A Simple, Heartfelt Funeral for Ford

By Tim Jones, Chicago Tribune

Jan. 4–GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The hometown that nurtured, voted for and never forgot Gerald Ford laid him to rest Wednesday after a simple but heartfelt funeral and an extraordinary display of public affection.

This was the final homecoming for the nation’s 38th president, who on a day of brilliant sunshine and low temperatures was hailed as a citizen, public servant and, as a young congressman, a most unusual Washington politician–one who did not see a future president whenever he looked in the mirror.

“He put us on the right path when the way ahead was uncertain,” said an emotional Donald Rumsfeld, who sniffled every few seconds as he struggled through his 12-minute eulogy. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, also served in the Ford administration.

Wednesday’s ceremonies marked the official end of national mourning that started in California, moved to Washington and concluded in the western Michigan city where Ford grew up and practiced law and which he later represented in Congress. This stop, lasting a little more than 24 hours, packed an emotional wallop.

While the 80-minute funeral at Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids was dominated by personal friends and dignitaries, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Jimmy Carter, golf legend Jack Nicklaus and Rumsfeld, the goodbye was led by tens of thousands of Grand Rapids and Michigan residents who lined the streets and filed through the Gerald R. Ford Museum to pay their respects.

Ford helped plan his own funeral and wanted it to be an unpretentious reflection of his life. For all of the orchestration, there was no anticipating the throng of people who started showing up before Ford’s casket arrived Tuesday afternoon.

About 57,000 people, many of whom waited outside for up to eight hours in the overnight chill, walked through the museum during the 17 hours Ford’s body lay in state. The lines never stopped until authorities cut them off late Wednesday morning, about two hours before the funeral.

“His last night was anything but lonely,” Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian and former director of the Ford Museum, in downtown Grand Rapids, said in his eulogy.

Crowds of people, including a little girl with long red hair holding a small American flag as she leaned over a security fence, stood along city streets as the motorcade slowly drove the 6 miles between the museum and the church, and then back. The drapes in the hearse were open, allowing those gathered to catch a glimpse of the flag-draped casket.

People who had never seen Ford showed up hours in advance, bundling children in blankets and effectively camping out along the funeral route.

At Grace Episcopal, 88-year-old former First Lady Betty Ford, again accompanied by her daughter and three sons, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief as Rumsfeld, Carter and Smith eulogized the ex-president, often poignantly. Ford, who died Dec. 26 at age 93, was a president who was not afraid to laugh at himself, Smith said.

For all of the solemnity of the event, Ford’s return to the city he left more than 50 years ago was not a regal affair. It was more Truman-esque in tone, in keeping with the plain-spoken tendencies of Ford, who represented this area in Congress for 25 years before assuming the vice presidency in 1973. He became president the next year.

Ford, like former President Harry Truman when he died, has enjoyed a rehabilitation of his reputation. In the weeklong series of funerals and remembrances, Ford’s controversial pardon of former President Richard Nixon in 1974, which probably cost him his bid for election two years later, has been praised as a nation-healing gesture.

“He was better at statesmanship than salesmanship,” Smith observed, underscoring a recurring theme heard on the streets in Grand Rapids and even echoed in the funeral service–that national politics has taken a turn for the worse.

Carter, a Democrat who defeated Ford in 1976, recalled the “intense personal friendship” he and his wife, Rosalynn, shared with the Fords.

“I want to thank my predecessor for all he did to heal our land,” Carter said in his eulogy, as Rosalynn Carter cried. That was also the first remark Carter made in his inaugural address in 1977.

Carter said that when the two couples traveled together, he always regretted reaching their destination because it meant the end of the time they enjoyed with each other.

As the sun began to set, a gravesite service outside the museum featured a Marine Corps choir, a 21-gun salute and a thundering 21-aircraft flyover that shook windows in the downtown area.

After the flag that had draped Ford’s casket was folded, Cheney, a former chief of staff for Ford, presented it to Betty Ford. She gently hugged it.

WORDS OF TRIBUTE:

Excerpts of eulogies made at former President Gerald Ford’s funeral Wednesday:

Ex-President Jimmy Carter

Jerry never came to the Washington area without being invited to have lunch with me at the White House. We always cherished those memories of, now, perhaps, a long-lost bipartisan relationship.

As president, I relished his sound advice and he often, although I must say, reluctantly, departed from the prevailing opinion of his political party to give me support on some of my most difficult challenges.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

There’s an old saying in Washington that every member of the United States Congress looks in the mirror and sees a future president. Well, Jerry Ford was different. I suspect that when he looked in the mirror, even after he became president, he saw a citizen and a public servant.

Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith

As the least self-dramatizing of men, President Ford used to joke that he was charismatically challenged. Well, whatever he may have lacked in charisma, he more than made up for in character.

— Associated Press

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