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National Mourning
By Administrator | December 28, 2006
Former President Gerald Ford died at his home in California this past Tuesday. He was 93 years old. That leaves us with only three living former presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
Most of my memories of the 1970s have to do with Watergate and the end of the Vietnam war. I was a teenager during a majority of that decade and was in eighth grade when Jimmy Carter was elected as a successor to Gerald Ford, who was never actually elected to either the Vice Presidency or Presidency, though I didn’t pay much attention to that at the time. I was caught up in my own personal issues and was just happy that I didn’t have to hear any more about the problems caused by the Nixon scandal and that the war in Indo-China was ending…especially since I’d lost a favorite cousin to the war several years earlier.
President Ford seemed to be a nice, quiet, grandfatherly kind of guy who didn’t create a huge amount of news that interrupted my self-absorbed teen years, though he did create something of a stir by pardoning former President Nixon. At the time, I had a strict bedtime of nine o’clock and couldn’t stay up even on weekends, so I missed Chevy Chase’s impersonations of President Ford on Saturday Night Live…though I very often caught them in repeats in later years.
My condolences go out to the Ford family, especially his wife Betty, as they face this trying time. President Ford seemed to be a genuinely nice guy who really only wanted to serve the public and who never sought the exalted office that he came to through a series of unforeseeable circumstances that were entirely beyond his control.
Take a moment to think about, and honor, our former president as you pass the flags that have been lowered in his memory. Remember our “accidental” president and the positive changes he brought to a country caught up in a time of incredible turmoil - and hope that we can find someone cut from the same mold to help bring our country out of the issues we’re now facing.
Topics: Current Events |
