SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Gerald R. Ford, the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, according to a media report Tuesday night.
Ford, who became president when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 to avoid impeachment in the wake of the Watergate scandal, was 93.
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," the Associated Press reported Ford's wife, Betty, said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage, Calif. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death, according to AP. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments, including an angioplasty, in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the news service reported.
Ford had been the longest-living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93, according to the report.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience as a congressman who had never run on a national ticket, the wire service reported.
Ford took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared "our long national nightmare is over, " according to the report.
But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president, the report said, add that single act cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during Ford's presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975.
In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned," the AP reported.
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office in 1973 by scandal, AP reported.
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process, despite the fact that it occurred without an election, according to the report.
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president, and First Lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country, AP reported.
Ford had slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, AP reported.
The following year, Ford joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks and in June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan, the wire service said.
In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days, AP said, and he wasn't seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home.
Gerald Ford is dead
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Originally Posted by Cluny the Scourge
