(NOTE: Dear Fanatical Apathy friends. This is a reprinted post from my other website, This Day In Mythstory. I thought it would be nice here too. Sorry we are so swampy of late. –CR)

Wish a happy birthday today to Gerald R. Ford, the notoriously clumsy, former Congressman from Michigan and former President of the United States who helped heal our nation after the Watergate crisis by letting the head honcho of said crisis, Richard M. Nixon, off the hook. (NOTE TO INTERNATONAL VISITORS: We Americans, a forgiving bunch, always feel better when the bad guy gets away. See current president’s unofficial pardon of O. Bin Laden.)

Let us celebrate the man with a series of fun facts. And by “fun,” we mean “as fun as anything can be when one is speaking of former President Gerald R. Ford.

  • At age 93, Ford is almost the longest-living President ever. Still holding the number one spot is President Ronald Reagan, who died at age 93 and 120 days. So Ford needs to hold on for 4 more months to beat The Gipper. And if he does, he gets a bowl of rainbow sherbet. (Shhhh–play along. That’s what they’ve been telling him to keep him going.) Number three is John Adams, who died when he was 90 (cause of death: autoerotic asphyxiation).
  • Ford was named Leslie Lynch King Jr., after his father who abandoned his mother a few months before his birth. Eventually, he was renamed after his stepfather, Gerald R. Ford. Less successful was his attempt to rename himself Roderick Byron Nightshade during a brief teenage fling with the Goth movement.
  • He was an “isolationist” in college, but after serving in WWII, became a self-proclaimed “internationalist.” When the kindly old man brings this up at current Republican events, he is punched in the stomach and forced into a closet.
  • Ford is the sole surviving member of The Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of JFK. The thoroughness of that, coupled with his immediate pardon of Nixon, explains his Presidential nickname, “Ol’ Let’s Wrap This Thing Up Before Lunch.”
  • He stepped in as Vice President after Spiro Agnew resigned, and then became President when Nixon bailed, meaning he is the only person to hold the highest office in the land without being elected to either post. (Fact obtained from a “November 3rd, 2000 Factbook.”)
  • To stem outcry over Nixon pardon, Ford also granted amnesty to all American draft dodgers. To show he was sincere, he then appointed one Richard Cheney from Wyoming to be his Chief of Staff.
  • Appointed Donald Rumsfeld to be his Secretary of Defense. Success of 1975 reduction of troop levels in Saigon to “zero” later influences Iraq policy.
  • He was famously lampooned with an impression by Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase. Chase made no attempt to look like Ford or sound like him, but he would come out and talk and then trip over something. Your parents seemed to find it very amusing.
  • Survived two assassination attempts at the hands of a middle aged woman named Sara Moore and former Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. Fromme claimed she just wanted to talk to Ford about “saving the Earth.” She also found fault with his administration’s excessive “Forehead Swastika” tax.