A goodbye well suited to the man

The nation’s capital bade a stately farewell Tuesday to Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president, at a funeral where he was lauded by the current president as “a good and decent man” whose affability cloaked a firm resolve.

President Bush escorted Ford’s widow, Betty, down the long center aisle of Washington National Cathedral to the front row, where she sat with her sons and daughter, her face etched in grief.

“Gerald Ford assumed the presidency when the nation needed a leader of character and humility, and we found it in the man from Grand Rapids,” Bush told those gathered, who included former presidents and first ladies. “President Ford’s time in office was brief, but history will long remember the courage and common sense that helped restore trust in the workings of our democracy.”

The state funeral, which included music by half a dozen choirs, bands and orchestras, culminated four days of ceremonies in Washington. The service reflected the character and career of the man: the earnest Midwestern congressman, the reassuring vice president and the accidental president who steadied the nation after President Nixon’s resignation.

“History has a way of matching man and moment,” said former President George H.W. Bush, comparing Ford with other presidents who ruled in dark times. “And just as President Lincoln’s stubborn devotion to our Constitution kept the union together during the Civil War, and just as FDR’s optimism was the perfect antidote to the despair of the Great Depression, so too can we say that Jerry Ford’s decency was the ideal remedy for the deception of Watergate.”

Ford, who was appointed vice president after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew, became president in 1974, after Nixon left office to avoid impeachment, and served until the end of the term in 1977. He died at home last week in Rancho Mirage. At 93, he was the oldest of the former presidents alive.

After the service, Ford’s body was flown aboard Air Force One to his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., where his presidential museum is located and where he lay in state through the night.

He is to be buried on the grounds today.

In Grand Rapids, thousands of somber-faced mourners lined the streets of downtown throughout the day, shivering in the brisk winter air as they waited for his motorcade and a chance to view Ford’s casket.

Visitors steadily filed into the museum. Boy Scouts and police officers came first, followed by the curious and the mournful, whose mood leaned less toward sorrow and more toward pride in one of their own.

“I remember all the hoopla they had for President Reagan when he died, and I’m glad there’s been far less for Jerry Ford,” said Lara Lynn Dreeter, 48, a high school teacher who drove from Indianapolis, Ind., to pay her respects. “He wasn’t a former actor. He wasn’t a Kennedy. He was a good ol’ Midwesterner and we honor our dead with restraint, not flash.

“To do anything else would be an insult to his memory.”

The presidential funeral was the second in less than three years for the nation’s capital, which gave Reagan a grand send-off in 2004.

Although Ford’s funeral had all the military trappings accorded a former commander in chief -- 21-gun salutes, honor guards, military choruses -- there were also notes of the ordinary.

Ford’s children greeted members of the public who came to pay their respects as their father lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Ford’s casket was carried from the Capitol to the cathedral in a conventional hearse instead of a horse-drawn caisson. At Andrews Air Force base, a troop of Boy Scouts, one in blue jeans, saluted the only Eagle Scout to have served as president.

And when Ford’s casket arrived in Michigan, the marching band from the University of Michigan -- where he had been a star football player -- struck up a somber version of the Michigan fight song. As president, Ford had preferred that tune to “Hail to the Chief.”

Former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw, whom Ford had asked to deliver his eulogy, praised him for bringing “Main Street values” to the White House.

“Once there, he stayed true to form, never believing that he was suddenly wise and infallible because he drank his morning coffee from a cup with the presidential seal,” Brokaw said.

The funeral for a transitional president came during another time of transition in the nation’s capital as political leaders prepared for this week’s shift of congressional power from Republicans to Democrats. Signs of the impending switch were evident: Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) sat directly behind her predecessor J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Indeed, the funeral served as a reminder of a different era of Republicanism, when, as Ford famously said, politicians could disagree without being disagreeable. Daughter Susan Ford Bales read a passage from the New Testament that admonishes “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”

Among Ford’s 20 honorary pallbearers were two men closely tied to the current president -- Vice President Dick Cheney and recently replaced Secretary of State Donald H. Rumsfeld, both of whom served Ford as chief of staff. Also among the pallbearers were men who have criticized the policies of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Among them were former secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, and former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill.

“In his understated way, he did his duty as a leader, not as a performer playing to the gallery,” Kissinger said in his tribute. “Having known Jerry Ford and worked with him will be our badge of honor for the rest of our lives.”

Two light moments eased the solemnity of the occasion.

Brokaw joked about the many pictures of Ford in the wide lapels and loud ties of the 1970s, suggesting that “some of those jackets

And former President Bush noted that a new form of presidential humor took root under Ford, who despite his famous athleticism was lampooned on late-night television as a klutz. The elder Bush also took his hits in the same venue, ridiculed for his choppy syntax and awkward hand gestures, and he paid tribute to the genre by mimicking his most famous mimic. “Being able to laugh at yourself is essential in public life,” Bush said. “I’d tell you more about that, but as Dana Carvey would say, ‘Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.’ ”

In Grand Rapids, the sun was low on the horizon as the hearse pulled into the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. The crowd grew silent and watched a military detail escort the casket into the atrium for a private family ceremony.

Ford lay at rest surrounded by artifacts that marked his unusual presidency.

Upstairs at the library were some of the lock-picking tools used in the Watergate break-in; the staircase from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy used by thousands to flee Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War; and a handgun used in one of the two assassination attempts made on Ford during his presidency.

Museum officials said that gun had always bothered Betty Ford, who sat in a blue chair before the flag-draped casket.

Ford, 88, shook hands with well-wishers, her frame frail and bent, her fingers loosely clasped and trembling in her lap.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm emphasized that the former president embodied the Midwestern spirit of hard work and modesty, and noted that he lived by three rules: Tell the truth, work hard and always be on time for dinner.

“Welcome home to the city where you and Betty were married ... Betty in a $50 dress, and you in muddy shoes,” Granholm said. “Mr. President, we are proud that you found your way home.”

As the governor spoke, Ford closed her eyes and clenched her lips. As wreaths of white roses and green ivy were placed near her husband’s casket, she grew teary and quietly mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

Reynolds reported from Washington and Huffstutter from Grand Rapids, Mich. Times staff writer Richard B. Schmitt in Washington also contributed to this report.