Gerald R. Ford, the 38th President of the United States, was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska, he was raised exclusively in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He would take the name of his mother’s second husband, Gerald R. Ford. He attended the University of Michigan where he played for the school’s football team and afterwards went on to graduate from Yale Law School.
After service in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942-1946, Ford began a political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district, a seat he held for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after Spiro Agnew’s resignation, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After the subsequent resignation of President Nixon on August 9, 1974, Ford assumed the presidency.
Gerald Ruldolph Ford Jr. served as president from 1974-1977. He was defeated for election to a full term by Jimmy Carter in 1976 in a close election. Ford is the only person to become U.S. president without winning an election for president or vice president. He died in 2006 at age 93.
President Ford’s stuttering is not as well documented as that of President Biden, as he did not refer to it in public or on the campaign trail. An April 20, 2023, Wall Street Journal book review “An Ordinary Man Review: Underestimating Gerald Ford” brought to light that President Gerald Ford struggled with stuttering in elementary school and junior high.
The 2023 biography An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford by Richard Norton Smith discussed how President Ford’s childhood was affected by stuttering. Smith summarized Ford’s issues with stuttering and when describing his childhood, wrote that it was “compounded by a severe case of stuttering that plagued the boy for years.”
GERALD R. FORD 38TH
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AUGUST 9, 1974 − JANUARY 20, 1977
Some years prior to the publication of Smith’s book, the topic received coverage in a December 28, 2006, article in The Washington Post, “The Homegrown Decency of Gerald Ford,” which gave an interesting synopsis of how he dealt with his debilitating stutter, “Young Jerry also had a stuttering problem. By the time he reached high school, however, the stutter was gone, as if he had miraculously laid it in his hand and flung it across a nearby lake.”
Sources cite that the young Ford practiced speech exercises and forced himself to participate in school debates where he gained confidence speaking in front of people, which would set the foundation for his future political career and subsequent presidency.
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