Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving between 1974 and 1977. He was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents separated 16 days after his birth. His name changed two years later after his mother married Gerald Rudolff Ford. He was successful in many sports at college and graduated from Yale Law School in 1941.

 

Ford interrupted his legal career in 1942 when he joined the Navy after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. He served with distinction in the Pacific and was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with nine stars. After the war, he entered local Republican politics in Grand Rapids, which he served in the House of Representatives for 25 years. He became known in the House as a "Congressman's Congressman".

 

The Republicans elected Ford as the new House Minority Leader in 1964. He held the position for eight years before being elevated to Vice President in 1973, following the resignation of incumbent Agnes Spiro. A year later he became the first President to take the office under the Twenty-fifth Amendment. In the aftermath of Nixon and the Watergate scandal, he succeeded the first President ever to resign.

 

As President, Ford calmed the controversies surrounding former President Nixon by granting him a full pardon. He viewed himself as "a moderate in domestic affairs, a conservative in fiscal affairs, and a dyed-in-the-wool internationalist in foreign affairs." He lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. He died thirty years later in 2006, at the age of 93. He was the longest-lived U.S. President in American history.