Full disclosure and confession: in one of my first-ever editorials, written in 1976 for the Ottawa Hills High School Arrowhead, I urged my readers to vote for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.
I came of age politically during Watergate. I followed it very closely. I still remember getting the news of the Saturday Night Massacre and gleefully relaying it to my parents' traditional Republican friends, who were over at our house for a dinner party that night; when I saw their stunned expressions, I knew that Nixon had just signed his own political death-warrant. I also recall the night Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew. I ran the scoreboard for the Ottawa Hills football team, and I'd brought a small black-and-white TV into the press box so I could keep an eye on things. I put the announcer's mike up to the TV speaker and broadcast the news to the football crowd, much to the irritation of the coach.
Ford figured prominently in my political maturation. I thought he was a good man, and even if I didn't agree with some of his policies, I thought he was honest and genuine. For me, this paragraph in the CNN story about his death yesterday sums it all up:
Gerald Ford was the unlikeliest of presidents, a man brought to power by unprecedented circumstances without seeking the office, at a time when Americans -- reeling from the Watergate scandal -- were disillusioned and weary.
Rest in peace.
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