Ford's 'integrity' recalled on centennial of his birth

Erica Felci | The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- It was just a month into his presidency when Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in an effort to unify a nation divided by Watergate.

But it took years for the country to approve what became the defining moment of Ford's presidency.

Those who were critical of Ford's decision now reflect on it kindly. And a poll released in April shows Ford's approval rating is 13 points higher than it averaged while he was in office.

But Ford couldn't have known that in 1977, when he and former first lady Betty Ford retreated to the Palm Springs area after a bruising campaign that cost them the White House.

In the three decades he called the Coachella Valley home, Ford sought to establish a different legacy.

On Sunday — what would have been Ford's 100th birthday — the country will reflect on a president who brought integrity to the White House, and the desert will remember a neighbor who cared about giving back to his community.

Ford devoted time and money to more than two dozen of the area's charitable organizations, including the Betty Ford Center, a world-renowned addiction treatment center that his wife co-founded in Rancho Mirage.

Ford is also credited with helping save the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert.

And while financial contributions to groups to such as Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage were never fully disclosed, officials confirmed they were generous and multiplied by Ford's friends who also gave.

The connection to the Fords became so great that, when he died in 2006, billboards mourned the loss of "Gerald 'Our' Ford."

"When people write history books, I want them to talk about Jerry Ford and I want them to talk about Jerry Ford like they do about Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln," Ford's daughter, Susan Ford Bales, told The Desert Sun.

"I want him to be remembered as a great man for what he did for this country. The decisions he chose for the country instead of choosing to be re-elected.

"We don't want to be forgotten."

Events marking Ford's centennial celebration have been occurring throughout the year.

In May, students at Gerald Ford Elementary School in Indian Wells attended a presentation on Operation Babylift, in which thousands of children were evacuated at the end of the Vietnam War.

That same month, the presidential museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., launched a "Growing Up Grand" exhibit.

Bales said some of the items on display — including her father's babybook — had been in storage in the desert.

On Sunday, family members will lay a wreath sent from President Barack Obama at the Grand Rapids museum, where both Fords are buried.

Fading ties

Since their deaths — Betty Ford died in July 2011 — the Ford family's connections to the valley have slowly diminished.

The Betty Ford Center, which underwent leadership changes amid an internal rift over its future mission, no longer has a member of the family on its executive board.

Bales, her three brothers and their families all live in other parts of the country. Their parents' Thunderbird Estates home and some belongings sold for $1.675 million in March 2012.

But though no local celebrations have been planned for Sunday, many say Ford will always be remembered for his impact on the community.

"To the Fords, the Coachella Valley was never a second home. Every day they were here, it was home — a place to savor, full of cherished friends and a sense of community from which they derived enormous pleasure," Ford's chief-of-staff, Penny Circle, told The Desert Sun via email.

"It was only natural for them to want to give something back."

Ford's dedication to the McCallum Theatre was one of the reasons Ted Giatas said he decided to take the CEO job in 1999, when the Palm Desert venue was struggling financially.

"It was not the ideal job to go to, but I thought there were a lot of good people on the board," Giatas said.

"He was always astute, a very intelligent man. He was someone to be admired. He was a man of high integrity and honesty."

Ford regularly attended board meetings — taking particular interest in the theater's finances — and would call Giatas a couple times each month to discuss operations.

Ford and Betty, a former dancer with the Martha Graham Company, were particularly keen in ensuring McCallum offered classical music and dance productions.

Those shows tended to lose money, Giatas said.

Still, in 2001, when McCallum leaders requested a $5 million grant from the city of Palm Desert, Ford took a lead role in presenting the theater's position to council members.

And city officials echoed Ford's position on dance and classical music offerings.

"It was really the turnaround for the McCallum," Giatas said. "I certainly don't think the theater would have obtained what it has nationally and enjoys today (without that support."

The Fords were also big supporters of Eisenhower Medical Center, the Rancho Mirage hospital that shares a campus with the Betty Ford Center.

Of all his charities, Circle said "it will surprise no one that the Betty Ford Center was closest to his heart, just like its namesake."

Michael Landes, president of the Eisenhower Medical Center Foundation, said that commitment extended to the rest of the hospital, too.

In the early 2000s, as the Rancho Mirage facility launched a capital campaign, Landes said the Fords made a "significant commitment for our campaign" and spurred additional donations by advocating the hospital's mission to influential friends.

"President Ford was very good with sharing this with people in his own way," Landes said.

"It's a tribute to their commitment to what they think and what they knew was so important to our entire community: Having Eisenhower remain a place of excellence."

High honors

Ford's commitment to his country was recognized in 1999, when President Bill Clinton presented him the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

That same year, Gerald and Betty Ford received the Congressional Gold Medal for "dedicated public service and outstanding humanitarian contributions."

It is the highest honor Congress can give.

Then-Rep. Vernon Ehlers, a Michigan Republican, said at the time that Ford had a "well-earned reputation for personal integrity and principled leadership."

"You and Mrs. Ford healed a nation in torment," he was quoted as saying.

But Ford wasn't always viewed that way.

Ford — a veteran congressman from Michigan who was appointed vice president in December 1973 — assumed the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974, after the embattled Nixon resigned.

After being pestered with questions about Nixon and Watergate during his first news conference as a world leader, Ford realized he "had to get the monkey off my back."

"No other issue could compete with the drama of a former president trying to stay out of jail. It would be virtually impossible for me to direct public attention to anything else," Ford later wrote in his autobiography, "A Time to Heal."

"America needed recovery, not revenge. The hate had to be drained and the healing begun."

Nixon received a "full, free and absolute pardon" for all "offenses against the Untied States" on Sept. 8, 1974 — and critics quickly blasted Ford for cheating the country out of a truth-finding trial.

Author and syndicated columnist Richard Reeves, who penned "A Ford, not a Lincoln," said he was "more critical of him than I now think he deserved."

"Many of us who were critical of him after Watergate and the pardon of Nixon now realize, or at least I do, that what he did -- pardoning Nixon — was the right thing to do," Reeves told The Desert Sun.

At the time, in 1975, Reeves said he didn't believe Ford's argument that the country would get hung up on a Nixon criminal trial and the inevitable civil suits that would have come out of it.

Historians generally agree that issuing the pardon contributed to Ford's 1976 election loss to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

But in the mid-1990s, when former football great O.J. Simpson was on trial for the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, Reeves said it became clear what Ford was trying to avoid.

"I realized Ford was right," Reeves said. "If the country could come to a halt over O.J. Simpson, they could certainly come to a halt over Nixon."

Over the years, others also have come to have a greater appreciation for Ford.

A Gallup poll released in April showed Ford's retrospective job approval rating averages at 60 percent. That's 13 percentage points higher than the 47 percent he averaged while in office.

"I think he's going to be remembered the way he wanted to be remembered: As a guy who held the country together when it looked as if the center may not hold," Reeves said.