Gerald Ford had the Navy band play Michigan's fight song before state events
Gerald Ford never lost his attachment to Michigan football. As president he often asked the Navy band to strike up The Victors, the university fight song, in place of Hail to the Chief. Long before politics he had been a star center there, and he turned down offers from two professional teams.
He was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha in 1913. His parents separated just sixteen days later, and his mother took him to her family in Grand Rapids. When she married a paint salesman named Gerald Ford in 1917, the boy took that name, though he was never formally adopted and the change was only made official in 1935. He became an Eagle Scout, the only one ever to reach the presidency, and captained his high-school football team.
At the University of Michigan he played center and linebacker on teams that went unbeaten and won national titles in 1932 and 1933. His senior season in 1934 collapsed to a single win, yet teammates voted him most valuable player as the man who would keep fighting in a losing cause. That year Georgia Tech refused to play if Willis Ward, a Black teammate and Ford's close friend, took the field, and the university gave in. Ford reportedly threatened to quit, and played only when Ward asked him to. Michigan retired his number 48 in 1994.
Rejecting the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, he went to Yale as boxing coach and assistant football coach, was at first refused entry to its law school because of the workload, spent a summer as a Yellowstone ranger, and modelled for a New York agency while finally studying law. After Pearl Harbor he joined the Navy and served aboard the light carrier USS Monterey through many Pacific operations.
A long House career followed, including a seat on the Warren Commission. In 1973 he became the first vice president appointed under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, and after Nixon resigned in 1974 he took over the presidency, making him the only president never elected to either office. Having beaten Ronald Reagan narrowly for the 1976 nomination, he lost to Jimmy Carter, who later became a close friend.
Source: Gerald Ford
