Happy birthday to Gerald Ford (7/14)!

[Terabith]

Happy birthday to Gerald Ford (7/14).

 

Gerald Ford is mostly known for being played by Chevy Chase on “Saturday Night Live” and falling down a lot. But that’s really not fair.

 

First of all, he was a male model and even owned a modeling agency. He was on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

 

He was also a super elite athlete. He played football in college, and he had the opportunity to play for the NFL for either the Detroit Lions or the Green Bay Packers. He turned them down because he wanted to go to law school. Yale offered him the job of boxing and football coach even though he had never boxed in his life. At first Yale wouldn’t let him take classes full time because of his coaching duties, but eventually they relented and Ford wound up in the top third of his class.

 

He was a hero in World War Two, serving in the Pacific.

 

He was the only president who was never elected either president or vice president. He was appointed vice president by Nixon after Spiro Agnew pleaded guilty to tax evasion, and he became president when Nixon resigned due to Watergate.

 

His wife, Betty Ford, had been First Lady for only two months when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her openness about the disease was shocking, and it was the first time that the term breast cancer was spoken about openly on the news rather than being whispered about.

 

He survived two assassination attempts in seventeen days, both by women, one of whom was a follower of Charles Manson.

 

Let’s just say Gerald Ford is not someone we would want to fight in an alley at night.

 

 

 

[Beth S]

Great summary of Gerald Ford!  Thank you @Terabith

[Terabith]

Bumping a few days late.