President Ford earned his stripes in Chapel Hill

Gerald Ford’s early training, which helped prepare him to become the 38th U.S. president (1974-77), included two “tours of duty” in Chapel Hill, N.C.

He arrived on campus for the first time in the summer of 1938 as a student to take classes at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich., and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1935. He was an outstanding football player there and after graduation, he accepted coaching jobs at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., hoping to also go to law school there.

But, dagnabbit! Those Yale administrators frowned on the idea of Ford being a fulltime employee as well as a law student. Eventually, they agreed to allow Ford to enroll at Yale.

Harry Shulman, a Yale law professor, handled things. Shulman was a visiting professor at UNC in the summer of 1938, and it was agreed to allow Gerald Ford to start law school at Chapel Hill, then “transfer” to Yale.

Roland Giduz, editor of the Carolina Alumni Review, wrote about President Ford’s “Carolina connection” in 1975. Technically, UNC cannot claim Gerald Ford as “an academic alumnus,” but his “presence on campus” has historical significance.

Ford was described by UNC law school faculty members as “mature and serious of purpose.” Giduz noted that President Ford mentioned two classmates by name – Harry McMullan Jr. of Beaufort County and William F. Womble of Winston-Salem.

World War II brought Gerald Ford back to Chapel Hill in a teaching capacity.

Ford was a young lawyer in Grand Rapids when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He promptly enlisted and was commissioned in the U.S. Naval Reserve on April 13, 1942. After attending flight instructor school at Annapolis, Md., Ford was assigned as one of 83 instructors at Navy Pre-flight Training School in Chapel Hill.

UNC President Frank Porter Graham pledged that the university would offer “all its resources to the nation for the defense of freedom and democracy.” Graham campaigned hard to have the university’s newly built Horace Williams Airport designated as one of the Navy’s four sites to offer the pre-flight training programs. It was, and in all, about 18,700 Navy cadets trained on the UNC campus during the war years.

The young Navy flight instructors found housing within the community. Ford was matched with recent UNC graduates Earl Baker Ruth and Bill McCachren. They moved into a rented cabin near the airport.

Ruth and McCachren had played basketball together at Charlotte Central High School and were recruited to attend UNC. They were standouts on the Tar Heel basketball teams of the late 1930s, coached by Walter Skidmore.

Ford attained the rank of lieutenant in March 1942 and was sent to sea two months later aboard a newly commissioned light aircraft carrier, the Monterey. The ship was assigned to duty in the South Pacific. In 1944, she suffered damage when a fire broke out, requiring the vessel to return to the United States mainland for repairs. Ford was released from active duty on Feb. 23, 1946.

As an attorney in Grand Rapids, Gerald Ford was elected to the first of his 13 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1948.

Meanwhile, after Ruth was discharged from the Navy in 1945, he settled in Salisbury and joined the faculty at Catawba College. He went on to earn his master’s and doctorate degrees at UNC. Ruth won a seat in the U.S. House in 1968. Ford, as the House Minority Leader, was quick to welcome his old Navy chum and fellow Republican to Congress.

Ruth was elected for two succeeding terms. A “series of political events” led to the swearing in of Gerald Ford, as the U.S. vice president, under Richard Nixon, on Dec. 6, 1973.

One of the first congratulatory wires to Ford was sent by George Barclay, a former All-American football player at UNC. As an offensive guard, Barclay, lined up next to Ford, the center, when the two participated in 1935 East-West All-Star Shrine Bowl football classic.

They became friends there in the trenches on the gridiron. Barclay’s advice to Ford was: “Just keep centering the ball straight back!”

In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed another old friend, Earl Ruth, as governor of American Samoa. Tough duty, but someone had to go to the paradise capital of Pago Pago in the South Pacific tropics. The Samoan people said: “Talofa, governor,” meaning “welcome…with love.”