Gerald Ford

**Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.** (born **Leslie Lynch King, Jr.**; July 14, 1913 — December 26, 2006) was an American politician who had served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. Before becoming president, he was the 40th vice president from 1973 to 1974 under Richard Nixon. As a member of the Republican Party, he was also a member of the House of Representatives from 1949 to 1973, becoming its minority leader in 1965. He is the only president who elected to neither office as vice president or president.

Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He attended the University of Michigan and Yale Law School. After Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and served from 1942 to 1946.

Ford began his career in politics in 1949 as the U.S. Representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district. In 1965, he became the House Minority Leader. In December 1973, he became the vice president of the United States to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two months warlier. That made Ford the first person to become vice president due to the 25th Amendment. In August 1974, Ford became president after Richard Nixon resigned.

As president, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which were to ease tensions between the Western world and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1975, South Vietnam collapsed after it was invaded by North Vietnam. The event ended US participation in the Vietnam War.

Domestically, Ford had to work with economic downturn. Growing inflation and a recession happened during his presidency. Ford also gave a presidential pardon to Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. The pardon was one of his most controversial actions as president. Foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the larger role that Congress began to play and by its restraining of presidential powers.

In 1976, Ford ran for reelection and defeated former California Governor Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. He narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic candidate, the former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

After his presidency ended in 1977, Ford remained active in the Republican Party. However, his views on some social issues caused disagreement with conservative members of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s, and he was regarded as a moderate. He is ranked average in presidential opinion polls.

Ford died at home on December 26, 2006, after he had faced a series of health problems, at the age of 93.

## Early life
He was born on July 14, 1913, at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his parents lived with his paternal grandparents. His birth name was Leslie Lynch King, Jr. His mother was Dorothy Ayer Gardner, and his father was Leslie Lynch King, Sr., a wool trader and son of prominent banker Charles Henry King and Martha Alicia King (born Porter). Dorothy separated from King just 16 days after her son's birth. She took her son with her to the Oak Park, Illinois, where her sister, Tannisse, and brother-in-law, Clarence Haskins James, lived. Then, she moved to the home of her parents, Levi Addison Gardner and Adele Augusta Ayer, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dorothy and King divorced in December 1913; she got full custody of her son. Ford's paternal grandfather, Charles Henry King, paid child support until shortly before his death in 1930.

Ford later said that his biological father had a history of hitting his mother. James M. Cannon, a member of the Ford administration, wrote in a Ford biography that the Kings' separation and divorce were  when, a few days after Ford's birth, Leslie King  Dorothy with a butcher knife and threatened to kill her, Ford, and his nursemaid. Ford later told confidantes that his father had first hit his mother on their honeymoon for smiling at another man.

After two and a half years with her parents, on February 1, 1916, Dorothy married Gerald Rudolff Ford, a salesman in a family-owned paint and varnish company. They then called her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr*.* The future president was never formally adopted, however, and he did not legally change his name until December 3, 1935; he also used a more conventional spelling of his middle name. He was raised in Grand Rapids with his three half brothers from his mother's second marriage: Thomas Gardner Ford (1918–1995), Richard Addison Ford (born 1924), and James Francis Ford (1927–2001).

Ford also had three half-siblings from his father's second marriage: Marjorie King (1921–1993), Leslie Henry King (1923–1976), and Patricia Jane King (born 1925). They never saw one another as children, and he did not know them at all. Ford was not aware of his biological father until he was 17, when his parents told him about the  of his birth. That year, his father, Leslie King, whom Ford described as a "carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son," approached Ford while he was waiting tables in a Grand Rapids restaurant.

Ford said, "My stepfather was a magnificent person and my mother equally wonderful. So I couldn't have written a better prescription for a superb family upbringing."
### Scouting and athletics
 Fred Green at far left holding a hat.]]
n football player, 1933]]
Ford was involved in the Boy Scouts of America and earned that program's highest rank, the Eagle Scout. In his later years, Ford received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in May 1970 and Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He is the only U.S. president who is an Eagle Scout. On March 22, 2019, Jimmy Carter gained the distinction of being the nation's longest-lived president.

## References 
## Other websites 
* White House biography about Ford.