Ford remembered: Farewell rites in D.C. and Michigan

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The nation remembered Gerald R. Ford on Tuesday for what he didn't have — pretensions, a scheming agenda, a great golf game — as much as for the small-town authenticity he brought to the presidency.

In an elaborate national funeral service in Washington and then more simply at his final homecoming in Grand Rapids, the 38th president was celebrated for treating politics as a calling rather than blood sport.

The last act of Ford's state funeral was playing out at his presidential museum, open throughout the night and this morning for the public to pay final respects. Thousands waited in line Tuesday night to file past Ford's casket.

Scouts came forward three by three and saluted by his casket to open 18 hours of visitation, before a final church service and Ford's hillside burial this afternoon.

The marching band from the University of Michigan, the school where he played football, greeted the White House jet carrying his casket, members of his family and others in the funeral party.

The service in Washington unfolded in the spirit of one of its musical selections — "Fanfare for the Common Man" — as powerful people celebrated the modesty and humility of a leader propelled to the presidency by the Watergate crisis that drove his predecessor Richard Nixon from office.

"In President Ford, the world saw the best of America, and America found a man whose character and leadership would bring calm and healing to one of the most divisive moments in our nation's history," President Bush said in his eulogy.

Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, called Ford a "Norman Rockwell painting come to life" and pierced the solemnity of the occasion by cracking gentle jokes about Ford's reputation as an errant golfer. He said Ford knew his golf game was getting better when he began hitting fewer spectators.

Ford's athletic interest was honored, too, in the capital and in Michigan. At the Grand Rapids airport that bears Ford's name, the Michigan band played the school's famous fight song, "The Victors," as Ford's flag-draped casket was transferred to a hearse.

He had played center for the Wolverines in their undefeated, national championship seasons in 1932 and 1933 and turned down several pro football offers to go to law school at Yale instead.