In fact it probably lost him the election in 1976. He believed that was the right decision as well, prayed hard about it– and again he was right. And then he had to do something else hard as well– get the troops out of Vietnam. He was right, but that did not make it easy.

To pardon and forgive Nixon was not the hard part, and his Dad was sure it was the best way to help the country get beyond ‘our long national nightmare’. I remember hearing Mike talk about how hard that was. He thought it was the Christian thing to do. Gerald Ford was convinced it was the right thing to do, even though he took enormous heat for it. Only Nixon was pardoned in advance of any trial. We all knew what that meant– a pardon meant he had done something terribly wrong, like other pardoned criminals. I was one of the librarians at the seminary library and I remember the day one of the secret service men came to the desk and forlornly asked me “Don’t you have anything in this library but religious magazines and books? Not even Sports Illustrated?” I suddenly felt sorry for them, trapped at a seminary doing a thankless job.Īnd then Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. It could not be an easy way to begin a marriage. He had decided to go ahead and marry his girl friend Gail, but what a life they were to have– newly weds sleeping in a tiny apartment at GCTS with two hulking body guards sleeping in the next room and watching their every move. In fact he was going to be followed around by Secret Servicemen all the time during his seminary education. And it changed not only his life, but mine as well, because suddenly Mike Ford was not going to be my roomate. No one had expected him to become President. It was Gerald Ford, and his son Mike was going off to seminary.

And then a real Christian gentleman had his brief time of fame.

He said everyone wept and felt lost.īut the President had lied to us about Watergate, and then had to resign lest he be given his walking papers by Congress. He said it was the day that Nixon resigned and flew off from the White House lawn. I asked him what were the hardest days he ever had in the White House. He had a huge booming voice and was a huge African American man. I was once given a tour of the White House in 2003 and had a long chat with one of the pages or stewards there who had been there since the time of President Johnson. All of a sudden Gerald Ford became President, the only non-elected President we have ever had.

Walking papers seminary