THE NEW PRESIDENT: A MAN FOR THIS SEASON

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Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Ford gave up a budding law practice in Grand Rapids and joined the Navy as an ensign. His first assignment — whipping raw recruits into physical shape at the University of North Carolina — was not Ford's idea of fighting a war. He kept requesting sea duty, and in a year he got his wish. He was assigned to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Monterey in the South Pacific. Although he was under enemy fire in several major battles, his closest brush with death came during a typhoon that nearly washed him overboard; he was saved by landing on a catwalk beneath him. The Monterey was a "lucky" ship, said Ford.

Mustered out at 32 with the rank of lieutenant commander, he returned to Grand Rapids to practice law. He also joined almost every organization available: the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Masons, the Elks. He was especially proud of his status as an ex officio Boy Scout (later he would boast: "I am the first Eagle Scout Vice President"). He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to go to Congress. In 1948 he was given his chance. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, grand old man of the G.O.P., had made a dramatic switch from isolationism to internationalism and was annoyed that the Republican Congressman in the Fifth District, Bartel J. Jonkman, did not convert along with him. Vandenberg encouraged Ford to challenge Jonkman in the Republican primary.

Stolid but Engaging

Initially, Ford worried that he might not appeal to his largely Dutch constituency. But if his name was not Dutch, his behavior and appearance were: stolid, slightly ponderous but engagingly open. He won by a 2-to-l margin, and in twelve subsequent elections he never carried the district with less than 60% of the vote. During the campaign, he received help from Elizabeth Bloomer Warren, a Grand Rapids fashion coordinator who had once studied dance with Martha Graham. Three weeks before the election and eleven months after her first marriage ended in divorce, she and Jerry were wed. They then picked up to go to Washington, where they have lived ever since.*

Freshmen Congressmen roughly divide into two types: those who go it alone and those who join the team. Ford was definitely a team player. While more restless freshmen like John F. Kennedy avoided the tedium of the House floor as much as possible, Ford attentively followed debate and parliamentary maneuvers. In his second term, he landed a seat on the Appropriations Committee and became an expert on the defense budget, an intimidating thicket of statistics that most Congressmen shunned. "He had a tremendous capacity for work," says his half brother Tom. "And let's face it, people who have a capacity for work normally succeed."