob Dole. Ford picked him to shore up the farm belt and satisfy the party's right wing, which had already forced his more liberal vice president off the ticket.

Which comedian's pratfalls on Saturday Night Live caricatured Ford?

Chevy Chase. The joke took hold after Ford tripped leaving Air Force One in Austria, though he had been voted most valuable player on his college football team.

In the second 1976 debate, Ford wrongly denied Soviet domination of which region?

Eastern Europe. Offered a way out by the startled questioner, Ford dug in and said Poles did not consider themselves dominated, then compounded the slip by refusing to admit it.

Which state did Ford lose in 1976, its last Democratic vote as of 2024?

Texas. Its 26 electoral votes helped the Democrats win 297 to 240, even though Ford carried 27 states to his opponent's 23.

What was the title of Ford's 1979 autobiography?

A Time to Heal. The Nation scooped its account of the Nixon pardon from a leaked manuscript, Time cancelled its planned excerpt, and the Supreme Court later ruled that the scoop was not fair use.

Talks to make Ford the 1980 Republican vice-presidential nominee collapsed after he discussed them on air with which CBS anchor?

Walter Cronkite. On live television Ford did not deny reports that he might share power in a "co-presidency"; the nominee felt betrayed and gave the job to George H. W. Bush the same day.

With which former rival did Ford form a close friendship after a 1981 trip to Sadat's funeral?

Jimmy Carter. The friendship began on the long flight home from Cairo, and years later Ford asked him to speak at his funeral, offering to do the same if Carter died first.

Ford died in December 2006 in which California community?

Rancho Mirage. The Fords built a house in the desert resort after leaving the White House, and it was there that Betty opened the addiction clinic that bears her name.

Betty Ford danced for whom?

Martha Graham. Betty Bloomer joined Graham's auxiliary troupe and danced at Carnegie Hall, and more than three decades later, as first lady, she saw Ford award her old teacher the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Which fight song did Ford often have played instead of 'Hail to the Chief'?

The Victors. It is the fight song of the university where he had been a football star, and he chose it for his own funeral, where a marching band played it as his casket came home to Grand Rapids.