Fourth Reich Archaeology - Jerryworld 2: Leatherhead

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

In this episode, we start off with a geographical and cultural tour of Grand Rapids, Michigan - Jerry's real hometown - with a little narrative help from the words of Grand Rapids native, Paul Schrader, spoken by the great George C. Scott. The class-based and ethnic lines demarcating the city's neighborhoods, plus the Calvinist work ethic pervading its business community, shaped the man Jerry would grow into.We consider Jerry's choice of the working-class South High School over the more affluent Central High, and run into his early anti-communist sentiments and actions. Jerry became a football star, and with that stardom came popularity. His popularity (and a little willingness to bend the rules) would eventually win him his first trip to the nation's capitol. But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for young Jerry - we'll also dig into Jerry's traumatic reunion with his deadbeat birth-father, Leslie Lynch King, and discuss how Jerry began balancing his budding sense of class-resentment with his instinctive political knack for maintaining good terms with all potential allies.After graduating high school in 1931, it was off to the University of Michigan for Jerry, where he worked his way through school, worked his way into a popular fraternity, and worked his football team to back-to-back national championships. We'll explore the much-mythologized relationship between Jerry and his Black friend and teammate, Willis Ward with a little cameo from none other than George W. Bush.Finally, we will follow Jerry's relationship with the man he'd later refer to as his "real father" forward in time and watch him put his conflict-resolution skills to the test. Patreon: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission, the science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America.

America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one. For example, we're the CIA. Now, he has a mile. He knows so long as a die, afraid of we never be secure.

It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? This is a day. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology.

I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Thank you so very kindly for tuning in to this, our third episode overall, and our second installment in the ongoing series Jerry World. First, we'd like to instruct our listeners if you have not already tuned into our first two episodes, especially episode one of Jerry World, where we lay the foundation of what we'll be getting into today. Please stop this episode right now and turn your dial back to Fourth Reich archaeology and introduction and then to Jerry World Origins. In Jerry World

Episode 1, we introduced Jerry's family tree. Both his biological father, Leslie Lynch King, the millionaire failed son of Nebraska arc settler Charles Henry King, and his would-bees socially ascendant mothered, member of the daughters of the American Revolution, Dorothy Iyer Gardner. We also covered his stepfather, the honest, hardworking, and ambitious, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Sr. We discussed how both sides of Ford's family tree trace their roots back to pre-revolutionary America and how Ford's pedigree embodies American settler colonial ideology. We also talked about how that family tree was watered by Freemasonry, including intersections with the Knights of Ex-Sarbon, a Masonic offshoot, which coexisted there in Omaha, Nebraska, alongside another southern

Masonic offshoot, the KKK. Finally, we talked about how Ford's fraught early life and childhood was riddled with contradictions that would follow the man throughout his life. When we left off on our last episode, our young hero was going by the name Jr., living in economic precarity and dealing with rage control issues. I think it's important for the listeners to remember that Gerald Ford Jr. was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., and he didn't know that that was his real name growing up. Growing up, he went by either junior or Junie. So that's how we'll be referring to him in this episode. For this episode, we'll continue the biographical trajectory of Ford's early life, following him through adolescence and young adulthood. We will keep up

with Jerry or Junie as he leaves Grand Rapids to Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan and onto football stardom. We'll explore themes of race relations, class dynamics, and self-mythology. We'll then jump forward in time to Jerry's mediation of the dispute between his mother and his deadbeat biological dad over missed child support and alimony. And we'll tee up the next episode where things will start to get a bit more spooky when Jerry heads to the East Coast, studies law at Yale, and finally heads overseas to the Pacific Theater as a Navyman during World War II. For now, let's jump right in to

Jerry World Episode 2. In our last episode, I think it off, I think we left off with Dorothy and her mother in Grand Rapids with Young Jr., or Junie Ford. Later in life, Gerald Ford would say that he didn't remember his time in Omaha. And so really, for all purposes, Grand Rapids, is the origin of our hero. And I'm not sure if we covered this in the last episode, but we should probably give the listener a breakdown of the structure of Grand Rapids. We did talk last time about how it's a major industry was furniture. And so the residents of the city were largely either the folks working the line in the factory,

the salesman and managers and the secretaries in the corporate offices, or the owners of capital. If you were to look at Grand Rapids on a map, so we're thinking bird's eye map of the city, which we will add for our listeners on our socials, you'll find the city is structured no differently than many of the mid-sized cities in America. It's basically a cluster of residential neighborhoods, and then a central downtown. The business district is sort of mid-northwestern.

And then, of course, the neighborhoods are segregated largely by economically lots. Sent from somewhere to my soul. Now the Grand River runs north to south of the city and divides the city into two parts. On the west side of the river you had the, we'll call them the proletariat. These folks were working the factories, they were the linemen, and it was largely a Polish community. On the banks of the Grand River are where the furniture factories are located. And then immediately east of that is the downtown business district.

Now, as you go northeast of the downtown, you get to what's called the hill district of the city. This is where the owners of capital lived. You could imagine mansions running around the peaks of the hill. In the stillness of the midnight. And then south of the hill was what's called the south side, and this is where you had the, you know, the ethnic communities, you had the Italians, the Dutch and the black neighborhoods, and these folks were more middle of the pack. I wouldn't say middle class, but just right at the lip of middle class. And it was diverse, but largely Grand Rapids is a Dutch town. And I wonder, Don, maybe you could tell us a little bit about that. Sure. So Grand Rapids is, like you said, largely a Dutch town, and more specifically than that, it's largely a Calvinist town. What church? Dutch Reformation.

Calvinist now. Calvinism being one of the OG forms of Protestant Christianity depicted by Max Weber, the sociologist in his seminal work. the protestantish ethic and the geist of capitalism. For those of you who don't speak German, that is the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism, which posited that capitalism and particularly industrial capitalism was fueled in its rise by the tenets of Calvinism that stressed denial of pleasure to the same.

They believe in the tulip. What's it crap? It's an acronym. It comes from the cannons of Dorp. Pursuit of capital for the purpose of hoarding it. Well, T stands for total depravity. All men, through original sin, are totally evil and incapable of good. All my works are as filthy rags

suicide of the Lord. And this extreme doctrine of pre- determination. Unconditional elections. God has chosen a certain number of people to be saved, the elect, and he's chosen them from the beginning of time. God has already selected the chosen people who would ascend into heaven. Limited atonement. Only a limited number of people will be atoned. I'll go to heaven. You kind of prove that you are part of the chosen people through the acquisition of earthly wealth. I is for irresistible grace.

God's grace cannot be resisted or denied. And P is for the perseverance of the sakes. Once you're in grace, you cannot fall from the numbers of the elect. Not for the sake of ostentation, not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of proving sort of your holiness. This is something that has become vulgarized,

I think, with the, prosperity gospel of 20th century America, but needless to say in Grand Rapids, and even though Gerald Ford was not a Calvinist, he was surrounded by this Dutch Calvinist way of thinking. That's predestination. I mean, if God is omniscient, if he knows everything and he wouldn't be God if he didn't, then he must have known, even before the creation of the world, the names of those who would be saved. Including when he was a youth involved in a local

Christian youth group which would bring in business magnates and, you know, the leading men from the city to give talks to boys and to impress upon them the values of market economics and their Christian fundamentals.

I admit it's a little confusing when you look at it from the outside. You have to try to look at it from the use. But if you look at anything from the inside, it makes sense. I mean, you should hear perverts talk. So that aspect of Grand Rapids really shaped Gerald Ford. That's what the Venusians call negative moral attitudes. For a marvelous cinematic depiction of this, if listeners haven't already, I would recommend

that you check out Paul Schrader's 1977 film Hardcore, where George C. Scott portrays a Dutch Calvinist from Graham. Rand Rapids, whose daughter escapes into the seedy underworld of California. Right. And so Junie was steeped in this as a young boy. Jerry Ford Jr., Junie, he was steeped in this culture and community. And honestly, as you're talking, I can't think of a better value base to slot in in early American society, right, in the 20th century, to essentially be like an incubator for the American ideals that the Americans really wanted our constituency to reflect. It's kind of wild.

Now then it's all worked up. It's fixed. More than I thought I was fucked up. So yeah, Grand Rapids is a Dutch Calvinist town. And then just to the east of Grand Rapids, it's sort of I would consider maybe more a suburban area, you have the East Grand Rapids District. Now, this is where you had the managers, the Petit Bourgeois. This is where they were living. And some in substance, they were no better off than, you know, the folks that were sort of south of the Hill District, except for that

their value base was more focused on, you know, whatever money they had, they would invest into their children's education, and they cared a lot about social status. So when Gerald Ford Sr. was growing up, I guess he wasn't an orphan, but very young he had to get out of school and work to provide because he was the man of the house. And he grew up in West, on the West side, in West Grand Rapids. And his whole life, the goal was to make it out to East Grand Rapids. And he finally did that in 1921 when he bought a home on, I think, Rosewood in East Grand Rapids. At this point, Junie is about five years old. But then they were probably in the house maybe a year.

But then they were probably in that house maybe a year. He couldn't make ends meet. He couldn't afford the space. Before long, they were right back to the sort of the southern, southeastern side of the city, living a home, I think, on Union Avenue. And so this is where Junie spent most of his childhood in this area of Grand Rapids. And in terms of his demeanor, like we've already talked about how he was a temperamental kid, had outbursts of violence.

He would get into fights. But he was a popular kid in the neighborhood. He was outdoorsy. He would go swimming and canoeing and he'd go on hikes. He was a Boy Scout and he would eventually become an Eagle Scout. He wasn't much of a talker. with a pair of paler shoes. The Upper Peninsula and the television is...

If you recall, he had sort of issues with stuttering, and he didn't speak much, but he was known as being like the doer. And he was always down to do something active with the kids. One other thing that he did, consistent with his work ethic, was, remember, he had three younger half-brothers, whom he understood to be his full brothers, and they were

born when he was aged five, ten, and thirteen, respectively. So he's, you know, in some cases substantially older than they are. And he was changing diapers. He was helping Dorothy out rearing those boys Oh right Yes I'm remiss of me there's a famous quote how he says

he thinks he probably changed more diapers than his mother in that era So just I drove all night to find my child

in strange ideas So just to recap, Jerry Ford, he's an outdoorsy kid, very popular among the kids in the neighborhood. He's also sort of a tussler. There's, like, accounts of him breaking a kid's nose when he was in the seventh grade. He also, like, broke his own collarbone. But everybody sort of liked him, you know. He would play jacks with the girls.

With the younger kids, he would play hide-and-seek. With the older kids, he would go out on adventures on his canoe. and, you know, he's a Boy Scout. He spent summers in Mackinac Island, sort of an idyllic childhood. He didn't read much, but there is an account of how his mother got him a series, the Court of King Arthur by William Henry Frost. I'm not sure if you know the story of,

King Arthur, Don, but there are many renditions. There's many, right? Yeah. Which one is this one? Okay, so the Court of King Arthur by William Henry Frost, it's like an early 20th century rendition, and it's essentially Arthur at the stage of his life where he's got the Camelot and the Knights of the Roundtable, and they go off. I think everyone is familiar with it. We're nights to the round table. We dance whenever we're able.

We do routines, and all the scenes, the footwork and picket cables. You know, Lancelot. Galahad, brave Sir Robin. Exactly. I know it from Monty Python. Yeah, I was about to... We should do some Monty Python right here. Yeah.

Bravely bold Sir Robin brought forth from Camelot. He was not afraid to die. Oh, brave, Sir Robin. He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways. Brave, brave, brave, brave, brave, brave, sir Robin. But as I was reading this, And we'll get back to this later on in this episode. The version of the story I like best,

and I think that is most fitting for our purposes, Don, is the origin story of King Arthur. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. King of the who? The Britons. Who are the Britons? Well, we all are. We are all Britons.

And I am your king. Oh, king, hey, very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. by hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. Well, I didn't vote for you. You don't vote for kings?

Well, how'd you become king then? The lady of the lake. Her arm clad in the purest shimmering seymite held a loft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I'm your king. Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

And my favorite version of it, of course, is in the 1963 Disney film, The Sword and the Stone. And we'll get back to that in a little bit. If I went round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had loved a scimitar at me, they put me away. Shut up, will you shut up? Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. Shut up! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! The sort of decisive moment in his childhood comes up

when it's time for him to move from the sort of elementary school age into the middle and high school. Now, I understand that at this time, where you went to sort of junior high, fed right into where you go to high school, So maybe after like sixth or seventh grade, in the pubescent years, let's say, Jerry was faced with this choice because his family's home was located in between school districts, right? And Dick, do you want to talk about what those districts represented and what his options were? Yeah, no problem. So in this era, remember, now he's living in the south, sort of the south central.

region of this of grand rapids and as you say he's equidistant from a school called i think central high which is north of even the hill district and so it's in a nicer part of town and then south of him was south high which was you know that's where the the folks in that neighborhood went went to much more diverse much more diverse right um again this is like where the, I would say, lower middle class lift. Michigan, bunch of way, Cadillac. If I ever meant to go away,

I was raised, I was raised, in the place, in the list, I often think of going back to farms, to farms, golden arms, golden arms. I was going to say South High students, you know, reflective of their relative class position were much more likely to feed right into

the local factories, you know, to finish high school and go straight for a job, not a ton of college admissions from South high school, whereas Central was sort of the opposite, right? Yeah, exactly. To cut right to it, it's like Central was the rich kid's school and South is where the poor and ethnically diverse and racially diverse and all that comes with it. That's where those folks went to school. So it was a choice that both Dorothy and Jerry Sr. were acutely aware of, and they knew that it would basically define who Jerry was for his life, right? ever the woman who's focused on ancestry and lineage and all of that was obviously scheming to figure out how she could get her kid in central i think they had an inn so that they could get the kid they could get junie in central and at the same time you know they were weighing what it would mean and how

it would be different if Junie went to South High. And so you had Jerry Sr. Jerry had a lifelong friend who was someone who lived in the Hill District, a very wealthy man. And he consulted with them at this time. And the two talked about what the different options meant. And it was a very frank conversation. And what they determined was if Junie were to go to central, he would surely make the networking and get the opportunity to carry the family name into this higher echelon and society down. And, you know, the lineage of the family would be secured. But at the same time, it would be hard for Junie to- To fit in. To keep up, yeah, to fit in with the rich kids, right? The rich kids obviously have expensive hobbies and pastimes.

and they do all sorts of things in the summertime that costs a lot of money. And Jerry Sr. saw that as a problem. And also, you know, what it would mean for all of a sudden for Junie to be the poor kid in his crew, right? Up until now, I should say, like, you know, the Fords, they weren't wealthy. Growing up, they were, it was always a struggle to stay in the middle class. There was a lot of tumultuous, you know, moments where they lost everything and were working back to get to the, top. But if it's not clear until now, like, they very much exuded status and they really wanted that sort of image of themselves that they're well off. And so naturally what-

Right. Like Gerald Ford Sr. was friends with Vandenberg, the U.S. Senator from Grand Rapids, Michigan that was serving office in Washington. You know, he was a prominent Freemason. He had connections to the people that were the elites in society but he was just keeping afloat right i would imagine that he would kind of identify in a sense with the the plight faced by junie as himself kind of a lower rung guy moving around in circles above his class position and you know while he could handle that as an adult and I'm sure that he would have wanted Junie to be equipped to handle that as an adult and to deal with anything. I think that probably influenced the decision that, you know, which set of skills is going to best poise Junie to excel later on down the road. Right.

You know, thinking of the future, not just the immediate present. Right. But what I was going to say is what this also meant was that in his, neighborhood in southeast on Union Ave where they were living. Up until then, for all intents and purposes, like the Fords were the quote, rich family on the block, right? Like, there are accounts where Jerry's friends, Juni's friends will mention like when they were kids, like they always loved going to the Ford's house because that's what the sort of they thought was what wealthy people live like because they had a piano in their house or whatever, you know, whatever the sort of symbols of wealth were

for the middle class at the time. So it would be like a shift in Junie's head if you were all of a sudden plopped into Central High where it's like, oh shit, no, this is what, you know, I can't keep up with these are the rich kids and now all of a sudden I'm the poor kid, right? It would be like a crack in the ego that. So, you know, Dorothy and Jerry Senior worked so hard to sort of cultivate and protect. And it's, and just as you were saying, like, Like, here is Jerry Sr. consulting with one of his very wealthy friends out in the Hill District to get sort of advice on like, what should I do with my boy's life, right?

It's not a decision that he does on his own. He like sort of consults with... Brother Mason. The men who he thinks are powerful. Well, whatever the case, ultimately they decided to send Junie, Jerry Ford Jr., they decided to send him to South High. Still, I never meant to go away. I was raised.

I was raised in the place. And so I think it's now the seventh grade. And he is in South High, which at the time was both junior high school, right? You had a wing of the school, which was the junior high school. And then on the other side, you have the, you know, the conventional ninth to 12th grades. Yeah. And we talked about Jerry Sr.'s perspective. on this, and I'd just quickly like to touch on Dorothy's perspective here. Remember, Dorothy,

daughter of the American Revolution, had gone to a prestigious boarding school in Illinois, and then she went off to Wellesley College to study. She didn't get a degree, having married Leslie King, but, you know, she sees the value and comes around to the decision to send Jerry to South High, in obtaining street smarts. And I wonder if that's not because she herself was sort of forced through trial by fire to learn street smarts when she fled a knife-wielding psychopath out of a palatial manse in Omaha, Nebraska some years before, carrying a 16-day-old newborn and, you know, a person more schooled in the ways of the upper class might have just learned how to deal

with a Leslie King and his abusiveness. And so I think that that thick skin and that tough backbone was a real value that Dorothy wanted to be sure to pass on to Jerry. And the high school decision was one of the evidences that we have of her goals for him there. Right. And just one last point on this is, like, I think very much in the calculus was that Junie could go to Central High and sort of be in the middle of the pack or not really shine because all the folks around him, the resources they had were so much greater than what Junie had access to.

So inevitably, they would just be better performers in school or would outshine Junie. Or he could go to South High where he really had a shot at becoming a star. A big fish in a small pond. Exactly. To cut it short again, you know, be a little fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond. So as we're getting into, you know, Junie going into high school, first with junior high, it was sort of an all-American childhood, I think, up until this point. And one of the images that in my head is like, you know, Summers in Mackinah, he's a boy scot. I'm thinking River Phoenix as young Indiana Jones. You lost today, kid. It doesn't mean you have to like it. All right, Don, are you ready for some football?

So football in the 1920s was a very different sport than it is today. It was considered like an honorable sport among gentlemen, right? You could exhibit your strategy skills and also this is the era of the Roosevelt's and the Muir's like you were a tough rough and tumble guy but you're also a smart guy and you could get into fistfights, but you could also play chess and you could do it all. And you were sort of carving the world out into your own will. Few institutions can be identified as more uniquely American than the game of professional football. But few people know the origin of what would become the nation's favorite game.

Gridiron football was the creation of elite American universities. So football was seen as a great display of this, right, of what the, the Cape capabilities of young Americans, young American men. And college football, in particular at the time, was just starting to gain rapid popularity. It wasn't until 1875 when Harvard first played Yale that a set of concessionary rules combined Harvard's rugby-based game with soccer.

So Jerry Sr. and his family would go to University of Michigan Games. They would support the team. And at the time, it was like the NCAA was a very fledgling organization. And I think the NFL wasn't really a thing. And football wasn't like a paid sport. It wasn't, you know, you didn't have professionals. It was an amateur's game. And as I say, really like a way for young men in America to display their character and their grit, you know, it was a way for you to show your chops. Theodore Roosevelt once said, the credit belongs to the man who was actually in the arena,

whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat. At the time, the sports that were played for money and paid sports,

you're talking about, like, boxing and horse racing and baseball. And people very much saw that as a way to taint the integrity of the sport because they felt it led to gambling and dishonesty and all of that stuff was viewed as immoral. And so you didn't want to really taint that with football at the time. and so there was no question when young junie was in the spring of his eighth grade when the boys were trying out for the high school junior varsity that he assembled with his cohort to try out for football having never played and maybe this is a good time don

if you want to sort of give the the listener sort of a visualization of what football was at the time. Sure. Yeah. So having written a paper about the founding of the Green Bay Packers when I was in the first grade, I know that they were founded in, I believe it was 1919, but the NFL wouldn't come into existence for another five or six years. And back at this time, the game was played with no pads on the body. The only headgear was a leather helmet that basically covered up your ears but was otherwise a garment. And the players all played both offense and defense. You ask you a question. You like playing football? I love playing football. There was not such specialization in the positions, but the one thing that's continuous, I think, from

than to today is the sort of brutality of the sport. For a special breed of men called leatherheads, the rules were simple. You hit anybody that comes there. There were no rules. And I think it's interesting, too, that you mentioned this is a uniquely American thing. Football was what soccer was called in the old country.

And it took the name of that more sort of a feat sport, and roughed it the hell up. So in the sense of our Fourth Reich historical continuity, it's interesting to note the American football phenomenon of taking something from the old country, in this case, something called football, and turning it into something else. I think we could trace similar phenomena

to imperialism, to, espionage, to covert operations, all of these different areas where the U.S. is sort of adopting from its British forebearers in the wake of the end of the First World War where, you know, the U.S. comes out as a major power, and it's evolving, so to speak, the old ways. into a new, more sort of technologically advanced iteration that is certainly informed by that settler colonial mentality that we talked about last time. So a bit of a long detour there to say American football that Jerry Ford was playing was not only a way to get popular in school, but also a way to rough people up that he was want to do

and get praised for it instead of getting in trouble. Yeah, and I love that point about football, right? And it plays very well with sort of a superficial theme about names. You're just sort of labeling this game as football that doesn't have, I don't think, any real semblance to what we know is soccer, but, you know, what they called in the old country football. Right. So why don't you tell the listeners how he was recruited to the team?

Yeah, I'll get into that, sure. So it's a brutal sport, as you mentioned. Let's not forget that Jerry was a brutal kid. He got into fights. He was also a big kid for his age. As an eighth grader, he was probably size-wise as big as the, certainly the freshman and maybe even the sophomores. He was a big kid.

And so he shows up on the field, and he knows at this point he's gone. on to the games and he knows how important football is and how it is a ticket to essentially celebrity status in the high schools. And so he shows up on the field and the coach is out there looking at the crowd of huddled eighth graders and he's sort of sizing him up and figuring out who can do what.

And the coach is drawn to Jerry and looks at him and says, hey whitey. He calls him Whitey. Jerry thinks it's because of his hair was white. Whatever the case may be, he says, hey Whitey, He played ball before, and Jerry says, no, he's never played football before. And at that moment, it's almost like providential. You need another player.

Well, that's all we got. He points over, and he says, you're a center. You stand over here next to him, and you hit anybody that comes near him. Anybody that comes near him. And from that moment on, Junie didn't even question it. He was committed to being a center, and he was a very good center. He could snap that ball. he was dancing around

and he really made a name for himself and it worked I mean he became very popular very fast he was an all-city athlete I like him again he's a very handsome young guy so like the ladies were fawning over him he was the all-American teen during this time in the 1928 1929 era not to mention just knocking guys on their ass

day in and day out oh right yeah definitely here here is an avenue for him to really fuck people up right and no one's going to second guess it he's just brutalizing people on the field and it's accepted and immediately he turns that budding celebrity gleaned from his football prowess into exploration of politics in the student environment so he ran for class president during his high school years, but his coaches were concerned that he would dedicate less time to practice if he got the job as class president. So his coaches actually conspired to campaign for his opponent, and they succeeded in convincing, you know, the players and the players to get their

friends to go and vote for the other guy and keep Jerry out of that class president's office. My God. It's almost like exactly what the pros do, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He wanted to spin it into something greater, but was frustrated in that. But nevertheless, he continued to use his football-driven popularity to throw his weight around in the social milieu. So one occasion that really stands out is when a group of leftist students at the high school, from South High School, they were protesting that they didn't have adequate school books, that the school wasn't paying for their textbooks or the textbooks were in bad condition, so they were leading a protest against it. And in the course of protesting, they painted some graffiti on the steps outside of the building on May Day in the year 1931. Wow. So you could imagine in the U.S., this was a time before McCarthyism, before World War II, there was a wider field of possibility in the political sphere in the U.S.

You have been reading in the daily papers about strikes and riots, and you have heard the president deplore them. Perhaps in the safety of your home, it has been hard to realize what such industrial strife really means. Granted, the first Red Scare and the Palmer raids had already taken place by this time. Right. But, you know, the 30s as a decade were the heyday of the Communist Party of the United States. Right. and really the sort of golden era of communist organizing in the U.S. What observers describe as the most crucial battle in American labor history

involving nearly 100,000 men, has practically shut down the entire American motor industry. From Michigan, where the strike started, we bring you these actual pictures of a riot in progress. What happens when a crowd of strikers grows crazy, when destruction becomes the order of the day? Right. And it was right after, you know, you have the Bolsheviks, it was work, it was sort of working up, in Russia. Local police used tear gas in the last effort to disperse the crowd. But even that fails, so they call for the National Guard. No doubt had the Americans sort of inspired by that.

And it hadn't been tamped down. Right. And when the guardsmen eventually arrive, they're greeted with yells and boons. I would imagine that for a working class school like South High in Grand Rapids, where, like you said earlier, you know, this is sort of the proletarian. kids. Their parents are working for the profit of the people that live in the Hill District,

and so they're becoming conscious of the inequality between their educational experience and the educational experience of their peers across town that have this much sort of more well-funded educational system. And Gerald Ford at this time, he picked a side, and it was the wrong side. These pictures of the Minneapolis truck drivers strike, typical of disorders flaring up in various cities, show a spirit of lawlessness which has no place in America. 5,000 are in the milling mob trying to prevent trucks from delivering needed food to the city. A strong guard of police and distribution of nightsticks to citizen deputies fails to check the crowd which closes in in an ugly move. Gerald Ford Football Star gathered up the varsity team like a gang and surrounded the protesters and forced them to erase or remove the graffiti that they had left out in front of the school building.

And it's funny because, you know, we talk a lot in this series about self-mythologizing and, you know, the way that facts get distorted in the retelling. And here's one example, that the story was frequently told that the students painted a hammer and sickle outside, but there's also reason to believe that they, in fact, painted a list of their demands. So it was a much more substantive sort of use of vandalism to exact what they were demanding

and it was sort of smeared as this youthful, simple reference to symbols. Right, right. It's a terrible thing to see the kind of trouble that makes neighbors bitter enemies. Surely there must be some other and better way of settling these.

it was a list of demands that's been sort of repainted as vandalism exactly exactly but nevertheless notwithstanding that it was you know perhaps a legitimate outburst by these students ford took it upon himself to you know enforce order and to rally up the the popular kids in school of the football team to work on the side of the administration. Now listen to the sheriff. I'm sorry that this thing happened. I done all in my part to stop it. I coaxed and pleaded with the men to get off the picket line.

They refused to do it and call me all kinds of names. And I had to take action because the law must be enforced. And that set him up, you know, he continued. to ride that wave. Strikers in many instances led by professional organizers, agitators, and radicals often mistake their organized power for right. Those charged with the enforcement of law and the protection of property also may blunder,

but the merits of no case can justify violence. Scenes like these have more than local significance. They represent a menace to our entire recovery program, under which millions of people have already gone back to work. Riots are but one degree removed from civil war and must be regarded as such. There was another local election, a literal popularity contest. The contest was for the most popular boy in Grand Rapids.

And that contest was put on by a movie studio, interestingly. The prize for the winner was an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. Why don't you listen to your children for a change? No doubt my children could make this appointment for me with the greatest ease. That's easy, Dad. Jefferson Smith. I beg your pardon? Jefferson Smith. He's the only senator to have.

Sure, he ought to be president. I like Jeff Smith. Me too. Oh, you too. Now everybody's been heard from. And Jerry Ford just had to win. So he worked with his younger half-brother to stuff the ballot boxes in the local movie theater.

This was an election that was prone to interference, because basically the way that it worked was everybody that gets a movie ticket can cast their movie ticket into one of the boxes for the local popular boy. Forgive my abysmal ignorance, but I don't know this Jefferson Smith from a hole in the ground. And his little brother stood at the door, because nobody really cares who's the popular boy, right? I mean, you're talking about well beyond the South High population. So his little brother stood there, collected people's ticket stubs, and stuffed them all into Jerry's box. Gosh, Dad. Head of the boy Rangers. Oh, a boy.

No, no, Dad. Jeff's a man. Jeff Smith. Biggest expert we got in Wild Game and animals and rocks. Yeah, and right now he's the greatest hero we ever had. It's all over the headlines. Sure, didn't you see about the terrific forest fire all around Sweetwater? I did. What about it? Well, Jeff put that out himself. And sure enough. He got to visit the White House. He's the greatest America we got, too, Dad. He can tell you what George Washington said by heart.

During Herbert Hoover's presidency, and that's auspicious in its own right, for reasons we'll get into later in the Jerry World series. Right. And here, too, is a great example of sort of one of our themes of, you know, is it Providence, is it fate, or do you make your own fate by exploiting the moment. And it's crazy to see that, like, at this age,

his wheels were turning this way, right? Boy, Ranger, a squirrel chaser to the United States Senate? Listen, Jim, a simpleton of all times. A big-eyed patriot knows Lincoln and Washington by heart. Stands at attention in the governor's presence. Even collects stray boys and cats. He does what? Joe, you know what I'm talking about.

And it's sort of not the mainstream narrative of Jerry Ford that he's a cheater and willing to do what it takes, but that he's an honest, hardworking guy. That's right. And I think in a lot of ways, his ingenuity in that respect was the product of the economic struggles that his family was going through at the time.

Do you really think you can handle this what you'll call him in Washington? Do you think it's all right? I think it's all right. A young patriot recites Lincoln and Jefferson turned loose in our nation's capital. Yeah, I think it's all right. Right, the hard work was born out of the necessity of the struggle, right? Jerry Sr. was working full-time.

And so Junie, Jerry Jr., would be running the house, right? He's taking care of the kids. In the winter, he would be the one tending to the coal furnace. Because Dorothy was also very much sort of a, I don't say socialite, but a networker. And so she had bridge games to go. She had meetings for the DAR that she was attending. She was out there wheeling and dealing

to make sure that they maintained a certain status in the community. Sussing out the local families for a potential mate for a young junior. Absolutely. All of those things that you would think, like Jerry recollects in one of his interviews that she was always writing thank you letters.

She was always writing notes to people. She was always sort of inviting people for dinner, bridge games, and very much wanted to be a part of the social scene. If there's anything to say, if there's anything to do, if there's any other way, I'll do anything for you. Jerry Sr. was working all the time. This was one of their family mottos was hard work. right tell the truth be on time for dinner as we'll discover throughout this series maybe there isn't

much truth to any one of those three family models that they had but he was working all the time he had a sort of rough and tumble professional history in his old job and i think he lost his job in the early 20s he started out working for another guy in paint and varnish and eventually became his business partner and they um they struck out on their own And they started this store to sell varnishes and paint. Like a father to impress, like a mother's morning dress. If it ever made a mess, I'll do anything for you. And this is all happening in the summer of 1929.

1929 is also the year the Ford's moved out of their Union Home, Union Avenue home and into a much larger space, chasing that American dream of moving up in the world. Of course, the upgrade was canceled abruptly. The stock market crashed. Exactly. You have the crash. The business isn't doing so well. And for the second time, I think, right, in the decade, they have to dial it back. and move back to a much smaller place because jerry senior could not afford the mortgage now at the time what junie jerry junior is 16 or 17 right and what's the official narrative here don you know his biographers and presumably based on their conversations with him will refer back to these abortive

attempts at upward social mobility by Gerald Ford Sr. as having instilled in Juney this distaste for debt and having informed his future fiscal conservatism. Sounds like some bullshit. Yeah, I think that it's a total projection looking retrospectively. You know, sure, he had all of these policies of fiscal conservatism, but I think it's more a function of the way that this sort of American narrative of thrift was manipulated by neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman, who would form part of Gerald Ford's circle of economic advisors later on, and we'll get into all that later, but at least according to the official narrative, he was instilled with a sense of frugality and a distaste for taking out debts that you couldn't pay from the experience

of having his family home, you know, not foreclosed, but before foreclosure de facto taken away. Right. To be clear, I do think that Jerry's experience, that we've just recounted rendered him susceptible to the whisperings of the forked-tongued neoliberal economists that would later influence him on a policy level. In fact, this sort of quintessential, archetypical American persona that he embodies is exactly what makes him such a fascinating figure for us to study as a conduit for the rise of the Fourth Reich. I did everything for you. I did everything for you. I did everything for you. I did everything for you. I think the big takeaway here is what we What is confirmed is that Gerald Ford Jr. had developed a strong work ethic. And like many

in his generation, like many of the folks in the neighborhoods he was living in Grand Rapids, he had to work to make his way. He had many jobs growing up, many service jobs. He worked at an amusement park. He worked with his dad. He worked for his dad. I think it is his junior year, 1930 now we're talking, where he worked at a Greek diner called Bill Zuburn. place, and maybe I wonder, Don, you could tell me a little bit about this Greek diner. Sure, so similar to the person whose place he'd eventually take as vice president of the United States, Spiros Agnopoulos, aka Spido Ted Agnopoulos, aka Spido, Ted, Jerry Ford spent his teenage years working in a sort of a greasy spoon Greek diner that specialized in hiring members of the football team.

And they made made a very small amount of money but they were entitled to eat all that they could up to 60 cents worth, which I assume was a lot at the time at the time. exchange for their labor. Yeah, President Ford always recountsing, you know, the pay was $2 a week plus lunch. And just for like to give you an idea, he was working at Bill's Place during the school year, during the lunch hour. So you'd like go to school and then go to Bill's Place and work and then go back to school. So it seems like a pretty hard day's work, right? You're just switching from one thing to another. Yeah. And it was at Bill's Place one day in 1930 when

Jerry would reconnect for the first time since his 16-day-old flight from Omaha with his biological father. Okay, so I want to focus next on a moment in Junie's life, Jerry's life, that is very traumatic and electric. Actually, until I was about 17, I didn't know that Gerald R. Ford was not my father. I learned indirectly first by inference, and then I had a, I think, an interesting but a very startling experience as a young person would have. It's 1930. He's working at Bill's place. I was working at a restaurant across from the high school where I was going to school, and I used to work from 1130 to 1 and make hamburgs and wash dishes and take the money. that people paid for those kind of lousy lunches we serve. But there's some dispute about the year, right?

But we're going to go with 1930, and we're going to say it's April or May. Some folks say 1929, but I think 1930 makes sense, and you'll see why. So Jerry's working at the counter at Bill's Place. Anyhow, I was standing there working one day in this restaurant, my senior year in high school. It's the, you know, I think the lunch rush may have not started. yet. I noticed the man standing across the rather narrow's store, standing in front of the candy counter.

He stood there for a long time. And then something crazy happens. Finally, as I was handling some food or washing dishes. All of a sudden, he turns around, he's confronted by a man. He walked across and... And, well, I'll just let Jerry himself explain. Said, Leslie, I'm your father. I was a little startled first to be identified as Leslie, and then he said, yes, I am your father,

I was divorced from your mother, and he said, would you go out to lunch with me? And I was really startled, and I spoke to Bill Scroooges, who was a good Greek proprietor of this Hamburg joint. I said, Bill, something's come up, this gentleman wants to see me, says he's my father, can I be excused? And Bill Scrooge's was a very great guy, said yes. And so I took my apron off and went off with my real father. So I guess the story is that Leslie was passing through Grand Rapids from Detroit to Wyoming. He had just picked up Lincoln.

He had just come from Riverton, Wyoming to Detroit, to pick up a new Lincoln. And I was working five days a week from 1130 to 1, and one night a week from 7 to 10 for $2 a week plus 50 cents a day for lunch. So I was kind of... Those were the days. Yeah, sure were. Essentially what this is is he's offering Jerry to come live with him, right? A promise of money.

And I'm sure he's laying down that old Leslie King charm, That silver tongue devil he is, he's trying to woo Jerry to come live with him. It's the same outside, driving to the riverside. He invited me out to Wyoming after sort of neglecting me for 17 years. So Leslie Sr. takes his biological son to lunch at the, I think it's like the sherry inn or some fancy lunch spot. They have lunch and then they part ways. Before they part ways, Leslie hands Jerry $25. Oh, yeah. Right? And so this gives Jerry a taste of it, a very real taste of how easy money could come, right?

And he specifically says, spend it on something you wouldn't otherwise get. And what does he spend it on? He spends it on golf knickers. Now, this isn't... He doesn't even play golf. He doesn't have golf clubs. So this is actually really interesting

because we talked about this before and I actually looked into it. At the time, he was like aware of golf and he actually had served as a caddy at his dad's Mason golf course. But there's like very... specific interview where he's like golf was not my thing at this area like I was not into golf and you have to think like he was around these country clubs where he was serving as a caddy

he didn't like golf he didn't play golf but I think he understood what golf meant in terms of social status and so I like to think of like you know teenage jerry like have absolutely no use for the golf pants other than to like maybe this is what rich people wear exactly it's classic society of the spectacle, Guy Debordshire. 100%. By the way, that wasn't the moment you found out that you had a true father. Well, I really had heard some inferences or innuendo that I had a real father and I was living with my stepfather. But this was the first time I ever saw him and spoke to him.

It hadn't sunk in. You know, I didn't pay much attention because my stepfather. because my stepfather, as far as I was concerned, had really brought me up. And no doubt Jerry is traumatized. He goes home, brings this up with his parents to confirm the story. More difficult part of it was going home that night

and telling my stepfather and my mother what had happened and transpired. According to Richard Norton Smith, he cries himself to sleep that night. Even if I cried alone. Yeah. And Leslie had invited him to live permanently with Leslie and his new family. He had a wife. He had in tow with him a little girl. And as we understand it, he also had either with him or maybe he had left them back in Wyoming to other kids, including a boy bearing the name Leslie King Jr. just like Jerry had been named at birth. Yeah.

And Jerry declines that invitation out of hand, but he leaves it off that maybe he'll come visit sometime. Did you have any desire to say to him, why haven't you contacted me before, or why'd you wait 17 years just talking? There was a temptation, but like in politics, Like in politics, you bite your tongue sometimes when you should, so you won't be impolite. It's also interesting to remark.

You mentioned it was April or May 1930. Now, why is that significant, Dick? Right, I was just going to say, Charles Henry King, the patriarch of the King family, this business magnate who had accumulated multi-million dollar empire, he had died in February of 1930. And so here we have Leslie, Charles's failed son, inheriting this gargantuan amount of money, this untold wealth, untold riches.

Yeah, he was the only male child of Charles Henry King. There must have been a slight resentment there. I think particularly when I was earning $2 a week and trying to get through high school, my stepfather was having difficult times and obviously my real father was doing quite well if he could pick up a new Lincoln or Cadillac. Yeah, strange situation.

So, like, what does this smell like to you, Don, right? Like, it's like, rich kid, Braddy Rich kid has a bunch of money now. Like, what is he doing? He's going around to... sort of consolidate and clean up his loose ends and I don't know I wonder maybe you could talk on that a bit yeah I think he's one flipping stacks and getting himself a brand new shiny lincoln and remember at this time a lincoln is like a top of the market automobile and he's also you know he's the king at this point and so I think he does have a desire to

maybe work his biological son back into the fold and to undo a little bit of that shame that I'm sure he still bore with him that certainly in Omaha the people would not have forgotten about what had be fallen the King clan and the King clan will stay in the news Leslie King will stay in the news in Omaha even later later on, which we'll get to later this episode. But at this time, I think he's hopeful that, you know, by throwing around his wad and showing off his new wheels that maybe he can persuade Jerry to come under his wing. And some of this is also coming from a place, I'm sure, of getting back at Dorothy, right?

For sure. I think he wants to sort of plant in the seed in Jerry's head. Like, you know, your mom has sold you a lie your whole life. Because remember, up until this point, everything indicates that Gerald Ford Jr. did not know his real name was Leslie Lynch King, Jr., right? So I got to believe that Leslie Sr. is taking this opportunity now that he has these massive resources

he never had before to clean up house, sort of vengeful way, get back at Dorothy, see if he can recruit Jerry and exercise his newfound power in this really demented way, right? Like he shows up out of the blue to see his young biological son that he's abandoned. Right. And as far as we know, there was never any other efforts on Leslie's part to reach out to Dorothy before this encounter. Yeah. So actually the Boreum book the story here is apparently that leslie senior said to jerry look i um i went into grand rapids i knew i was looking for jerry ford uh and so i was my plan was to go to every high school and just ask if jerry ford goes here and i think like the second high school was south high there you go

so you found him that way needless to say leslie's appeal did not have the desired effect so it obviously didn't work out. Jerry stayed in Grand Rapids. But remember, our boy Jerry was a reader of King Arthur's Camelot. And so I'd like to think familiar with the origin story. And that origin story is about a boy named Wart. It's the sword in the stone who discovers his name isn't Wart. He's by Providence. He's the one that's able to pull the sword out of the stone. And he discovers he is a king. It's a miracle, ordained by heaven. This boy is our king.

Well, my Jove. What's the lad's name? What? Oh, I mean Arthur. Hail, King Arthur! Hail King Arthur! And so this mythology of like, oh, maybe I am actually destined to inherent this kingdom of wealth.

I got to think that was running through Jerry's head at some point in this time. Yeah, I think it feeds in to deepening this duality of Jerry Ford. On the one hand, he's got a chip on his shoulder over the fact that he's got this biological father out there who's super wealthy but has been withholding the money from him his whole life. And he's, you know, grown up in poverty instead of in wealth. And on the other hand, Jerry has this sense of potential and opportunity that perhaps he can get something out of the fact that he has this rich biological dad who talks a big game and presents himself as being this very generous guy. So that will come up a little bit later on, but suffice it to say that this is Jerry's first real exposure to the practice of self-mythologizing, right? His parents, that is, Gerald Ford Sr. and Dorothy, had sold him this lie his whole life about who he was, you know, Gerald Ford Jr. from Grand Rapids, and he believed it.

And so if they had the power to create and shape his identity, then perhaps so too did he. So if you think your life is complete confusion Because you never win the game Just remember that it's a grand illusion Just deep inside we're all the same So during high school having expressed his athletic prowess on the field and his leadership quality in the classroom, Ford was unsurprisingly approached by college recruiters,

and he settled on the University of Michigan. He entered in 1931 upon graduating, high school, and he graduated from U. Michigan in 1934. Part of his consideration in choosing Michigan was that it was closer to his home, that he had that background that you mentioned Dick in attending Michigan football games, and that it was also cheaper. Now, there weren't athletic scholarships at this time, but a local high school, school administrator from South High channeled profits from the South High bookstore to give Jerry

a loan to cover his $100 per month tuition. And Jerry being Jerry, of course, he eventually paid it all back. He was also working at the time, waiting tables, right? He was getting paid like $1.50 a day. Not exactly the kind of money that you would build your nest egg with. he did all sorts of things to just make a couple bucks he would sell blood scout football tickets and by the time he got to a senior year he couldn't really afford to make ends meet couldn't afford school and so he writes he asks his father Leslie

for some money he gets no response another way that he made money was working the kitchen and washing dishes at the frat house for Delta Kappa Epsilon. When I was a freshman, a freshman soft and green, I dreamt of Delta Kappa, of college like the queen, and when upon the woolly goat they gently mounted me, I felt with joy I'd reached at last the Hall of DKEE.

Known as the Deke House, and he was also invited to join the frat, being a popular football player. So he did join the frat, and it was known for wild parties. However, Jerry was the sober guy in the frat. He drank every now and again, and he partied a little bit, but his reputation among his frat brothers was the guy who didn't participate in the debauchery to the same extent as everyone else

And this son of the son of a son of a son of a son of a DKE Like every college fellow I like my whiskey free For I'm a rambling rake of a college man And the son of a DKEe And this is something that the listeners should take note of Right Dick? Yeah, right, he's sort of the sober guy in the room

Gathering dirt on everybody Seeing everyone else sort of let loose and taken notes, which I think we'll see come up a couple times in his life. Another thing I want to point out here is a common theme is like, oftentimes Jerry was not able to sort of get in through the front door of an institution or community or society, right? You have this frat, DKE, where he worked for them essentially first, and then people took a shine to him and invited him in.

And it's a very similar thing you'll see, you'll hear a listener that basically this is how he gets into Yale in a couple of years. But in any event, I mean, yeah. Yeah, I think that even he was sought after for his fiscal responsibility because the frat itself was in a substantial amount of debt. And so they were hoping that Jerry could help to work out the finances and to get them back. in the black. Absolutely, absolutely. And he became popular in the frat, and he was popular in school. He was, after all, a football star. Gerald Ford exemplifies the excellence that is the University of Michigan. As an undergraduate student, Ford excelled at both center and linebacker. During the 1932 and 1933 seasons, he helped lead the Wolverines to undefeated campaigns and two national championships.

He was voted the team's most valuable player in 1934. And he made a lot of friends on that football team. You want to talk about that, Don? Sure. So the most famous story, which is the one that we'll focus on, involves Jerry's black teammate and friend, a guy by the name of Willis Ward. And Willis Ward was actually recruited for track and field

because he was very fast guy. more than for his football abilities, but nevertheless, he was, you know, a star running back on the team. And so the running back in the center, they developed that sort of camaraderie where Jerry was his block man. And they also developed a camaraderie because Jerry, you know, considered himself to be a man of the people, having gone to South High, having had black friends growing up and Willis Ward came from Detroit to the predominantly white

University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and so Jerry was one of the people there one of the few white people there I should say with whom Ward could make a real connection and let's get into the mythology of Jerry and a very famous game that after this game happens it's referenced at every point

in Jerry's life. Absolutely, and it would follow him into his political career. Gerald Ford showed his character and his leadership. As a star football player for the University of Michigan, he came face to face with racial prejudice. When Georgia Tech came to Ann Arbor for a football game. Georgia Tech at this time was all-white. Not only was it all-white,

but the school refused to play against any team, with a black player. So it was all white. Oh yeah. And so when it came time for Georgia Tech to play against Michigan, the Georgia Tech Athletic Department demanded of the Michigan Athletic Department a commitment to bench Willis Ward, who was the only black player on Michigan at the time.

One of Michigan's best players was an African-American student named Willis Ward. Georgia Tech said they would not take the field if a black man were allowed to play. And this created quite a controversy. It became public. You know, the ACLU, I think, got involved. It was the subject of controversy within the student body. They called the group of United Ward Front, and their demands were very simple. Either war plays or the game should be canceled. You know, there were calls for Michigan to boycott the game rather than, bench ward, and Jerry Ford was torn up inside. It was decided at the highest levels that Michigan

would not boycott the game. As a matter of fact, the athletic director of Michigan was the son of a Confederate soldier and had absolutely no qualms whatsoever with Georgia Tech's policy. Joe Ford was furious at Georgia Tech for making the demand and for the University of Michigan for caving in. Michigan had one black player, right? So it's not like Michigan is the vanguard of integration, right? Like it was mostly white kids. Right.

And so the story goes... Ford's quality as a person was easily visible when he threatened to leave the team in response to the university's decision to play without Ward. However, Ford agreed to play when Ward personally asked him to. Jerry was super torn up, that he was going to quit the team or at least boycott the game to stand in solidarity with his friend. The story then goes that both Gerald Ford Sr. and later Willis Ward himself cautioned Jerry against doing that and said, the best thing that you can do is to get out there, play a hell of a game, and take the win.

He agreed to play only after Willis Ward personally asked him to. And show them on the field, you know, this kind of bullshit sports metaphor where somehow Michigan winning the game signifies some kind of a racial victory. The stand Gerald Ford took that day was never forgotten by his friend. And Gerald Ford never forgot that day either. And three decades later, he proudly supported the Civil Rights Act. and the Voting Rights Act in the United States Congress. Well, Ford did play, and he got in some epic hits on the Jim Crow crackers on the other side of the line of scrimmage. Indeed, I think one of his hits was so powerful that they carried out a guy from Georgia Tech on a stretcher

who had reportedly used the N-word as a taunt, and Michigan did win the game. What do you think, Dick? I mean, I'm not sure. I think if you actually boil down the story to its bare elements, it's just a story of Gerald Ford playing in a game that was racially segregated, right? All of the inner turmoil. Right. That's what I was going to say. It's like the story is that Georgia Tech said, we're not going to play with a black kid. And then Georgia Tech didn't play with a black kid. Right. Yeah. So it becomes a part of this mythology, and it actually comes up later in Ford's life and will be carted out as emblematic of Gerald Ford's racial tolerance. Yeah. Michigan changed. University, the state, the country. Ford contributed to that change. So it was that constructive anger. But beloved listener, like so many myths, this one too turns out to bear certain falsified or exaggerated elements. Let's hear it from Willis Ward himself. I was bitched. It hurt Jerry Ford.

Badly. He wrote his father wanted to quit the team. And his father left it up to him. Of course, he was prevailed upon by the alumni to play the game. So he played. Yes, listener, it was the pressure exerted by the Alumni Association that ultimately convinced Jerry to take the field. Not a personal plea from Willis Ward, as has been so oft repeated in the mythological narrative. But, listener, you know, this is Fourth Reich Archaeology. We are not going to leave a stone like that unturned.

And whether self-consciously or not, Jerry gave a pretty perfect description of this process of self-mythology when he addressed the Michigan football team on a campaign stop in fall 1976. great ball team for a meal before I have a little engagement down the road here. Those stories close at a great all-time center. I found this. The longer you get away from reality, figure those stories get. So make all your fame now, and I can only say that they get better because the longer you're away from school, the fewer there are of people to tell the truth about what

to be clear like I don't think that he was among the most racist people and in fact probably was substantially less racist than many of his other peers pretty much at every stage in his life right his superiority complex that he had in his brain wasn't you know based on racial demarcations right and but he was a star at the time he was a star he did this he won against Georgia Tech. I think Georgia Tech was the favored team and they beat Georgia Tech. He was a football star and as he's getting out of college, he does have offers from the pro teams. I think the Green Bay Packers Curly Lambo himself. And the Chicago Bears also and he turns them both down. So I think a lot of times this is shown as an example of like his eyes are sort of on a bigger horizon and he really really

wanted to get into law and this and that but don't forget that like at the time the NFL wasn't what it is today right so like yeah you can go play football but it wouldn't really give him let's put it this way I fully believe that if Jerry Ford was living today and this was happening he would have gone to the NFL you know and rather than maybe serving the military to get his chops Jerry would become a politician after having served in the NFL for 10 years. So either way, this is the mythology that after Michigan offered to play in the NFL, and he rejected it. Okay. So like you said, he's got his eye on law, but law in his eye is really a stepping stone to a political career.

And so in pursuit of that political career, he looks to Yale University, one of the most storied institutions in the country and certainly a highly prestigious law school. And there's just one problem they won't admit him. Yeah, I hear that place is hard to get into. Could be, could be. Ask J.D. Vance. In any event, he doesn't let that stop him. So he says, all right, well, fine. I won't go to law school right away,

but I bet that you guys need somebody to staff the athletics department. And so I guess so, and sure enough. I think it was his coach or someone in the athletics department of Michigan had like a job lead at Yale. And that sort of leads to like, you know, I could be assistant coach of the Yale football team. Why don't I do that? And Yale does, you know, they take him. And so he works as the

football coach or assistant coach. As ever the case with Jerry, you know, the people around him take a shine to him and they offer him another job as the wrestling coach. And then they even offer him like a job as a boxing coach, even though I don't think he had any experience other than his you know childhood street fights right and i think he he lied and said that he did have experience uh to get that job to make a little extra money yeah we don't care jerry's a great guy we're going to put him as a boxing coach i am just a poor boy though my story seldom told i squanded my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles such our promises all i eyes and chest, still the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

We're going to get real deep into the Yale stuff in our next episode, but for now we're going to pick up our narrative in the summer of 1936, when in the off season Jerry Ford goes to work a summer at Yellowstone National Park as a park ranger. On his way out there, he takes a stop at the ranch of his biological father, Leslie Lynch King. Remember the last contact that they had had was when Jerry asked Leslie for some money and got no response, but presumably they had had some sort of correspondence at least to arrange this visit. When he gets to the king home, he's struck by the opulence and excess that surrounds his biological father and his new second family. And remember, we're talking 1936 in the American West. So this is the middle of the great.

depression we're talking about. Oh, if you ain't got the dore me, folks, you ain't got the doorie me, why you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee. That shocking juxtaposition of King's life of luxury really disgusted Jerry Ford. And, you know, not only did he resent his father once again for his own upbringing in poverty, but he also resented the fact that everybody around him was sort of struggling. And here, this little oasis in Wyoming was the sort of province of this man. And I can't help but think, like, you know, at this point, he must know that he has a half

brother that is named Leslie as well, right? So Leslie Sr. had a boy after Jerry with, I think it was Atwood was his new wife. And his boy is named Leslie King. So that's right, listener. There are two Leslie King juniors in the world at this time and we'll let you decide which one is the junior. But so this is this is what I'm thinking like, you know, he's got to have this in his head as well, and you have to wonder in the interaction, like, what was Jerry feeling when once again, Leslie's pumping him up with all of these sort of promises and, you know, all this generosity and all this talk that Leslie always does to sort of charm his way out of a situation, even in confrontational moments. And how does Jerry, our young hero, how does he react, right?

Like, does the grizzly bear come out? Does he cuss? Does he cuss? Does he cuss? Leslie out? Or is he calm? Right. Because, I mean, Leslie's generosity is clearly the kind that comes with strings attached. And so if Jerry had any hope of future prospects of getting money from his biological dad, he would want to play it cool here. And for reasons that we'll discuss later, think that's probably what he did. Now, back to Yellowstone. So Jerry makes his way to the park, and since this is really a podcast

about propaganda and mythologizing of historical figures, I want to read directly from the National Park Service website the way that it describes Jerry Summer as a park ranger. If you're a visual person like I am, We'll post it on our socials, or you could Google, if you're so inclined, the pictures of Gerald Ford as a park ranger to get a sense of what this strapping, blonde buck brought to Yellowstone. In the summer of 1936, Gerald Ford worked as a seasonal park ranger at Yellowstone National Park. Ford later recalled the time as one of the greatest summers of my life. According to his supervisor at Yellowstone, Canyon District Ranger Frank Anderson, Ford was a darned good ranger.

While serving in Yellowstone, one of Ford's assignments was as an armed guard on the bear feeding truck. Now, the National Park Service no longer feeds the bears, but Ford always remembered that duty and often regaled his family with stories about the truck. During his summer at Yellowstone, Ford also worked in the Canyon Hotel and Lodge, meeting, and greeting VIPs. This was a job that Ford at least outwardly expressed distaste for. He explained to his supervisor that it was undemocratic and un-American to give special attention to VIPs. According to Wayne Rapogel, Ford's roommate that summer, one of the duties that Ford particularly enjoyed was the early morning check.

From 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. every morning, each automobile and camp had to be checked for make, model, and state license number. Rapogel indicated that Rangers had to run most of the time to get the 100 to 200 licenses listed in two hours. As a football player, Ford was very fit and saw this duty as an opportunity to stay in shape. Rapogel stated that Ford genuinely enjoyed everything B Rangers had to do. From this part of the west, tis unlikely he'll ever. return. So yeah, as you can see, Jerry had a very formative experience there at Yellowstone.

It both entrenched his class resentment. It gave him a further springboard to explore his budding sexual side. apparently, you know, when he was entertaining all these ladies, it's a real query whether he took advantage of the solitude afforded to him by his ranger's cabin to roll in the hay with some of these visitors. And it's also a part of his myth-making, right? We see here even now that the official publications of the U.S. government cast this very idealized gloss on Jerry's Yellowstone experience to hammer home the image of Ford as an every man, as an outdoorsman, as a hard worker, as a brave young man. as a guy who was dynamic and drew people around him. All right.

Enough with the fun in games and the wilderness and all that. It's time for divorce court. When real couples deal with real life. Divorce Court. When Jerry got back to Grand Rapids after his summer at Yellowstone, he told Dorothy all about his. visit to the King Ranch, and this once again lit a fuse under Dorothy. She instructed Jerry to find her a lawyer because it was time for her to go after all that money that the

deadbeat, abusive, degenerate Leslie King owed her after all these years of failing to pay child support. And remember, Charles Henry King had been giving her a little bit of sort of allowance during his lifetime, but he had been dead now for coming up on seven years, and it was, that hole was being felt in the Ford household. They still had kids under their roof. So, ever the faithful son, Jerry called up a fellow who had been his frat brother at University of Michigan, who was practicing law in Grand Rapids. Let every good fellow of every degree, Viva, D.K.E. Now drink to the health of D.E., VALA DKE.E.

Vila, Vival, Vival, Vival, VAL A more. Vival, Vival, VAL A more, VALA, VALA, VAL A more, VALA, VAL A more, VAL A more, VAL A more, VALA That fellow, whose name was Kelly, talked to Dorothy. He got the claim, and he filed suit in Nebraska court. Now, do we want to put our lawyer hats on here for a second, Dick, and talk about jurisdiction? Yeah, let's put on our lawyer hats and take a step back just for a minute. So remember, Leslie was living in Wyoming. You might remember from our first episode, the Leslie and Dorothy got divorced.

Well, that divorce was in Omaha, Nebraska, where they were living, or where Leslie was living, I think, by the time they split up. So the divorce is in Omaha, and Leslie is living in Wyoming. This is why Jerry called up his lawyer friend, because there is an issue of whether the Nebraska court, which was basically they were the ones, the Nebraska court would have the authority to sort of issue a judgment, whether Nebraska was able to capture assets that were in Wyoming. So, yes, let's put on our lawyer hat and maybe talk a little bit about why that's tricky. Sure. So it was very easy for Dorothy's lawyer to obtain a judgment for $5,600 in back alimony from the Nebraska state court that retained jurisdiction over her divorce with Leslie King. Now, it's worth noting to the listener, $5,600 back in 1937 is worth about $122,000 today. And that judgment was entitled to interest as well. So by 1938, and you can guess, that Leslie didn't pay up once the Nebraska court issued its

order. So the following year, that amount had grown to $6,000, which is equivalent to about $130,000 in 2024. So unable to enforce a Nebraska state court judgment across state lines in Wyoming, Dorothy's lawyer goes to federal court in Wyoming and file suit to enforce the judgment. And there, the process gets held up for a little bit and it's very contentious and at this time indeed the local paper the Omaha World Herald reported on the case and they called it quote one of the most flagrant cases of alimony dodging in the history of the country you never give me your money Listener, there is no reference to any

of this in President Ford's memoirs. We are talking cutting-edge stuff here. Right, it's not part of the self-mythology, but it is nevertheless a highly, let's say, revelatory anecdote. So, afraid that the U.S. Marshals will come and turn his house into a rummage sale, Leslie starts writing letters after the Wyoming court case is filed to Jerry. And he's asking Jerry to help his cause vis-a-vis Dorothy. So we're just going to read one of these letters in excerpt form here, as reported in the Richard Norton-Smith book. So

Leslie writes to Jerry, arrange with your mother for her to make some fair. settlement with me. This is to your benefit in the future. And by the way, while all of this is happening in like early 1939, Jerry writes Dorothy's lawyer, Jerry's frat bro friend, and asks for an urgent $1,200 because Jerry had invested in a business enterprise here out east. I hope your interest to speak. dear listener about this mysterious and urgent request. Unfortunately, you will not find out about what it pertained to in this episode, but in the next. So please do tune in next time to hear all about this $1,200, Jerry needed for an interesting business center prize.

But don't worry the back in the limousie But soon we'll be away from here Step on the cash and wipe that tear away But don't worry, we won't leave you hanging right there We will at least bring you to the conclusion of this divorce drama Jerry pushes a settlement at $4,000 to get that cash quick I have a structured settlement but I need cash now Leslie wants to pay it in installments,

but Dorothy smartly doesn't take his word for it without any collateral. Now, just to give a sense of what Jerry was pushing for, he was encouraging Dorothy to lose $2,000 off the top of what she was asking for. That's equivalent of about $50,000 difference. in today's dollars. Leslie says no dice, no collateral. Take it or leave it. Jerry pushes back on Leslie and continues to encourage him to post the collateral. Leslie is kind of saying that he doesn't have anything that's valuable enough to post as a collateral for a $4,000 obligation, but that's kind of bullshit. Sounds like some bullshit. Totally. Total bullshit. At the same

time, Leslie is sending his son, Leslie, to a prestigious boarding school in the East Coast, which comes with a hefty tuition bill, as a listener will understand. And so his claims ring totally hollow that he doesn't have the money to put up the collateral. In any event, Jerry pushes back and he writes back to Leslie, I feel that more amicable relations can exist on all sides. Consequently, I am believing in you as for your own honesty. Please, Dad, do as you agree or else. I'm afraid our now splendid relationship will have a hard time.

I know you will, for I am counting on it. Wait a minute. So now he's referring to Leslie as dad. He is. Listener, remember when we pose that question about Jerry's attitude towards his father during his visit en route to Yellowstone? Well, if he's talking about a splendid relationship, I guess it couldn't have been nearly as strong as his internal reaction apparently was. You have inward Jerry, outward Jerry. He's playing, I think, right, he's playing his dad.

He's playing Leslie by saying, dad, let's keep our splendid relationship together. Yeah, he's playing Leslie, but Leslie sees him. right through it and he pounces on what he perceives as Jerry's weakness writing back nobody's trying to cheat you Gerald as I have told you several times he then refers to Jerry's erstwhile girlfriend by the name of Phyllis Brown more on her next time as well writing I'm very much interested in you and Phil and if times would get better and when they do I am going to help you. Remember what I'm telling you, old boy.

Meanwhile, remember, Leslie, the piece of shit that he is, is sending his kid, the other Leslie, to New England for school. And so he's driving his boy out to New England from Wyoming and goes through Nebraska. And on his way to New Haven, Dorothy has Leslie arrested in Nebraska. He spends a night in Omaha. and he pays a $2,000 bail to get out. And then this is when he writes a real rager.

He takes up his pen and he writes a real rager to our young hero. I'm going to fight this to a finish. I'm sure it won't be very pleasant for all concerned as the publicity in all newspapers won't do anybody any good. I want you to show your colors for me. you know down in the bottom of your heart your mother never spent this money on you and i'm sure you being a kang would not be a party to getting something for nothing so dorothy needed the money right and humbled by this very severe threat and maybe she thought she may have taken things too far right

it's not lost on me that he had to pay a two thousand dollar bail which is basically equivalent to the amount of money he wanted to lop off the $6,000 that was due. So humbled by that threat, she agrees to accept the money, and she does accept the money. And then what she does is she writes her son, Jerry, and attaches the check. And she says, Have a good time. Now you know what sign of the fence your bread is butted on. Okay, now, so I'll say, like, I'm a first-gen American, and when I've heard this,

I didn't really know what it meant. I had to rely on my co-host, Don, to explain it to me. What, like, what does this even mean? What side of defense your bread is buttered on? Yes, well, being a third-generation mid-westerner, I'm very much familiar with the vocabulary of passive aggressiveness. What Dorothy is saying here is essentially, Jerry, you rat fuck? If the money means this much to you, more so than your mother's dignity,

then take it and go off with Leslie King, essentially. So am I right to say that after deducting her the legal fees that she had accrued for the frat bro lawyer they had hired, she sends that balance, but then he just promptly sends it right back, right? Yep, so the story goes. So the story goes. The guilt trip worked. And he was not about to bear the emotional burden of taking money and tacitly admitting that, you know, he had pushed for this settlement against his mother's best interest.

You're going to carry that way, carry that way for a long time. Right, and this money essentially becomes Jerry's inheritance from Leslie, because he never sees Leslie again. Leslie dies shortly thereafter in February 1941. Oh, and reportedly from some allergic reaction to aspirin, right? That's weird. You want to talk about that? Yeah, that cause of death raises a red flag in my eye, at least.

I mean, we're talking 1941. Aspirin is not new on the market. As a matter of fact, by this time, Eiji Farben had already come out with heroin as an alternative to aspirin with purportedly fewer side effects. So, you know, the fact that he would just be taking aspirin as like, you know, a middle-aged man and not know that he had this death. allergy to it, it doesn't really pass the smell test in my eye. I wonder if maybe Margaret Atwood, his second wife, not to be confused with the author of The Handmaid's Tale, I wonder if she didn't poison old Leslie and give him his comeuppance once and for all.

Who knows? I don't think we ever will, but it's worth considering. I love this fan theory of yours. This is maybe one of my favorite fan theories of yours in the Gerald Ford Cinematic Universe. You got to think, Leslie King, he was a violent man. He was an abuser. Sure, when he was younger, he was probably worse. But, you know, as far as I can tell, these scumbags that are scumbags to women, they're always going to be scumbags.

And so there's nothing that suggests he wasn't also abusive to Atwood. And likely what happened there was Atwood just stuck. get out better than Dorothy or whatever you want to say. So I totally buy the story that maybe Atwood poisoned Leslie is sort of a form of self-defense from any further violence. And another rhyme with the life of Gerald Ford Sr. Remember, Gerald Ford Sr.'s dad died having been run over by a train. And he was purportedly on his way back from St. Louis, where he was living a double life with his child bride on his way back to the marital bed of Gerald Ford Sr.'s mother, whom, by the way, George Ford had also married when she

was just 15 years old. The only witness to George Ford's death by train was the self-same child bride. And so perhaps she also would have had the opportunity to do in the two-timing George Ford by tossing him on the tracks. We'll have a lot more murder, mayhem, espionage, secrets, and sex in our next episode set in the Northeast between the Jazz Age Manhattan of New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University, in whose hallowed halls walked not only Gerald Ford Law student and coach, but also much of what would become the group of founding fathers of the CIA. For now, though, I'm Dick.

And I'm Don saying farewell and keep digging. You'll be swell. You'll be great. We're going to have the whole world on a plate. Starting here, start now. Honey, everything's coming up, roses. Clear the decks, clear the tracks. You've got nothing to do but relax.

Blow a kiss, take a bow. Honey, everything's coming up, roses.