Gerald Ford carved out a niche for himself in Washington, D.C. He was a kind man, a well-respected man and a loyal man.

Without ever being elected, he served as vice president and president. Because of his character, which was beyond reproach, he was the logical fill-in for two men whose actions were easy to reproach.

He was chosen to replace Spiro Agnew as vice president in 1973 when Agnew admitted to income tax evasion. President Richard Nixon did this using the 25th amendment for the first and only time in its history. Ford officially became the vice president on Dec. 6, 1973.

About eight months later, Ford replaced Nixon as president after Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. He became president on Aug. 9, 1974.

He was the 40th vice president and the 38th president.

In the desert, Ford is regarded as one of our own. Instead of "Gerald R. Ford," billboards around town read "Gerald Our Ford" after his death on the day after Christmas 2006.

Gerald and his wife, Betty, loved the desert as much as the desert loved them.

The philanthropic duo moved to the desert days after his presidential tenure came to an end and never left, spending their twilight years in a home built for them at Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage.

There's Gerald Ford Drive winding its way through the desert. There's Gerald Ford Elementary School in Indian Wells. The Fords became and are still all but synonymous with the desert.

They enjoyed the retirement life and, though they stepped out for the occasional event, kept to themselves for the most part. He was a fixture at the Bob Hope Classic, she led the charge to create the famous and life-changing recovery and rehab center the Betty Ford Clinic.

The closest thing to a scandal in the desert involving Ford was his frequent errant tee shots that had the gallery ducking for cover on more than one occasion at the Bob Hope Classic.

"I can tell I'm getting better at golf because I'm hitting fewer spectators," Ford once quipped, showing the sense of humor that was tested during his presidency but flourished after the job was done.

Almost everyone that knew Jerry and Betty has nothing but kind words to say about them. They lived a life of laughter and love and free from scandal.

That's why it was such a surprise when in the winter of 1989, Gerald Ford found himself in the back of a police car in La Quinta.

A police car pulled up to the La Quinta Hotel Golf and Tennis Club on Friday, Jan. 20, 1989. In the back was Gerald Ford.

Across the country in Washington, D.C., most Republican dignitaries were on hand for the inauguration of president elect-George H.W. Bush, which would happen that Monday, but here in the desert it was the former president sitting in the back of a California Highway Patrol cruiser.

As a crowd started to look on, the policeman stepped out from behind the wheel, took Ford out of the back of the car and threw him in handcuffs.

And the gag was revealed. It was not a policeman at all. It was Clint Eastwood dressed as Dirty Harry.

He was delivering Ford to the hotel for a roast. Inside the ballroom, with about 1,200 people in attendance, Ford was feted. He sat at the dais with Eastwood, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, golfer Chi-Chi Rodriguez and Ford's son Steven. Ford's administrative assistant Bob Barrett was the master of ceremonies. The whole night was a benefit for the Betty Ford Center. Other famous friends were in attendance such as Telly Savalas and Jamie Farr.

In true roast form, comedians and friends and politicians took turns poking fun at the former president. Hot topics were Ford's struggles on the golf course, the fact that everyone there didn't get an invite to the inauguration, and, of course, his much lampooned stumble down the steps of Air Force One in Salzburg, Austria in 1975.

Some of the jibes:

Eastwood: "I don't know any other president who is just a regular guy, but Ford sure is."

Chi-Chi Rodriguez: "I was (Ford's) first golf teacher. I told him 'You can tell people we're friends, just don't tell them I'm your golf pro.'"

Rumsfeld: "We want to thank you, Ford, for marrying so far above yourself."

As is customary, Ford got the final word and, though not known as a guy who oozes charisma, he did an excellent job of returning fire.

Such zingers as:

"Twelve years ago today Betty and I left the White House and I said 'They won't have Jerry Ford to kick around anymore.' How wrong I was."

"I haven't felt this good since I fell down an airport ramp."

"Bob Hope was scheduled to be here tonight, but he couldn't make it. You remember Bob Hope: The Dan Quayle of the senior set."

It was a fun night and raised a lot of money (each seat was between $250 and $1,000) for the Betty Ford Center, but it also was classic Ford.

Not born with an oversized funny bone, Ford developed a comfortableness with the art of humor over the years. He didn't mind being the butt of jokes. He had to develop a thick skin, because as they say "timing is everything" in comedy, and Ford was the president at a particularly relevant time in the world of comedy.

Ford was only president for two and a half years, but his term coincided with the debut of NBC's Saturday Night — now known as Saturday Night Live, a show that revels in making fun of presidents.

That was true even back then and that meant Ford was the original SNL punching bag. The thing they latched onto with Ford was his well-known stumble down the staircase of Air Force One.

SNL famously had Chevy Chase, in no way made up to look like Gerald Ford, stumble around the oval office, tripping over podiums, papers flying, taking down a whole Christmas tree, etc. No actual written skit involved, usually just one long prat fall.

Because he was the first, it was up to Ford to establish the baseline for how presidents would react to being skewered on Saturday Night Live. Be part of the fun or a stick in the mud. He opted to take the high road.

Ford took the depictions of him in stride, although he admitted that it did pain him, a college football star at Michigan and widely believed to be the most athletic president, to be depicted as a Grade A stumblebum.

“The comic representations of me by Chevy Chase and others were sometimes hard for me and my family to take. Though it was essential to grin and bear it, it could and did hurt,” Ford said in a book he would later publish.

He even worked with the show as it became more popular. He allowed producer Lorne Michaels to come to the Oval Office and shoot him saying "Live From New York, It's Saturday Night" and "I'm Gerald Ford and You're Not." The latter was a counter-punch to Chevy Chase's familiar line "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not" that Chase used during Weekend Update.

In the book "Live From New York," Michaels recounted that meeting, and how Ford was an unusual man in that he was happy to go along with the humor, even if he didn't always get the joke.

"I suddenly find myself in the Oval Office, and it's just me, the president, and this little crew. There's security too. We'd done two or three takes, and to relax him, I said to him 'Mr. President, if this works out, who knows where it will lead?' Which was completely lost on him," Michaels said.

Ford also got the Simpsons treatment in 1996 in an episode called "Two Bad Neighbors" when he and Betty move into the house across the street from Homer and company. He and Homer bond over their mutual love for football, nachos and beer. Of course, there is a trip over the curb involved.

Instead of shying away from the relentless ribbing a president receives, Ford leaned into it. In 1987, he published a book called "Humor and the Presidency."

The book includes anecdotes relating to presidents before Ford and their own humor or the humor thrust upon them. It includes political cartoons, biting satire from throughout the years and Ford's own musings.

The concepts in the book seemed fluffy at the time, but in the context of the political climate of 2017, they are downright profound.

While the current president prefers to be at war with Saturday Night Live and the other late-night shows, quickly firing off tweets not with a witty comeback but with hate-fire and brimstone, Ford chose the complete opposite route.

Ford believed using humor was a useful tool for a president, both in coping with the day-to-day stresses, but also in establishing a working relationship with the media and with the country. "When the president is relaxed, the country is relaxed."

In the book, humor is described as "indispensable to democracy ... the ingredient lacking in all the dictatorships."

Ford was an unusual champion of humor, something that was not obvious during his early days in the spotlight. His public persona as a politician was that of a man without much personality. But as he grew older and wiser, he figured out what a valuable part of life humor could be for any man, especially the president. He was never a life-of-the-party joke machine, but was OK being the straight man, or even the butt of the joke throughout his life.

And what a life he lived. It was full of moments that would make Forrest Gump feel inadequate. He was a Division I college football player at University of Michigan. A boxer at Yale. He saw action as a Navy man. He was vice president and president without winning an election. He survived not one, but two assassination attempts.

Even in the failing health of his final days, Ford still used his now-carefully honed wit to make people smile.

Before his death in late 2006, Ford wrote an open letter to the participants in the 2007 version of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. It was his last known public writing.

He said the reason he hadn't been seen in public much lately is that he's been working on his golf game. "I'm practicing to try to make it on the Senior, Senior Champions PGA Tour," he said at age 93, the longest living U.S. president of all time as of October 2017.

From SNL to his book to the roast in La Quinta to his golf course one-liners, Ford found subtle ways to inject humor into his life and the lives of those around him. It was important to him.

But being a funny guy wasn't something that came naturally to him, it was just something he, not unlike that tarmac in Austria, stumbled into.