ABSTRACT
Gerald R. Ford came on too fast for confident prediction. It was nice to have a non-crooked Vice President, but few thought Ford would rise above that post. He did not think so himself, and even said he did not intend to be a Presidential candidate in 1976, as Coolidge had said of 1928. An hour into his Presidency, Gerald Ford said, "I can't change my nature after sixty-one years." That nature was born on Bastille Day, 1913, in that pause before the curtain went down on Victorian optimism and hypocrisy. The style and world view and character Jerry bolted together in those early years were there to draw on when Ford suddenly had to shift gears for an uphill Presidency. For Jerry Ford, the big thing at school was sports, and his sport was football. One night in the 1940s when Ford was serving on an aircraft carrier, a terrific typhoon came up.
