LOS ANGELES - Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He 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,” Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. “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. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

Ford was a decent guy, the right person to become president after Nixon's fall. His wife, in the Betty Ford Clinic, probably had as much if not more, impact on society as he did.

What full lives Reagan and Ford and Nixon all had.

Ford was likely a good president, all things considered at the time.

RIP.

A good decent man. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and possibly the two Bush administrations (41 was Ford's CIA director) are legacies of the Ford administration. With no Ford administration, none of these may have achieved the level of power they did.

Edited December 27, 200619 yr by ehaase

I liked him.

He was proof that the "knee jerk" anti-Republican reaction is not at all grounded, and this is coming from someone who is non-partisan...I vote for both Republicans and Democrats, based on the person and "context."

We could use more Republicans like Gerald Ford.

So Carter is now the oldest living former president,

and his only peers are Clinton & Bush Sr.

Ford was the first president I can remember seeing on TV as a kid...I've been to the Ford Library at the U of Michigan, he was an alumnus of my school.. seems like he was a decent guy, and he spent a lot of time and owned a home here in my adopted state of Colorado.

Edited December 27, 200619 yr by moltar

Good guy, forgettable president. The news outlets went really overboard on this IMO.