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Ford autographed his book, responding to a request from Lin Hanson, Omicron ’59.
Marcy Nighswanders / Associated Press As the nation’s top leader, Ford kept good company. Here, President George Bush, Phi ’48, left, walks with former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon in the courtyard of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. November, 1991.
Mark Wilson / Reuters Former President Ford smiles after receiving the Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton at the White House, Aug. 11, 1999. The awards were established by President Kennedy in 1963 for outstanding service to the United States.
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Brother Gerald R. Ford, Jr., Omicron '35 Remembered
“He wrote a beautiful sentiment in the book. He always supported us. He always visited the house when he was on campus. You’d be surprised how many of his classmates returned 10 years ago to a reunion. They all had great stories about him.
“Even though he was a member and captain of a double-champion Michigan football team, he never was haughty,” Hanson said. “There was no distance between him and the rest of us. He was one of the guys. Although, I have to say he was a little different in that he never drank or swore.”
DKE Executive Director David Easlick, Omicron ’69, reinforces Hanson’s depiction of Ford. “I met him for the first time in 1974. We were at the Shant. He was Vice President of the United States, and I was something like treasurer of the Omicron Literary Association,” Easlick said.
“He had just been made VP, but he had come to Ann Arbor for a University event. We were able to free him for an hour, and he joined us in an event at the Shant. The old house had burned in 1968/69, and the chapter had just been recolonized. Ford told some great war stories. Bill Henderson [DKE International Executive Director at that time] was there. We had prominent people from Detroit, many alums and chapter members. It was a great event. He’s never turned down a request we’ve made.”
And that includes annual DKE alumni dues. “We received his dues check just a few weeks before we learned he died,” Easlick said. Actives during Ford’s era were the primary contributors to the Shant’s first renovation in 1974. Ed Frey ’31, Ford’s early campaign manager, was a key contributor, and Nate Bryant, Omicron ’40, was the driving force behind naming the Shant’s “Ford Library.” The Ford Presidential Library also is on the University of Michigan campus.
DKE was one of the first fraternities, if not THE first fraternity, to expand into Canada. Those strong Canadian chapters are what make DKE an international fraternity, and of the six DKE chapters founded in Canada since 1899, four remain active today. President Ford never visited Canada during the short time he was U.S. President, but he did Canada a major favor on the international scene.
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had an ally in President Ford, who supported Canada’s inclusion in the G8 in the mid-1970s. French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing invited the heads of a group called the G5 for talks, then added non-member Italy. But he was adamant that Canada be excluded.
Prime Minister Trudeau fought back, with some support from leaders in Britain and Germany. “But Canada’s key friend was President Gerald Ford of the United States,” reported an article at the time. Ford was “irate” about Canada’s exclusion, and even considered refusing to attend. However, the President had a better plan. Just as France had invited Italy in 1975, he invited Canada to the 1976 summit in Puerto Rico.
“Once invited,” the article reported, “President Ford concluded, you would not be excluded in the future.” Canada became a member of the G7 as the group came to be called. It became the G8 when Russia joined in 1997.
Ford’s lifelong commitment to DKE is well documented. Today begins a six-day period of mourning for our fallen brother and former President, of both the U.S. and the Omicron chapter, and Ford’s personal secretary is working to arrange a seat for a representative of DKE at the first service in California “because the President would have wanted the fraternity represented.”
2007 would have been Ford’s 25th year as honorary chairman of DKE’s Rampant Lion Foundation. When David Easlick first asked Ford to accept the position in 1982, he said he would co-chair with his former Secretary of the Treasury Bill Simon, Rho ’51. Simon, at that time, was head of a leveraged buy-out investment firm. “He asked me to ask Bill,” Easlick said. “Bill wasn’t an easy man to reach, but when I got through, he agreed to it. I think Jerry had called him beforehand.”
Easlick visited the Fords at their Rancho Mirage, California, home shortly after the President’s 80th birthday. “He rattled off everybody in his pledge class,” Easlick said. “He was just fabulous. Anything the fraternity needed, anything, he’d just do it.
“He sent a hand-written note to me when my wife, Susan, died,” Easlick said. “And the last time I saw Jerry was at Bill Simon’s funeral, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Bill Simon thought the world of Jerry, and Jerry gave a heart-felt eulogy that day.”
For the next six days, heartfelt eulogies will be given for Brother Gerald Ford in California and in several venues in Washington. He has been eulogized extensively in major U.S. media. And as he joins DKE’s Mystic Circle, where he is in good company with Dekes and former U.S. Presidents Hayes and Roosevelt, he will be missed by a world he influenced and the brothers, his friends from the heart forever, that he leaves behind.
December 30, 2006 |
