27 December
2006 Chatmag News.
President Ford
Dead.
Gerald Ford, the
38th President of The United States, died Tuesday. Ford was the only unelected
President, taking the office after the resignation of President Nixon in
1974.
Ford served 895
days in office, and was succeeded by Jimmy Carter in 1977.
From Wikipedia:
(1974–1977) President
of the United States. Ford also served as the 40th (1973–1974) Vice President.
He was the first person appointed to the Vice-Presidency under the terms
of the 25th Amendment, and upon succession to the presidency became the
first (and to date, only) president in U.S. history to fill that office
without having been elected either President or Vice-President. He was
also the longest-lived United States president ever, having surpassed Ronald
Reagan's record on November 12, 2006.
Ford was born
in Omaha, Nebraska. He was originally named Leslie Lynch King, Jr., after
his biological father. His parents divorced when he was less than a year
old, and when his mother remarried, he was given the name of his step-father,
Gerald Rudolff Ford. He later changed the spelling of the middle name.
Ford obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, where
he was a football star. He went on to obtain a law degree from Yale University
before serving in the United States Navy during World War II. Returning
from the war a confirmed "internationalist", Republican Ford defeated the
incumbent in the party primary and was elected to the United States House
of Representatives in 1948, representing the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.
He was elected House Minority Leader in 1963 and served in the House until
1973. When Spiro Agnew resigned, Ford was appointed Vice President of the
United States at the height of the Watergate scandal, which eventually
led to Richard Nixon's resignation.
The Ford administration
saw the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, the execution of the
Helsinki Accords, and the continuing specter of inflation and recession.
Faced with an overwhelmingly Democratic majority in Congress, the administration
was hampered in its ability to pass major legislation, and Ford's vetoes
were frequently overridden. Ford was criticized by many for granting a
pre-emptive pardon to Nixon, and was subsequently defeated by Democrat
Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election.
--Chatmag News
Staff--
External Link:
Chatmag's
Discussion Forum. Gerald Ford.
