Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician. He served as the 38th president of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977. Ford also served as vice president from December 1973 to August 1974. He is the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office by the Electoral College. His 895-day-long presidency is the shortest in U.S. history for any president who did not die in office.
About Gerald Ford in brief
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician. He served as the 38th president of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977. Ford also served as vice president from December 1973 to August 1974. He is the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office by the Electoral College. His 895-day-long presidency is the shortest in U.S. history for any president who did not die in office. As president, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move toward détente in the Cold War. In the Republican presidential primary campaign of 1976, Ford defeated former California Governor Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. He narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic challenger, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. In retirement, Ford set aside the enmity he had felt towards Carter following the 1976 election, and the two former presidents developed a close friendship. Ford died at home on December 26, 2006, after experiencing a series of health problems, and was buried at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. He was the son of Dorothy Ayer Gardner and Leslie Lynch King Sr. His father was a son of prominent banker Charles Henry King and Martha Alicia King. Ford later said that his biological father had a history of hitting his mother. He also had three half-brothers from his mother’s second marriage: Thomas Gardner, Richard Addison Ford, and James Francis Ford. They never formally changed his name to Gerald Rudff Ford Jr.; he also used a more conventional spelling of his middle name, “Dick” He was a family-owned paint and varnish company, and did not formally change his name until December 3, 1935; he was never formally adopted as a result of his father’s abuse of his daughter, Leslie King, in the 1920s and ’30s.
Ford served in the U. S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946; he left as a lieutenant commander. In 1949, Ford began his political career in Michigan’s 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for 25 years, the final nine of them as the House Minority Leader. In December 1973, two months after the resignation of Spiro Agnew, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment by President Richard Nixon. After the subsequent resignation of President Nixon in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency. Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. During Ford’s presidency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the President. In one of his most controversial acts, he granted a presidential pardon to President Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. In a biography of Ford, James M. Cannon, a member of the Ford administration, wrote that the separation and divorce of Ford’s parents were sparked when, a few days after Ford’s birth,. Leslie King took a butcher knife and threatened to kill his wife, his infant son, and Ford’s nursemaid.
You want to know more about Gerald Ford?
This page is based on the article Gerald Ford published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
