"The truth is, he was actually a very gifted athlete. He and George H.W. Bush were probably the most athletic presidents ever," Porter said Wednesday.

He should know. Porter played tennis with both. In fact, when then-President Ford, who had been a star football player for the University of Michigan, heard that Porter was a former Utah state tennis champion, he made the young aide his doubles partner.

For years, Porter displayed a photo in his White House office of him and Ford playing tennis against George H.W. Bush. Ford had arranged that doubles game to help Bush relax just before his Senate confirmation hearings as CIA director.

Ford himself said some interesting things about Utah and Utahns.

"It was Horace Greeley who said 'Go West, young man,' but it was Brigham Young who knew where to stop," Ford, as vice president, told a USU graduation ceremony in June 1974.

(Ford always loved the West. He was a ranger in Yellowstone National Park in 1936, and he long maintained a condo in Vail.).

After the Mormon Tabernacle Choir gave Ford a special concert during that same trip to Utah, Ford said he and his wife felt "a nice closeness to the people of the Mormon faith" because of their "many, many" LDS friends in Washington.

"As a matter of fact, I think they probably had as big an impact in raising our four children as Mrs. Ford and I did, and it was all to the good, let me assure you," Ford told the choir.

Ford said he had associated for years with such well-known LDS Church members as Ezra Taft Benson (President Eisenhower's agriculture secretary, an LDS apostle and later church president), hotel magnate J. Willard Marriott and George Romney, governor of Ford's home state of Michigan and father of current Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Other Utah ties

Ford made numerous other trips to Utah through the years, campaigning for Utah candidates as House minority leader, vice president, president and former president. He talked to students at USU, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. He played in golf tournaments in the state.

He once gave an exclusive interview to then-Deseret News reporter Rod Decker in 1978, where he talked, in part, about why he had pardoned Richard Nixon for his Watergate scandal involvement.

He said that before he issued the pardon, "I had to spend 25 percent of my time listening to lawyers on his papers and tapes and other questions. The only way to get it off the deck was to pardon him. I did it, and I'll defend it."