President Ford: Man of the People

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Dec. 30, 2001 — -- History will likely remember President Gerald Ford as the man who put the nation and the presidency back on its feet after the turmoil of Watergate. But some Americans have more personal memories.

Gerald Ford touched the lives of many ordinary men and women during his long life.

Lance Corporal Kent Carson, 22, was being treated at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in November. Across the hall, the 38th president was being treated. A nurse attending both men had a surprise for the young Marine.

"She came back and told me that Gerald Ford would like to speak with me, if that was all right with me," Carson remembered. "He came in and thanked me for my service to the country."

It was probably one of the last times a member of the general public talked with the former chief executive.

"He didn't have to say anything," Carson said. "He was just somebody really special, and I was just a marine, and it just made me feel really good about myself."

Terri Lynn Land said an encounter with President Ford is the reason she went into public life. A high school student in 1976, she was planning to become a teacher. But after working on Ford's 1976 campaign she decided, "I didn't just want to teach history, I wanted to be a part of it."

Today she is Michigan's secretary of state. When Land was elected in 2002, she received a note from her old boss.

"We're all very proud of your success," it read in part. Land was astonished that the former president even remembered her hometown: "I was especially pleased to see that a first class citizen from Byron Center was elected," he wrote.

Anise Meena, 13, received similar inspiration from the former president. She met Ford at a special church blessing for adopted children.

The former president told Anise that he too was adopted.

"He said, 'Hello, I'm Gerald Ford, the president,'" Anise recalled. "I felt, 'Wow, a person who could become president was adopted? I could become president too.' And I felt really special, too."