THE NEW PRESIDENT: A MAN FOR THIS SEASON

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The new President has sometimes been compared to the furniture that used to be produced in such abundance in his Michigan home town, Grand Rapids: durable, dependable and easy to live with. Gerald Ford is Middle America. His roots reach deeply, tenaciously into the thrifty, hard-toiling community of Grand Rapids—though he was not in fact born there. His birthplace was Omaha, where his mother Dorothy lived with her first husband, Leslie King, a wool trader. Ford was christened Leslie King Jr. Two years later, the marriage broke up, and mother and child returned to Grand Rapids. In 1916, Dorothy married Gerald R. Ford, a paint salesman, who adopted young Leslie and gave the boy his name—as well as his penchant for hard work, athletics and community involvement. He also instructed his stepson in a certain humility. Remember, he told the boy, someone else can always do the job better than you. The elder Ford, who died in 1962, never prospered as a businessman but established a reputation for character and good works. Says Jerry's half brother Richard:* "Being his son meant a lot in Grand Rapids in those days."

During the Depression, life teetered on the edge of discomfort for the Fords. As a high school student, Jerry had to wait on tables to supplement the family income. Nonetheless, he still had time to indulge the passion of his youth: football. A strapping youngster, he played center for South High School for reasons that probably had as much to do with temperament as physique. Ford always had his hand on the ball, but he snapped it to the quarterback who called the plays and scored the touchdowns. As Ford acknowledges, he never stopped playing center even when he gave up football: "I've tried to be a good blocker and tackier for the running back who carries the ball."

Ford went on to play football at the University of Michigan, where he was a solid B student. He spent summer vacations as a park ranger. In his senior year he was voted the football team's most valuable player. "You learn to accept discipline," he reminisced in later years. "My football experiences helped me many times to face a tough situation in World War II or, in the rough-and-tumble of politics, to take action and make every effort despite adverse odds."

After graduation in 1935, Ford turned down offers to play professional football. Instead, he decided to coach football and boxing at Yale. "I boxed the lightweights and coached the heavyweights," he recalls. While on the job, he took some courses at Yale Law School. He did well enough to be admitted to the law school and finished in the top third of his class in 1941. During his Yale days, he dated and almost married a Powers model named Phyllis Brown, who persuaded him to invest $1,000 in a modeling agency. Ford even modeled sportswear with Phyllis on the ski slopes in New England. But he soon severed relations with both model and agency. Nothing quite so frivolous has since intruded on his well-regulated life.