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US former president Gerald Ford dead at 93
By Rob Woollard
AFP
LOS ANGELES
Petroleumworld.com 12 28 06Former president Gerald Ford, who sought to heal the United States after the trauma of the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon from office in 1974, died late Tuesday at the age of 93.
Flags flew at half mast and tributes poured in for the unassuming politician who became the 38th US President without winning a national election, closing the book on Watergate with a controversial pardon of Nixon.
President George W. Bush hailed Ford's "strong and steady" leadership from 1974 to 1977 during a "period of great division and turmoil" as trust in the government nosedived following the scandal-tainted Nixon years.
"For a nation that needed healing ... Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most," Bush said in remarks televised across the nation Wednesday.
Ford's wife of 58 years, Betty, said in a brief statement that her husband, who became the longest living US president last month, had lived a life filled by "God, family and his country."
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," the former first lady said. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
The former president's family said Ford died peacefully at 6:45 pm (0345 GMT Wednesday) at his Rancho Mirage home. No cause of death was given.
Funeral services are to be held in Washington D.C. and Grand Rapids, Michigan -- a district he represented for years in the US Congress -- with details to be announced at a briefing Wednesday.
Flags on official buildings across the United States were to be flown at half-mast and military guns boomed out single shell salutes in tribute to Ford, who was perhaps best known for a single act in the first weeks of his presidency, when he outraged many Americans by issuing the disgraced Nixon "a full, free and absolute pardon" on September 8, 1974.
That decision -- which saved Nixon from prosecution and possibly time in prison -- overshadowed Ford's presidency and would be debated for years.
In August 1999, however, Ford received the Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian award for his post-Watergate efforts in helping to knit the country together.
Ford will be remembered "as someone who scored confidence in the presidency when it was in doubt," said presidential scholar Michael Beschloss, speaking Wednesday on NBC television.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who was chief of staff in Ford's White House, said Ford had assumed office during the "the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War."
By the time he left office White House "he had restored public trust in the presidency, and the nation once again looked to the future with confidence and faith," Cheney said.
Ford served as president after Nixon quit the White House in shame in August 1974, after exposure of a plot to spy on opponents following a bungled break-in at the Democratic party offices in the Watergate building in the US capital.
The longtime Republican lost the 1976 election campaign to Democrat Jimmy Carter, a defeat historians have attributed to his decision to pardon Nixon.An amiable and respected Republican representative from Michigan with a reputation for loyalty, Ford became vice president in 1973 replacing Spiro Agnew, who battled charges of conspiracy, extortion and bribery.
Even then, it was clear Nixon himself could be forced out by the cover-up over the Watergate break-in.
Once Nixon became the only US president ever to resign office on August 8, 1974, Ford told the nation when he took the oath of office the following day that he faced the task of healing "the internal wounds of Watergate."
"Our long national nightmare is over," he said. "Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men."
Before Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated him in the 1976 election, Ford cut government spending to fight inflation, recession and unemployment stemming from a sharp rise in oil prices.
Ford was president in April 1975 when the last US troops, diplomats and Vietnamese supporters were flown in helicopters from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon to US naval ships, marking the end of the US intervention in Vietnam.
Twice in 1975, assassins tried to kill Ford. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, was arrested for pointing a loaded pistol at him while he was in Florida.
Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a would-be revolutionary, tried to shoot him in California. Both attackers are serving life sentences.
AFP 27 1638 GMT 12 06
Copyright© 2001 AFP All Rights Reserved.
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