A Good Man

Gerald Ford was a gee-wiz guy as House Republican leader when the 43 newly-elected Republican freshmen congressmen arrived in Washington, D.C. for orientation on Capitol Hill after the November 1972 elections. This was the largest Republican freshman class elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.

Jerry Ford immediately sought out John B. Conlan, newly-elected congressman from Arizona's huge new congressional district drawn after the 1970 Census in north Phoenix and Scottsdale Arizona, all the way northeast to the Utah-New Mexico borders.

Conlan was previously an Arizona state senator, chairman of the state senate judiciary committee, helped draw the new congressional district boundaries to include affluent Republicans and rural conservative Democrats, so he could run and win. He was no dummy.

Conlan was son of National Baseball Hall of Fame umpire Jocko Conlan, brought up in Illinois before the family moved to Arizona, a U.S. Army paratrooper, graduated from Harvard law school, a regional field director for the Reverend Billy Graham's national ministry, and organized evangelical Christians to get involved in politics.

So Jerry Ford wanted to know John Conlan, who got himself elected as president of the incoming class of Republican congressmen, and immediately reached out to him as the House Class of '73 arrived for orientation sessions.

At their meeting, Conlan told Ford that he wanted to continue his efforts to reach out to conservative Christians throughout the country, to get them out of the pews and into the polling places to elect more conservative members of Congress.

Conlan outlined his book project called "One Nation Under God" and said he needed support to make it work. Ford told Conlan he would do whatever he could to be helpful. Conlan wanted the front-cover of his book to be the stained-glass picture of George Washington kneeling at Valley Forge that was in the prayer room at the Capitol, which was a privileged space reserved for members of Congress, no pictures allowed.

Jerry Ford made the necessary calls to House officials as minority leader and opened the way for Conlan to get the image for the cover of his book -- a first use of the Washington stained glass image -- which made a huge impact as the book and its supplements were circulated throughout the country and told Christians how to get involved in politics, which they did in droves.

A bond was therefore forged between Republican Leader Ford and Conlan. They agreed they wanted to build the Republican Party. Ford was more secular and moderate in his political views than Conlan, but understood the political dynamics that were pushing the Republican Party to the right.

But Conlan, with Ford's support, traveled to almost every state on weekends and holidays during his four-year tenure as congressman, mostly visiting churches throughout the South and even giving his testimony at a Billy Graham crusade in Alabama. The result was more Republican and conservative Democratic gains in the House in 1974 and 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged Jerry Ford in the Republican primary fight for the presidency.

As we mourn the loss of Gerald Ford, our 38th president, many remember him as a quiet fighter to build a moderate-conservative coalition that would topple leftist Democratic control of Congress and even win the White House.

Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976 after the challenge by Ronald Reagan, which set up Reagan's march to political victory against Carter four years later.

Throughout it all, Ford was a good man in every way, a marvelous father, grandfather, and devoted husband to Betty Ford, who in her own right started and built the superb clinic named for her that has saved tens of thousands of substance-abuse addicts.

Gerald Ford was a very good, spiritual man who understood the political and cultural dynamics of our country as well as any president in our lifetime, yet he was so laid back and not seeking the limelight that most people did not know the true positive impact he had on our politics and culture.

So we salute and say a fond farewell to Gerald Ford, a common man, a good and great man, who as our only unelected 38th president restored confidence in our constitutional heritage and country at a time when all our founders had bethrothed to us was under siege.

Thank you good man. God bless and good bye. As a soul now in heaven. please continue to watch over us as a member of the community of saints.