Tribute: Gerald Ford

When Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the House of Representatives in 1954, Ford rushed from a nearby committee room to sort out the bloody chaos. He helped Lyndon Johnson write NASA's charter, which focused American efforts in space. He was one of the young Republicans who pushed the avuncular but ineffective Joe Martin out of leadership; when Martin's successor, Charlie (the "gut fighter") Halleck, was deposed, Ford was the choice for minority leader--positioned for his climb to the top.

Ford still chuckles when he recalls watching the faltering Chinese leader Mao Zedong suddenly show life when he spotted Ford's beautiful 17-year-old daughter Susan. Ford talked nuclear arms control with Leonid Brezhnev, and when the Soviet boss, nicely relaxed with vodka, admired a wolf-skin coat given to Ford in Alaska, Ford peeled it off and put it on Brezhnev as they walked on the frigid tundra of Vladivostok.

In his amazing memory bank, there may be no finer moment than the U.S.'s 200th-birthday party in 1976. Ford swooped to Independence Hall, Valley Forge and the Statue of Liberty. That night he returned to Washington and looked down at the Capitol and the White House, both anchors of American democracy and both houses in which Gerald Ford watched and made history.