Memories of the Ford Administration

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Re: Requested Memories and Impressions of the Presidential Administration of Gerald R. Ford (1974–77), for Written Symposium on Same to Be Published in NNEAAH’s Triquarterly Journal, Retrospect

I REMEMBER I was sitting among my abandoned children watching television when Nixon resigned. My wife was out on a date, and had asked me to babysit. We had been separated since June. This was, of course, August. Nixon, with his bulgy face and his menacing, slipped-cog manner, seemed about to cry. The children and I had never seen a President resign before; nobody in the history of the United States had ever seen that.

Our impressions — well, who can tell what the impressions of children are? Andrew was fifteen, Buzzy just thirteen, Daphne a plump and vulnerable eleven. For them, who had been historically conscious ten years at the most, this resignation was not so epochal, perhaps. The late Sixties and early Seventies had produced so much in the way of bizarre headlines and queer television that they were probably less struck than I was. Spiro Agnew had himself resigned not many months before; Gerald Ford was thus our only non-elected President, unless you count Joe Tumulty in the wake of Wilson’s stroke or James G. Blaine during the summer when poor Garfield was being slowly slain by the medical science of 1881, while Chester Arthur (thought to be corrupt, though he was an excellent fisherman and could recite yards of Robert Burns with a perfect Scots accent) hid in New York City from the exalted office he would finally accede to.

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