Matt Vande Bunte
on April 16, 2011 at 6:00 AM, updated April 16, 2011 at 9:12 AM

 AP File PhotoU.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger, right, administers the oath of office to Gerald R. Ford as the 38th President of the United States in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 9, 1974. Betty Ford holds the Bible at center.

After his father took the presidential oath, Steven Ford remembers the family going back to its Virginia home for a few days because the Nixon clan leaving the White House had some packing to do.

His mother stood over the kitchen stove the first night saying “‘Jerry, something’s wrong. You just became president of the United States, and I’m still cooking,’” Ford said, showing a photograph of a post-oath dinner.

“The neighbors are going ‘Great new government job, Jerry,’” he said. “It was a very unique time in American history.

“This country was in shambles and here you had a man walking in who had not been elected by the American people. Ten months earlier, my dad was a congressman from Grand Rapids.”

The youngest son of the late Gerald R. Ford shared anecdotes both silly and sober Friday during a keynote speech to the Michigan Dental Association’s annual meeting at DeVos Place, across the river from the museum that honors his father’s presidency.

With then-Vice President Spiro Agnew resigning in 1973, Ford said his father’s name was on a short list of prospective replacements. And, “to be honest with you,” he said, “we thought Dad’s name was at the bottom of that list.”

But a White House phone call rang the private line in the Ford home one night. President Nixon’s Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, suggested that Betty Ford join her husband on the call, but the private line had only one phone.

Ford remembers his dad saying “‘Mr. President, if you could just call back on the other line, Betty could get on.’ And he hangs up.

“I’ve gotta be honest. It just didn’t feel like a career move to me. We sat there for five minutes. Finally, (Nixon) calls back on the other line.”
Ford showed a famous photo of Nixon bidding farewell at the door of a helicopter outside the White House, as he stood 25 feet away and his dad prepared to become president.

“This was a constitutional crisis,” Ford said. “Most countries, when you have that kind of transference of power, there’s troops in the streets. But not in America.”

• Citing high unemployment, rising inflation, falling stocks, the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that pushed out Nixon, Ford called the months before his father took office “a terrible time in American history.” It was an era his father helped heal by pardoning Nixon, he said.

“It cost him an election, but he thought it was important to pardon Nixon to get him out of the way so the Congress and the president could deal with the war, deal with inflation, deal with the economy,” Ford said. “He was thinking long-term, not short-term.”

• Ford said his mother’s battle with drinking “totally changed the face of alcoholism in this country” by having a former first lady raise her hand and admit her disease. He recalls his father taking the lead on a family intervention to get help for Betty Ford.

“I’ll never forget the strength and kindness and love he showed my mom,” said Ford, himself a recovering alcoholic. “That’s, to me, what a real leader is. It starts in the family. I’ll never be able to thank him enough for what he did.”

• Showing a photo of his father as an infant — born Leslie King, Jr. — Ford told how his grandmother and the baby fled his biological grandfather’s physical abuse. They ended up in Grand Rapids, where Ford’s grandmother remarried and the boy’s name changed.

“It proved to me that it’s love, not blood, that raises kids,” Ford said. “Dad lived his life in a way that it was his character, not his circumstances, that dictated what his life looked like.”

QUICK QUIPS
Steven Ford spoke Friday at the Michigan Dental Association’s annual meeting, which concludes Saturday at DeVos Place

• Ford showed a family photo from the day after his father lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. In the background is a youthful, but familiar-looking Dick Cheney, his face snarled with a scowl. “He had that warm friendly smile back then, too. Some things never change.”

• Ford, an actor, showed clips from several of his movies including “Contact,” “Transformers,” “Starship Troopers” and “Eraser.” Then he told the crowd that he really wanted to work with teeth because his childhood orthodontist “drove a Corvette and he had three really cute technicians.” But acting also has its perks, he said. “Can you believe? They paid me to kiss Meg Ryan,” referring to the movie, “When Harry Met Sally.”

• Ford thanked Grand Rapids for turning out en masse four years ago when his father died. Some people waited in line for hours, outside in the cold, to walk by the late president’s casket. “Our family was so touched. It just brought tears to (my mother’s) eyes.”