I went to the gym today...first time after Christmas, so I was just going to slowly get into things by starting on the stationary bike, and my Nano is out of juice (ran out while standing in line at the post-Christmas Macy's check out line getting my birthday present), so I was watching the news on one of the gym's TV's, when I found out that President Ford had passed away.

He was a great man and a powerful leader.  He was before my time, but he led this nation away from tragedies and into times of peace and forgiveness.  He spent his time serving our country as the chief leader.  I am honored to have his name in my nation's history, and I am gravely saddened to see him go.  Maybe I'm being a little sentimental, but this really is the saddest news.  My prayers will be for his family and friends, and anyone who has been touched by his life.

July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th President (1974–1977) and 40th Vice President (1973–1974) of the United States. He was the first person appointed to the Vice Presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment; and, upon succession to the presidency, became the only person to hold that office without having been elected either President or Vice President. Prior to becoming Vice President, he served for over eight years as the Republican Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. Ford was the longest-lived President. The Ford administration saw the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, the execution of the Helsinki Accords, and the continuing specter of inflation and recession. Faced with an overwhelmingly Democratic majority in Congress, the administration was hampered in its ability to pass major legislation. Ford came under intense criticism for granting a pre-emptive pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal, and was subsequently defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election

Ford was born as Leslie Lynch King, Jr. on Monday, July 14, 1913, at 12:43 AM CST in Omaha, Nebraska. His birthplace was 3202 Woolworth Avenue, the home of his banker grandfather, Charles Henry King. His parents were Leslie Lynch King, Sr., a wool trader, and his wife, the former Dorothy Ayer Gardner, who separated two weeks after his birth and divorced the following December. According to Associated Press reports, Leslie King, Sr. was abusive and had a drinking problem, and Ford later described his father as having frequently hit his mother [2]. James Cannon, the executive director of the domestic council during the Ford administration, has written that the future president's father threatened Dorothy Gardner King with a butcher knife a few days after their son's birth and announced his intention to kill her, their son, and the baby's nursemaid. [3]

On 1 February 1916, after returning to live with her parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dorothy King married Gerald Rudolff Ford, a paint salesman.[4] She began calling her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr. The future president was never formally adopted, however, and he did not legally change his name until 3 December 1935; he also used a more conventional spelling of his middle name. [5]. He was raised in Grand Rapids with his three half-brothers by his mother's second marriage (he also had three half-siblings by his father's second marriage), and was not aware of his actual parentage until shortly before turning fifteen. He met his biological father, whom he described as a "carefree, well-to-do man", while working in a restaurant as a teenager, but it appears that no further meetings ensued [6]. "My stepfather was a magnificent person," Ford stated, "and my mother equally wonderful. So I couldn't have written a better prescription for a superb family upbringing."^[1]

Ford joined the Boy Scouts and attained that program's highest rank, Eagle Scout. He always regarded this as one of his proudest accomplishments, even after attaining the White House.^[2] In subsequent years, Ford received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He is the only US President who was an Eagle Scout.

Gathering Leaves

Raining, hailing:
The colored cascade from the skies;
As seasons change and we arrange
our homes to fill with pies:
Going and running
Between homes, stores and the car;
Giving little chance for reflection
of blessings from afar.
Wonderous are the fallen
and gathered colored leaves
we admired as they grew
so abundant on the trees;
this time which gives the branches rest
from their sunny season of fruitful zest.
Staying and resting,
gathering memories and love,
a time to pause, a time to breathe
a time to worship, a time to bequeath
this hour, this day, this moment we share
to our selves, to our families,
to our God for whom we bare
all our hearts and all our souls:
Loving Him through our family opus:
His raining, hailing
blessings on us this Christmas.