From Woolworth Ave. to the White House
(This story originally ran in the July/August 2001 issue of Nebraska Life Magazine.)
For the first 16 days of Gerald Ford's life, Omaha was home.
By Curt Arens
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| Aboard Air Force One, former Michigan football star, President Gerald Ford, donned a Cornhuskers hat for a Nebraska visit. |
There's no hiding Omaha 's affection for her most famous native son. An expressway bears his name, and the city has developed his birthplace with gardens, an exhibit and a conservation center in his honor.
Former President Gerald R. Ford, Nebraska 's only native-born president, returns the affection toward Omaha and the entire state of Nebraska . That was clear in a recent phone interview with us from his office and home near Rancho Mirage in southern California . Even over the phone, the 88-year-old statesman's strong, gruff voice was imposing, clearly recognizable as the same voice that soothed the nation's worried psyche in the wake of Watergate. He was polite and down-to-earth, much as we would expect from any native Nebraskan.
Ford recalled the first time he saw the completed Birthsite Park and rose gardens during dedication ceremonies. “We were on our way to the Republican National Conven-tion in Detroit,” said Ford. “We stopped in Omaha, and for the first time saw the gardens in full bloom. There's no question about it, Betty and I both were thrilled.”
That thrilling dedication and the happy events of the day for both the Fords and Nebraska residents stand in sharp contrast to Ford's tragic initiation into the world. The saga sounds like an installment of Paul Harvey's “Rest of the Story.”
The future president was born on a steamy July 14, 1913, in his grandfather's mansion at 3202 Woolworth Ave., across from Hanscom Park southwest of downtown Omaha. He was born into a turbulent relationship between a spoiled father, Leslie Lynch King, Sr., and a frightened young mother, Dorothy Ayer Gardner King. He was named after his father, as Leslie Lynch King, Jr.
He was born into a world of luxury. His grandfather, Charles King, was a prominent Omaha wool merchant worth millions. But the merchant's son was another story.
Even while Dorothy and Leslie King were on their honeymoon in 1912, Leslie repeatedly became enraged and struck his young bride. When the newlyweds returned to Omaha, they moved into a cramped apartment, and Dorothy tried to set up housekeeping.
Leslie King's violent attacks continued. While the elder Kings were away, he moved his pregnant wife into the King mansion. After their son was born, in spite of warnings from Dorothy's doctor, King continued to berate his wife, his infant son and his mother-in-law, who had come to help her daughter. The confrontations grew ever more violent; once King threatened the three with a butcher knife.
Fearing what her husband might do next, Dorothy fled from the mansion with her infant son and nothing else. She had decided to leave her husband permanently. Their divorce was granted in December 1913. Leslie King, Sr. was found guilty of “extreme cruelty,” and sole custody of their son was granted to Dorothy. Their young child's life in Omaha had lasted just 16 days, and his parents' marriage just 11 months.
After escaping the grasp of her controlling husband, the young mother and her son moved to Grand Rapids, Mich. There, at a church social, Dorothy met her future husband and her son's adoptive father, Gerald R. Ford, Sr.
Dorothy and Gerald Ford were married in 1916, and Leslie King, Jr. became Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. For all practical purposes, the boy would consider the elder Ford his father.
In fact, young Ford himself didn't know of his Nebraska roots until he was a teenager in Grand Rapids. One day, as Ford waited lunch tables at a dairy shop near his high school, Leslie King, Sr. strode in and announced that he was Ford's real father. Out of curiosity, Gerald agreed to have lunch with the strange man. Upon departing, King handed the lad a $20 bill.
This was a particularly stinging event, because King had left Nebraska to avoid arrest for failure to pay child support and other funds to Ford's mother. King gave poor health as his reason for moving to Riverton, Wyo., but he carefully avoided his native state for years until he was surprisingly caught in Lincoln in 1939 and forced to pay up.
Thus went the sad, sordid chapter of Gerald Ford's life that linked him to a biological father he didn't really care to know. Out of these stormy ties, Nebraska Historical Society researcher Eli Paul was charged in 1994 with creating the new Gerald R. Ford Conservation Center, an exhibit to depict Ford's relationship to his home state.
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| President Gerald Ford, accompanied by James Paxson at left, greets children at the dedication of Birthsite Park in Omaha in 1976. |
Paul, currently the museum director at Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, spent a year poring over old Ford records in the Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Mich. and the Ford Museum in Grand Rapids to develop the exhibit. How do you represent a man who lived in Nebraska just over two weeks? “He's probably spent more time in Nebraska as an ex-President,” Paul said.
But Ford had returned to Nebraska many times as an influential Michigan Congressman, campaigning for fellow Republicans in the state. He visited again as vice-president during the waning years of Richard Nixon's embattled presidency.
In fact, Ford's adult relationship with the state began when he purchased his first health insurance policy with Mutual of Omaha. Ford has now held a policy with the company for 61 years, he said, and he's returned on several occasions to speak, at the company's request.
As president, Ford visited the Strategic Air Command and Offutt Air Force base, which he considered a highlight of his many trips to the state. “I realized the importance of Nebraska” in the political arena too, he said.
For the Conservation Center exhibit, Paul decided to focus on Ford's visits to the state and the gifts Ford had received over the years from Nebraskans. He also recreated what life in Omaha was like at the time Ford was born.
“That part of Omaha was almost considered suburbs then,” said Paul. “It was an upscale neighborhood in keeping with the prosperity of the King family.” He noted that there are still visible reminders of the neighborhood's elegant past.
Paul set out to make Ford a Nebraska story by researching thousands of Ford photos and documents at the library and museum. “During my research, I became more and more impressed by his character,” Paul said. Ford was really a “Boy Scout,” he concluded, literally an Eagle Scout as a youth and figuratively as a statesman.
Young Ford entered the University of Michigan in 1931. There he played center on Michigan's national championship football teams. He was named by his teammates the most valuable player in 1934. He graduated in 1935.
Ford still follows the Wolverines and commented on their recent successful recruiting season. When we teased him about following the Huskers football team, he said that he's well aware of the prominence of Nebraska in college football, too.
Ford graduated in the top third of his class at Yale law school in 1941. He briefly practiced law in Grand Rapids, but joined the navy in 1942, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander before his discharge in 1946.
In 1948 Ford married Betty Bloomer. His legislative district in Michigan elected him to Congress that same year, the first of 13 times. Ford served a total of 25 years in the House of Represen-tatives, the last eight as majority leader. He served on the commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Former Nebraska congressman Charles Thone, who served in the House of Representatives from 1971 to 1979, worked with Jerry Ford almost daily. Thone, who was Nebraska governor from 1979 to 1983 and now practices law in Lincoln , said Ford didn't know much about agriculture. Thone joked that he became Ford's unofficial farm advisor. “He probably never thought he'd be anything but minority leader,” Thone said. But a strange turn of events would change Ford's course forever.
After Spiro Agnew was charged with tax evasion and resigned as Nixon's vice-president, Ford was appointed his successor in 1973. Nixon fell deeper into the Watergate scandal in 1974, and impeachment grew ever more likely. Eventually Nixon resigned and Ford took over the reins of a nation that was clearly rattled by the controversy. Because he had been appointed as vice-president, he effectively became the first president not elected by a vote of the people.
On Aug. 9, 1974, Ford took the oath of office in the East Room of the White House as America 's 38th president. “I am indebted to no man and only one woman — my dear wife — as I begin this very difficult job,” President Ford said in his first address to the nation. He concluded his speech by saying, “My fellow Americans, our long nightmare is over. God helping me, I will not let you down.”
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| President Gerald Ford was born in his grandfather's home at 3202 Woolworth Ave. in Omaha in 1913. The house burned in 1971. |
Ford's sincere, confident voice helped soothe America 's fears. He took his oath quite seriously, wanting to mend the nation's wounds over the scandal and to place it permanently in the past. This goal led him to quickly pardon Richard Nixon.
Ford had not been involved in Watergate, but the pardon linked him to the scandal, and many felt he had let Nixon off the hook. However, in Ford's mind, he was merely saving the country from a protracted trial and a national spectacle that would accomplish nothing in healing the nation's cynicism in Watergate's wake.
At Ford's side through these difficult days was another Nebraskan, now vice-president Richard Cheney. Cheney was born in Lincoln, and at age 32 became the youngest chief of staff ever.
“He was very well-organized,” Ford said of Cheney. “He's very knowledgeable and he kept me on schedule.” He said Cheney's qualities as chief of staff also prove quite useful in his new role as vice-president.
As president, Ford became more knowledgeable on farm issues. Thone was delighted to visit the White House and the new president during a bill signing on July 8, 1975. Ford signed H.R. 8410, a bill co-sponsored by Thone that strengthened the Packers and Stockyards Act.
Regarding the farm crisis currently gripping farmers and rural communities in Nebraska and across the nation, Ford told us, “The more we can give farmers freedom, the better.” The former president believes in relying on free markets on a global level, he explained. But we still have to protect farmers during times of low prices.
In his bid to win the White House in his own right in 1976, Ford faced a challenge for the Republican nomination from Ronald Reagan. Campaigning in the Cornhusker state, Ford emphasized his Nebraska origin. In his commencement address at the University of Nebraska that May, Ford said, “I have always had a great affection and a tremendous respect for Nebraska and for the people of the Great Plains.”
In the middle of the Nebraska battle was Ford's state campaign chairman, Bill Barrett from Lexington. Barrett was state Republican chairman in the early 1970s before serving 12 years in the Unicameral and another 12 in Congress.
“We were in good shape until just a few weeks before the primaries,” Barrett remembers. “It was a good-natured fight, but we were serious.” Reagan's campaign was invigorated by dynamic workers in the weeks before the primary. And the Nixon pardon didn't set well with many Nebraskans.
Ford noted with optimism at the UNL commencement, “A new buoyancy is emerging in America. For the first time in a long while, there is a growing faith in the future in America.” However, a sluggish economy, high inflation and high unemployment also made an uphill fight for Ford to garner the Republican nomination, let alone election to the presidency.
Omaha's Ward 3, which includes 3202 Woolworth Ave. and the neighborhood surrounding Ford's birthplace, voted 2-1 for Ford over Reagan in the 1976 primaries. But Reagan took the city of Omaha. The challenger also carried Nebraska over the state's native son by nearly 19,000 votes.
“We were shocked,” Barrett recalls. He was equally dismayed when Reagan gathered 18 of Nebraska's 25 Republican delegates to the national convention. But at the convention, “it was a shock to the Reagan people,” Barrett said, when Ford narrowly earned the nomination on the first ballot.
In fact, a remnant of that convention is one of Eli Paul's favorite items in the Ford exhibit he developed. “There's a great, three-sided cardboard ‘Nebraska' sign that was used by the state delegation at the 1976 Republican convention floor, the type of thing that shouldn't have survived, but one loyalist made sure it made it back to Nebraska to be preserved,” Paul said.
Ford and running mate Bob Dole of Kansas went on to carry Nebraska in the general election, garnering 59 percent of the state's votes over Jimmy Carter. Douglas County voted for Ford over Carter by some 31,000 votes. Interest-ingly, Ward 3 voted heavily for Carter in the general election, giving Ford only 40 percent of the votes in the neighborhood where he was born. In spite of winning Nebraska , the Ford ticket went down to defeat by a margin of over 1.6 million popular votes, gaining only 240 electoral votes to Carter's 297. Reagan received one electoral vote.
The elections may not have reflected any particular fondness for Ford in his home city and state, but in 1973 when Ford became vice-president, Omaha businessman James Paxson recognized the importance of preserving Ford's birthplace. The Victorian-style mansion where Ford was born had been destroyed by fire two years earlier.
Paxson bought the lot where the King mansion had stood for $17,000. He donated it to the city of Omaha for development of a birthsite memorial. After Ford became president, Paxson gave another $250,000 to fund the proposed park. Ford was genuinely touched by his old acquaintance's generous actions on his behalf. He was “honored and very pleased” when he found out about the birthsite development.
“Paxson was a model to know and to work with,” said Dale Mathre, an Omaha park planner at the time and now administrator for the city's parks department. “Paxson had a sincere interest to do something to acknowledge Ford's public service.”
Ford said Paxson initiated the entire plan himself. “He kept us abreast of the planning,” Ford said. “We were in contact throughout the development.” Ford said his wife, Betty, helped plan the rose garden, because she is such “a flower girl and loves roses.” The park features multi-level flower gardens and a central fountain and walk-in gazebo with columns resembling the north portico of the White House. A glass display case holds Ford memorabilia, including one brick salvaged from the foundation of the King mansion.
Ford was there for the dedication of the birthsite gardens in 1976, and he returned in 1980 when a portion of the site was dedicated as a memorial rose garden in honor of former First Lady Betty Ford. “It just developed into such a beautiful place,” Ford said.
But the visit of the former president that Paul will always remember came in the fall of 1995, when the Gerald R. Ford Exhibit he had researched was finally dedicated as part of the state historical society's regional conservation center, named for Nebraska's famous son.
“I was very honored to meet him at the dedication,” said Paul, who admitted being quite nervous about the encounter. “I was introduced to him while he was touring the exhibit. I hadn't planned on meeting him, so of course, I had nothing planned to say.” The meeting was impromptu, but during the 90 seconds or so Paul and Ford actually talked, Paul said Ford marveled about an entire exhibit surrounding his meager Nebraska ties.
“I think the exhibit turned out very well,” said Paul. “Gerald Ford was a great example to us, especially from the human interest side of the story. He became a real person to me.”
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| The gazebo and fountain at the Gerald Ford Birthsite Park in Omaha. |
Ford has kept a low profile since his presidency; he has enjoyed his retirement by traveling, lecturing and playing a little golf. “When we left Washington, we moved to California,” he said. “We spend seven months out of the year in southern California and five months in Vail, Colorado.” Ford has loved skiing throughout his life, but knee problems ended his skiing fun a few years ago. “I'm envious when I see people skiing,” Ford admitted.
The Fords enjoy seeing their children, Michael, John, Steven and Susan, and their grandchildren, who visit often. In fact the day we spoke with him, Ford was looking forward to visits from three of their four children that weekend for a benefit golf event for the Betty Ford Center.
“Betty is doing well,” the former president said. “She's busy, happy and healthy, and so am I.” Betty keeps extremely busy, he said, lecturing and working daily at the Betty Ford Center for alcohol and drug rehabilitation, where she is the “hands-on chairman.” Over its 19 years, the center has treated 40,000 patients, Ford said; their recovery rate is an astounding 67 percent.
Ford has trimmed his schedule since minor strokes last July. He still serves on three corporate boards and a number of charity boards, and speaks publicly about once a month, traveling four or five days a month.
Though Ford's ties to Nebraska may be loose, his character fits the state well. The honest, hard-working president could just as well have spent a lifetime here. “With Jerry Ford, what you see is what you get,” says Thone.
“He's a straight arrow,” Barrett adds. “If there hadn't been a man like Jerry Ford as president at that time, it could have torn the country apart. He was the right person for the job.”
Through the generosity of James Paxson in developing the memorial honoring Ford's birthsite, the former president has been linked to Nebraska, not only through birth, but throughout his life. And we Nebraskans seem quite proud to call him one of our own.
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