Hi, everybody. Today, my mommy is going to talk about Gerald R. Ford.

Thank you, Noah, for introducing Gerald R. Ford, the 38th President of the United States.

Gerald Ford was born in the year 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska, but he was given the name Leslie Lynch King Jr.

At birth. His father wasn't a good husband to his mother, and just two years after his birth,

his mother divorced his father and took him to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where her family lived. His mother

married Gerald R. Ford the following year and legally changed his name to Gerald R. Ford Jr.

Gerald Jr. didn't learn about his biological father until he was 17 years old.

Gerald attended the University of Michigan, where he was a star football player. When he graduated

in 1935, he was offered contracts to play in the NFL, but turned them down to attend law school

at Yale University.

He practiced law until World War II. Out of a sense of duty, he joined the U.S. Navy and served valiantly,

picking up ten battle stars during his service. When he returned home for war, his stepfather, who was the

county Republican chairman, convinced him to run for a seat on the House of Representatives. He won the

nomination and spent the next 24 years serving as a representative from Michigan, winning 12 elections along the way,

always receiving a minimum of 60% of the vote. In 1973, while President Nixon was facing

tremendous heat for his role in the Watergate scandal, Nixon's vice president, Spiru Agnew, was charged with

income tax evasion and forced to resign. Nixon selected Gerald Ford as Agnew's replacement,

because Gerald Ford had an outstanding record of honesty and dignity that was sorely lacking from the Nixon administration.

Eight months after becoming vice president, Richard Nixon resigned the office of president, making

Gerald Ford the 38th president of the United States. When Gerald Ford took the podium for his inauguration speech,

he said, my fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Just a month after taking office,

Gerald Ford shocked the American people by pardoning Richard Nixon, freeing him from a trial that would have exposed Nixon's obvious connection to Watergate.

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