Word: forde
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...stepfather's paint company weathered the Depression without serious deprivations, and Ford was a happy, popular teenager and a standout on his high school football team. In 1931 he enrolled at the University of Michigan on a full athletic scholarship. He majored in economics, played center on the Big Ten varsity squad and during his senior year was chosen to participate in the Shrine College All-Star game...
...returned to Grand Rapids to restart his law firm and pursue his interest in politics. His stepfather was active in local Republican affairs, and in 1948 Ford plunged in. He challenged the local incumbent Representative, Bertel Jonkman, in the G.O.P. primary and won, and then went on to win the general election, thanks in part to the support of Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Ford's experiences in the war had turned him away from Midwestern Republican isolationism, which Vandenberg opposed as well. Three weeks before after the election, Ford, in a quiet ceremony, married Betty Warren, an attractive divorc?e...
...Ford spent the next 25 years in the House, maintaining his seat through careful attention to his constituents back home and rising in rank through seniority and his amiable relations with colleagues in both parties. He became known as an "Eisenhower Republican," advocating strong U.S. involvement abroad and governmental fiscal prudence at home. After the Democrats' landslide victory in 1964, Ford was elected House minority leader. "It wasn't as though everybody was wildly enthusiastic about Jerry," explained Representative Charles Goodell of New York. "It was just that most Republicans liked and respected him. He didn't have enemies...
...didn't make any, even while trying to put the brakes on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation, although L.B.J. mocked him gently by saying he had evidently played football without a helmet. After Nixon's election in 1968, Ford had a President he could work with but not a G.O.P. majority in the House. When Nixon's 1972 trouncing of George McGovern still failed to overturn the Democrats' congressional advantage, Ford began to consider retiring, feeling he would never become Speaker of the House. When Nixon's surprise offer of the vice presidency arrived, Ford told a colleague...
...Despite the public relief that greeted Ford's swearing-in, doubts about his fitness for the immense job he had been handed quickly began to spread. The fact that he would not have seemed out of place chairing a local Rotary Club meeting was, to many, a mark in his favor, another triumph of America's common man. But the nation in 1974 faced a number of complex and seemingly intractable problems. The cold war had grown even chillier after the Soviet support of the abortive October 1973 Arab attack on Israel. Then there were the agonizingly slow withdrawal...