Fourth Reich Archaeology - Jerryworld 4: WAR, Pt. 2

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

We're back in Jerryworld in times of war. After a quick recap, we follow Jerry Ford into the Navy in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Jerry quickly finds himself in his element - leading sports and physical training among the recruits just like in his (very recent) coaching days. But he's not contented with stability and gets back on his grindset, landing himself significant promotion and a spot on the bridge of a light carrier in the Pacific theater. Once again, the hand of providence seems to guide Jerry through dangerous situations, brushes with death, and up the ladder. First in the Navy, and later on the Grand Rapids political scene.Jerry kept in regular contact with his step dad and stayed abreast of the goings-on in his hometown, even while overseas. Gerald Ford Sr. began to serve as a surrogate for Jerry Jr. in the Republican Home Front group - a well-intended conspiracy of local leaders and likely freemasons to unseat the party boss holding the keys to political participation in Michigan; Frank McKay.Jerry's participation in the political war against McKay parallels in some respects his participation in the hot war in the Pacific. Each bring their typical (for Jerry) mix of luck, cunning, charm, and timing.We even check in with Harry Conover and follow the eventual termination of Gerald Ford's partnership in his modeling agency.

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. where you were 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 a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of science. I'll never apologize for the United States of 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 on. 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. He has a mouse.

He knows so long as to die. Freedom can never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. insecure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. You get a lot of killers.

Why you think our country's so innocent? This is not going to see. I am. I'm going. Bigged forth Reich is coming. We need that forth Reich. Archaeology. This is Fourth Reich archaeology.

I'm Dick. And I'm Don. We'd like to welcome you back for part two of Jerry World for War. To recap, we talked about the presidential election of 1940, the rumblings of Nazism in America, which were contemporaneous with the Third Reich, and how Jerry Ford's involvement in America first, that sometimes Nazi-adjacent student society turned mainstream political movement, ultimately caused Jerry's application to be dinged by Hoover's FPI.

Right. Following up on what we had started to develop in Jerry World 3 about his time at Yale, we compared and contrasted Jerry's involvement in the America First Committee, of which remember, listener, he was a founding member, the faculty advisor of which was the CIA's Dickie Bissell. And we compared his involvement in that isolationist group with his support for the interventionist presidential campaign of Wendell Wilkie. Now, of course, once Wilkie secured the Republican nomination in 1940, the isolationist movement was really left without a candidate to represent. present them. This is the inflection point that Philip Roth played with in his novel, The Plot Against America, which, I believe, was adapted into like an HBO series, premised on the idea that Charles Lindberg defeats Roosevelt and keeps the U.S. out of World War II.

Well, that didn't happen, and it couldn't have happened because, as Jerry Ford witnessed firsthand, the people demanded Wendell Wilkie as the Republican candidate, and he was in their ranks cheering We Want Wilkie at that 1940 convention. We heard a great deal about Wilkie's political platform, which I think our listeners would agree upon review of the clips that we played from his 1940 campaign advertisements is leagues to the left of today's Democratic Party across a number of issues. And that was the political milieu in which Gerald Ford first got involved in electoral politics. But his involvement in the 1940 campaign, as we learned last time, was somewhat hamstrung

by the local party boss Frank McKay. Recall, listener, that Frank McKay brushed off Gerald Ford when the young Jerry asked him for a spot in the Wilkie campaign in the Michigan State Party apparatus. Now, that will become even more important in part two, as once again, the Ford family butts heads with the McKay political machine. Politics aside, Gerald Ford was eager upon receiving his law degree from Yale to enlist in some kind of war, any kind of war, for storm. Forst starters, he sought to enroll in the Cold War as a foot soldier special agent in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Now, as you said, Dick, Jerry Ford was rejected by Hoover, probably because of his association with the America First Committee. Using our patented Fourth Reich archaeology dig site

approach to understanding the deep history of the 20th century, we kept things local to try and understand the context in which Gerald Ford as a Michigan applicant to the FBI was rejected. So we looked at how Jay Edgar Hoover and his organization were walking a thin line. On the one hand, you have the Roosevelt administration, you have Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, and they're very keen on building up the case to bring the U.S. into the European conflict on the side of the allies, right? And on the other side, you have Hoover and the FBI's extreme anti-communist objectives. And to a large extent, those objectives overlap with the geopolitical goals of the Nazi movement, right? So just as Hoover's FBI keeps a watch on Henry Ford and his stooge Harry Bennett's violent crackdown on labor organizing in Michigan without intervening therein, At the same time, he is not willing to go out on a limb and hire a guy like Jerry Ford

who has these connections with the America First Committee because there could potentially be some political blowback. And hopefully, listener, we have helped you, as it certainly helped us in studying this issue, to put a little nuance. on our understanding of Hoover and of the FBI on the spectrum between absolute American Gestapo and law enforcement agency. Through all this, we picked up artifacts such as the mid-20th century American Nazis' reliance

on free speech that are still with us today. Now, when we last left off, Jerry had just... been accepted into the United States Navy and that's where we're going to follow him now. and you'll be my last love. I will never make you blue. I'll be true to you. In this whole world, you can love but wonder. Let me be the wonder.

So Jerry Ford officially enlisted in the Navy in April 1942, pursuant to his December 1941 application right in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, his reputation preceded him to the Navy. Recall that Arthur Vandenberg, the U.S. Senator from Grand Rapids and family friend of Gerald Ford, Sr., had written a letter on Jerry's behalf in 1941, and Jerry's ONI application had given rise to a substantial background check. So he's not coming in as a draftee or as somebody like many other men of the greatest generation coming in as mere volunteers ready to take any role that's assigned to them. Otto, what are you doing? I don't know. I just got an urge to join the Navy.

You're being brainwashed. Yeah, probably. Yvonne et niage. So Jerry's work corresponded to his experience. He worked first as a trainer or an instructor in the physical fitness program that the armed forces were rolling out at the time. A great all-time sports hero, Jack Dempsey, is today in the United States Coast Guard, in charge of physical training of the men of the LSTs and the LCIs in the Pacific. Another champion, Gene Tunney, got into the big fight early. He became a commander in the Navy, also in charge of physical education.

And this was common for college football coaches and athletic directors and the like, who were recruited in large numbers to serve in similar roles. Ex-heavyweight champ, Gene Tunney, pardon me, Lieutenant Commander James J. Tunney of the U.S. Navy is making rough, tough and rough. rugged man out of the Navy's new recruits. A two-mile run before breakfast, it's just an appetizer. And as it were, after a month or so in Annapolis, getting basic intro training to the Navy. Tunney has worked out a complete system of physical training for the Navy, five weeks of it, and has been put in charge of the entire program. His system stresses developing stomach muscles.

Yes, sir, after five weeks of this kind of workout, the boy should be able to do anything. and eat anything, even iron rations. Jerry was sent down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to the UNC campus. Once again, he had been here before. This was familiar terrain as he had spent one of his law school summers taking classes down at UNC. And immediately he became a big man on campus, right? He's really in his element here in the college,

mill you he was leading the calisthenics he was going to frat parties apparently still even though by this time he's like 28 years old uh and he's getting special privileges he's turning the riz up to 11 and he is getting in the room wherever the room happens to be hot. So, for example, when the singer Kate Smith came down to UNC to do a live radio broadcast. Hello, everybody. It is my happy privilege to introduce a new song. God bless America. And brought in tow a group of celebrities, Jerry was there backstage, right?

He, in fact, at that very event, met a young movie star by the name of Ronnie Reagan. Albeit neither man apparently recalled their encounter in later years. They were there together. And thanks to Jerry's experience in the Conover Modeling Agency and his relationship with Phyllis Brown, even though he maintained his Midwestern charm and his sort of oafish personality traits. God bless America, man that I love, stand beside her and guide her through the night with a life, He was more than comfortable in the room with, you know, B-movie stars and with singers. And apparently he was also hanging out with baseball players and pro athletes that would come through there

and meet the troops and meet the trainees and stuff like that. So he's really in his element having a blast and keeping a pretty high profile, notwithstanding his kind of unassuming demeanor on the personal level. Right. Having dated Phyllis Brown, I mean, hard to be humble when your girl is stunted on the jumbotron, right? He at this point has been with what I think we refer to as the predecessor, maybe the inspiration for what's considered as a supermodel in America. So he, you know, I think there was quite a bit of ego going on for Jerry Ford at the time.

But yeah, and we should say that the last thing that he did before really digging in all the way to his military career, the last coda or exclamation mark on his modeling career. Oh, right. after Pearl Harbor he landed the fucking cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in like in like Navy garb

right was that is that wrong do I have that wrong yeah no no no that's right it's funny because his hair was it's an illustration right at the time Cosmopolitan

was still using illustrations primarily for their publicity and their cover shots as opposed to other magazines like Look magazine where Jerry and Phyllis had a pretty substantial photo spread in one of the issues during their courtship. No, this was like a, it's like a silk screen print, right?

For print media at the time, it was much cheaper to do that kind of print than to do a photo. Right. It's not immediately apparent looking at the photo of the Cosmo that it's Jerry and Phyllis, especially because Phyllis, who is a brunette, was drawn as a blonde. It's her facial features, but the hair is blonde. And Jerry, who is blonde, was drawn as dark-haired to make the blonde hair of Phyllis really pop off. So you can look at the picture and not really tell that it's Jerry, but he always acknowledged that it was him on the cover of Cosmo. And funnily enough, Phyllis later on actually denied that it was Jerry and said that

it was some other guy on the cover of Cosmo with her. So it's just once again, conflicting narratives, everybody is out for their own story building up their own myth and I tend to think that it probably was Jerry Ford just because really everybody seems to say that it was including I think cosmopolitan like you can find prints blown up of the cover on eBay that say that it's a picture of Gerald Ford like there's plenty out there that corroborates that it was Gerald Ford but maybe it wasn't who knows yeah but if it wasn't it's even funnier because he certainly went along with it that's right but back to the story to our man i guess 1940s van wilder on unc chapel hill doing his thing as time went on he started sort of

getting the itch that he wanted to be where the action was and one thing about jerry which i'm sure the listener can put together he learned from his mom was that he was always writing letters to anyone who might pull strings on his behalf and so he was constantly writing letters to Washington and to folks he could carry favor from and in doing so he was applying for sea duty at the time right but that is why it is so fitting that this ship is named after a sailor of tremendous character, integrity, and wisdom. You know that, Susan. He wanted to get into the action, and he wasn't trying to hide from combat, but he didn't want just some shit detail that was sure to get him killed. Gerald Ford was raised in American

Heartland. He grew up in Grand Rapids and became an Eagle Scout. He played football at the University of Michigan on a team that won two national championships and listened to this on that great team, he was named MVP, not bad. The Navy is a respectable place. He was looking for a respectable post. He then went to Yale Law School, and after Pearl Harbor, he volunteered to serve. President Ford joined the Navy and asked to be sent to sea. And something with, you know, an acceptable degree of risk, right? He wanted to do that very badly. He never really knew why he felt it was a calling.

So ultimately, he sent over to the USS Monterey. He was assigned to a new carrier, the Monterey, becoming a plank owner himself on its commissioning in 1943. From there, he sailed to the Pacific and saw action and a lot of action in the Pacific. War. And it's May 1943. The Monterey is an aircraft carrier. It's got a bunch of planes, a bunch

of warplanes that launch off of it and go do bombing raids and secure territory in the Pacific. We're talking about the Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. It's not a major ship. It's not as big as some of the

larger ships in the U.S.'s fleet at the time. I think it was sort of known as, being a fast ship and nimble and it was you know it did have warplanes that would take off or launch from its deck yeah as i understand it this type of aircraft carrier that was like built on top of a leaner frame and hull but supported like a huge flight deck and a hanger deck and everything kind of a death trap like it was commissioned after a lot of the major carriers had been destroyed or damaged at pearl harbor that's right that's right and so it was like but it's such a goofy

like we'll post pictures but if you look at it it looks like shit yeah it and they had to like not retrofit but like they had to load it in certain ways to make sure it didn't like list to the to the porch side when it had its full bar of planes and bombs and all of that so yeah totally they filled up a bunch of the the one side of it with cement so that it wouldn't like to offset weight on the other side like just just goofy stuff that I'm sure at the time it was considered necessary but really not the best design, which will become relevant momentarily. Right. And maybe this is what was going on in Norfolk.

So now let's talk about how Jerry joins the crew of the Monterey. The Monterey has just taken on some repairs or perhaps modifications in Norfolk, Virginia, and was going through the Panama Canal headed towards. Panama City and that's where it was obviously, you know, Panama City being the gateway to the Pacific. So at the time, Ford is at a naval station called Naval Station Coco Solo on the eastern coast of Panama. And he needs to get to the Monterey to start his tour with the ship. And, you know, Panama in the 1940s, to some degree even today, it's very difficult to navigate across land.

But what made it even more difficult during the war time was that it was this military zone, the Panama Canal Zone. So you couldn't just, like, across the country in a short, short time. Here we are the night before sort of the Monterey is set to embark into the Pacific Theater. It is sitting in Panama City. Jerry Ford is on the opposite side of the Isthmus at Naval Station Cocoa Solo, and what is he doing? He's getting together with some of his old football or frat buddies

and taking on the Panamanian nightlife and what he called a movable feast. So he's getting loaded, right? And he is thinking about, you know, he's worried about the fact that he's got to get across, basically get across the country to get to a ship to take off in the morning. And one of his buddies tells him,

his buddies who's a pilot for the Navy told him, don't worry. You know, we'll do our drinking, and then I'll fly you across the canals of it. So they go ahead and they have a good time. Always trust a drunk pilot. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Fourth Reich Archaeology, words of wisdom.

There's always time for one more. Hell yeah, definitely. If you've got a buddy, a drinking buddy, that promises to fly you to your destination in the morning. Absolutely. And so the morning comes, or I guess late into the night, and they're getting ready to go, but as Jerry would recall, at that point, the goddamnest rainstorm you ever saw rolls in. And it is just pouring buckets of rain. And it looks like our young hero is about to miss his call time. But don't worry. The drunkard pilot convinces Jerry to get on board, and they fly through wind-blown Panama over the wind-blown Panamanian skies and this nail-biter of a rainstorm. And not to mention an unsanctioned flight through a U.S. military zone to try and get Jerry to his ship. And they make it. Panama, a Panama!

Panama. And to me, this is just a great little tidbit, another example of how Jerry almost supernaturally makes it on time, right? What would have happened if he didn't make it on time, Dick? Well, yeah, I mean, if he was late, he would have faced a court martial, right? If you're due to be somewhere, this is a strict order in the military, you follow your orders, and if you're not there, you face, you know, you may face court martial. Even worse That's called going AWOL

That's right Even worse He's getting in a plane with a guy He's been drinking with all night And they're in They're flying through You know This horrible

Rainstorm In a military zone They could have died Right But they don't He makes it And he sets off on the Monterey Now

This is where some You know This fantastic thing happens On the Monterey It's just like pretty much any other station in Jerry's life. At the outset, almost immediately, he becomes a man of the people on the ship. He was a star on the Monterey. Sort of think of him as a promoter of acts on the ship.

Recruiting musical talent. He was recruiting and organizing boxing matches, exhibition boxing matches. He was holding classes for calisthenics and weight training. He was organizing games. I mean, he was a popular guy in no time. He was also the editor in the ship's newsletter, the flat top flashes. And this is really, this is all important because news of sort of Ford as the standout idol on the ship made its way to the Monterey's captain, Captain Hunt.

And let me tell you, once Jerry found out that he was on the captain's radar, I mean, he made quick work of the situation. He played the captain like a fiddle. We've covered by now how Ford is always quick to convince authority figures to take them under their wing and teach him their ways. He did this in Michigan. did this in Yale. Here too is another example. The ship's assistant navigator had just stepped down and despite having no prior experience, Jerry becomes the ship's assistant navigator. And he cozies up to the chief, the navigator, a guy fellow by the name of Pappy Atwood. and through him he masters the job

and through that he's elevated eventually to this officer of the deck which gives him this privilege position of being at the bridge level throughout the remainder of the Monterey's campaigns which is I mean talk about a classic Jerry Ford come-up story you want to take it away from here yeah I mean it's it's amazing right like thank god that captain hunt happened to be a huge football fan and when jerry comes up and is ready with story after story from the trenches of michigan football yeah i mean that's just

uh uh i can't think of anything that's not a sexual metaphor here I mean, it's downright pornographic. It's amazing. I mean, we talk about self-determination, and we talk about being in the right place at the right time and fate and all of that bullshit. But, I mean, there's so much smoke that the fire is undeniable. Totally. Totally. And so, you know, the mission goes well for Jerry.

just to continue the story of his hangover from Panama, that he did describe the smell of the ship from Panama to Pearl Harbor. You got to shave one testicle. All the crops go over to the other testicle. You got to light the hair on fire on that one. When they all go scurrying out, you take a nice picture. is the worst smell that he has ever experienced in his life

because everybody himself included, I'm sure, we're just puking their guts out that whole time. Probably a mix of alcohol and rough seas, but you could imagine. And this is something, you know, I'd like to paint for the listener a little bit of a picture here of if you all have, have seen the Paul Thomas Anderson film, The Master.

There's a pretty lengthy sequence towards the beginning of the film with Joaquin Phoenix's character, Freddie Quell, in the Navy, and spending some time out in the Pacific Theater. And it really captures the majority of the time being kind of boring downtime. time. And of course, unlike Freddie Quell, who uses drugs to pass the time, Jerry Ford used much more wholesome means of entertainment. But the atmosphere, I think, is one that can be taken away from a viewing of that picture. And so Ford aboard the Monterey navigated with its crew, the Pacific Ocean. And they were involved in quite a few different missions. In fact,

the Monterey holds the record for the most nautical miles traveled by any ship in the Pacific theater during World War II. So they were covering a lot of sea. The Monterey took part in dozens of battles, including the famous Marianas Turkey Shoot, where in two days, the U.S. fleet shot down something like 600 Japanese warplanes and sunk three Japanese carriers. So these guys are seeing some real action. It is June 1944, and what had been a mere skeleton of American sea power only two years before is now an awesome force to reckon with.

Carrier Task Force 58, backed by the battle fleet of Admiral Spruance numbers 15 carriers. Seven battleships, 21 heavy and light cruisers, and 69 destroyers. U.S. planes outnumber the Japanese, nearly 221. The encounter is to be the last great one-on-one battle of aircraft carriers and Japan's last chance to stem the tide of allied victory in the Pacific. History refers to the engagement as the Battle of the Philippine Sea. of the Philippine Sea, but the American pilots will always remember it as the great Mariana's turkey shoot.

Now, of course, Jerry is not the one that's doing the shooting, but he's right there on the bridge. So he's got really, you know, if you think about war, like a football game, Jerry is kind of upgraded from the center position to a real quarterback's position, right? If not, drawing on his coaching experience, to call the plays, and to be in the room once again. Now, meanwhile, Jerry did not lose contact with his life ashore. For example, the Harry Conover modeling agency in which Jerry had invested either $500 or $1,000 from Conover, and according to the corporate charter of the Cunover modeling agency, Jerry was entitled to a 50% share of the profits.

Perhaps that actually pushes us in favor of thinking it was, in fact, a $1,000 investment, not $500. Yep, yep. But what he was getting in return was not a ton, especially given the high profile that Conover was making for himself in the modeling business. And so even from his posting on the Monterey, Jerry corresponded with a lawyer friend to get an accounting of the Conover modeling agency and to seek his fair due of the profits. And ultimately, he settled with Harry Conover for a buyout. worth five thousand dollars and once again i mean just maybe this supports our theory that we teased in the last episode of jerry world but i don't know something about that just it doesn't

really seem like that's all there is to the story because why would he settle for so little right Especially when you think about by the time Conover's sort of business venture comes to an end by the time of his death, that's like a multi-million dollar business that he's built. Right, right, exactly. And according to Carol Conover in her book, even after Jerry had gone away to the Navy, he was occasionally making an appearance. back in NYC, back in the offices, and maintaining a close friendship with Harry. So just something about that whole arrangement smells a little funny. Maybe let's just go back to our story at hand. with the Monterey in the Pacific.

So, you know, as you mentioned, the Monterey was involved in many military campaigns and battles, but perhaps the most dangerous encounter for the Monterey and its crew came in December 1944, and the adversary was not the Japanese Empire, but instead, Mother Nature.

Station special sea and anchor detail. Make all preparations for... are getting underway. Make all preparations for heavy weather. Dismiss from quality. A typhoon was rolling in. Typhoon Cobra was the ultimate designation. It's a Category 3 storm and in the Pacific. So you're talking about winds at 90 knots, which is like 100 miles per hour.

Wind, waves, swells of 60 feet. And it's causing a lot of chaos. I never even heard the word paranoid before he was. Typhoon off the Philippines. An American carrier plows through raging seas in a grim 48-hour fight with a savage tropical storm. Crewmen, battling winds which threaten to sweep them overboard, tie down planes which have broken loose on the carrier deck. Wind velocity reaches 75 miles an hour at the climax of this merciless storm. Some craft of this task force are lost, but the carrier is safe.

ships and men win a battle with weather yeah i saw that at one point the monterey with one of these gusts of wind tilted 70 degrees and stayed at that tilt for like 20 minutes so just imagine 90 degrees right that's horizontal right the flight deck is vertical perpendicular to the surface of the water 70 degrees tilt for 20 straight minutes. That's like the 2 o'clock hand, right? Like if you're looking at a clock. That's like 2.45. Captain, the barometer is still dropping.

I've seen it. Captain, the chief engineer wants to know if you're going to take on ballast. No, tell him no. Captain, I suggest that we do, sir. I'm not going to fall up a few lines with salt water. Yeah, you're looking at that angle, and that's quite an angle to be at. There was one quote in the Richard Norton Smith biography from one of his shipmates. He said,

We had a chief petty officer that washed overboard. The next wave caught him and washed him back aboard. Fuck. Yeah. Crazy if true. Fucking crazy if true. So it was, I think, so the date is, and, you know, we have the date. I think it's December 18th, 1944.

is when the storm is really, when the Monterey is really in the ship. You down there in the engine room, I want power. Power on the starboard engine. Do you hear? Emergency flank power. You want the ship to go down, we're in a typhoon. And it's actually an issue with navigation. The ship, inadvertently, they got closer than they wanted to to the eye of the storm. And there was like this long day and a night of fighting the storm

with the crew, you know, on the deck fighting, you know, battening the hatches, doing all the stuff Navy men do, and... Captain, I don't know whether we can keep on riding when I stern to the wind. With Ford on the bridge, sort of, as you say, Don... Calling plays. Calling plays, being the assistant coach, being the quarterback captain of the team. And then it gets, you know, late into the night,

there's sort of a quiet period, and Ford goes down to maybe catch some rest. We were right in the midst of a typhoon off the coast of the coast of the... coast of the philippines in December of nineteen forty three this typhoon was a very serious one and in the course of the night three of our destroyers rolled over and sank because of the waves were so violent and they were lacking in fuel so they were riding high in the water and everyone drowned well most of the people on each of the destroyers drowned i think there were several survivors of each of the three. When he talks about this night, Ford credits his, I guess, his ability to fall

asleep instantly. He has a supernatural ability, I guess, to just lay his head down and fall right asleep, which is spooky. I was down in the sack. I didn't have the watch and the general quarters came on. But anyway, he's resting in his cabin and a few hours later there's an explosion. During this storm, our carrier caught fire. I ran up to the flight deck. And it wakes him up. He's woken up by the smoke, and he makes his way from his quarters to the bridge. And to do so, he has to get up onto the surface of the ship, onto the flight deck. As I stepped on the flight deck up here, the ship rolled this way. Remember, the storm is still going on. The deck is just drenched and rain swept and with a pitch or a roll I guess to the side.

The ship was rolling at least 25 to 30 degrees. Ford slips and starts sliding more than 100 feet. From the starboard side of the ship to the port side of the ship. And I went down like a toboggan slide toward the lower end of the flight deck and I put my feet out and fortunately hit the little rim that surrounds the flight deck. By sheer luck, his foot catches what's called the tow rail. And, you know, when he recalls this moment in his life, he obviously he remembers it as a point in his life where he got the closest to death. In retrospect, I guess I was darn lucky. I didn't get hit by a bullet,

but, or he'd come close in this incident. You were heading for the ocean. I was heading for the ocean. The ocean was over here. And fortunately, I spun around and landed in the catwalk instead of going over the side. It's like a nightmare. We lost about five seamen or officers during this storm just going over the side. So I guess I was one of the lucky ones. But he also remembers that he would recite. He recited a Bible verse.

Don, maybe you want to lead us in this Bible verse? Yeah, this has got to be another Dorothy. the influence that he always carried with him, just like the Kipling poem, if this is on the same tier in the Gerald Ford head canon of guiding truisms. And the verse in question states, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths

did you fear death constantly while you were in the service no I didn't we were on a good ship we were both attacking and under attack but I really never had the fear or the apprehension of death. Maybe it's different when you're on a capital ship like a carrier, even though you are under attack, than you are when you're in a tank or you're in the infantry or maybe flying an aircraft. I don't know if you know this, Dick. The name of the meteorological officer who was responsible for the blunder, and this was not only the Monterey, but the entire task

Force 38, which was a whole crew of different ships that were all sailing in formation at the time. Navy pictures show that these storms proved to be an ally of the Japs, where 21 ships were damaged before they fought their way out of the storm center. The meteorologist who charted the course to try and evade the storm was a guy by the name of George Costco. And, you know, I'll just make this absolutely idiotic joke, which I'll probably cut. But I think that Costco was saying to himself that he's a Costco guy. Of course the 38th task force can outrun Typhoon Cobra. Well, Costco, maybe you should have spent a little more time looking at your radar screen

and a little less time digging into a double chunk chocolate cookie so my headphone disconnected in the middle of that and I thought that you were just being completely silent. No, I got the whole thing. You did not break up it.

In response to the... No, I love it. I couldn't not say it. Okay. Now, after the storm, this would again become a subject for the myth of Gerald Ford. Now, Typhoon Cobra really became ingrained in the popular imagination. It was the subject of a 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel called The Cain Mutiny, which was adapted into a film in 1954, starring Humphrey Bowler.

And that was nominated for multiple Oscars that year. Some of those clips that we played earlier of the Typhoon scene came from that film. And in fact, the authors of the sort of definitive book length account, the nonfiction account of Typhoon Cobra, which is a book called Halsey's Typhoon, named after the commander of the entire fleet, a guy named Admiral Halsey. Their book states that Gerald Ford led a brave rescue crew that saved shipmates from a fire during the storm. And as a matter of fact, that never happened, right? So it's kind of this Manchurian candidate moment where you apparently have people with either embellished or,

implanted memories of Gerald Ford. Mandela effect. Totally, totally, right? And it's funny too, because if you compare it with another president who would be Jerry Ford's neighbor in the house office building, guy by the name of John F. Kennedy, who also happened to be in the America First Committee over at Havet, while Jerry was in the inaugural chapter at Yale, JFK obviously became very famous, the original profile in courage for his feats of daring in another naval rescue. And so there was at least some attempt to do the same

to Jerry Ford, but in Ford's defense, he did not sell this story or even repeat it ever. In fact, there's no evidence whatsoever that he did any sort of a rescue mission during the storm. He was, like you said, Dick, calling plays. At one point, he did go and inspect a fire. Yeah, yeah, and report on it. Right. But all he said was like, oh, yeah, there's a fire and it's bad. And Richard Norton Smith credits that report back as informing the ultimate

decision to abandon the ship and well maybe you want to talk about the aftermath yeah there was discussion about abandoning the ship well first let's just say the monterey survives the storm um but it is very banged up in basically in a point of disrepair so the ship heads ultimately heads to dry dock in Bremerton, Washington, shout out to the Bremerton Ferry. And Ford, throughout his life, will recall the mighty Monterey as a lucky ship where he faced death, but ultimately survived. Even though the Monterey survived Typhoon Cobra, in that 38th Task Force, there were multiple ships that did not survive and actually capsized.

and sank as a result of that typhoon. And the death toll for the U.S. Navy in the typhoon was well over 700 men that were killed. So, you know, when we say that Jerry Ford was lucky to come out of it alive, we're not exaggerating there. only three men from the Monterey died and the majority of the ship's crew survived but other ships were not nearly so lucky

and you know you got to imagine that that Jerry was well aware of all of his fallen comrades who didn't make it through the storm Right. And I'm, you know, all were worried, all were concerned about their well-being except for us, because we know full well that with Jerry on board the Monterey, that meant the hand of Providence had touched that ship. And there was no way that ship was going down because the man on board, Jerry Ford, was much too important to his ship. And he would live to fight yet another war, this time on the shores of the Grand River. He does not go with the ship to Bremerton, Washington. He actually gets off before the ship ultimately makes that voyage. He gets off in Saipan and down through Hawaii way goes to San Francisco and ultimately makes his way back home to Grand Rapids.

You know, there's a stopover in Hawaii. I think it's Christmas Day and I can't help but imagine Ford trying as darnedest to get back home. for Christmas. But he returns to Grand Rapids briefly in January. Now, it's January of, I think, 19405, if I'm not mistaken, which is the same time that the party boss, mob boss, Frank McKay, is indicted. Yep, that's right. He rounds out his naval career in California, right?

He's sort of an instructor or coach of the new recruits. And he would always have a lifelong appreciation for seaman. Okay. All right. So after his tour of duty is over, Jerry Ford returns, of course, to Grand Rapids. And we've talked a bunch about this guy, the guy by the name of Frank McKay, who is the political boss, is essentially the big, bad at the time. This is a man who rose to prominence as the political boss of the whole state of Michigan and used his money and connections to obtain control over the entire Republican Party

in the state. McKay described himself as a businessman first and a politician second, and I think that's reflected on his CV. The highest political position he ever held was state treasurer, but he was really more of a behind-the-scenes type of a guy holding the bag and making kings and choosing who gets slotted him where is your classic sort of machine politician this is a guy who kind of worked his way up and then leveraged all his little small-time bureaucratic roles and also his business roles he had pretty much the only building supply company the only lumber company the only tire company the only insurance company that was worth going to in Michigan. He knew how the system worked and he knew how to grease the wheels of the system

and how to move money through the system. There was, of course, the great water scandal in Grand Rapids. It's this issue of getting clean drinking water to the folks in Grand Rapids. As sort of a parallel, you could think of the water scandal in the movie Chinatown by Roman Polansky. It's going to be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they're paying for water that they're not going to get. Oh, that's all taken care. Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat?

What can you buy that you can't already afford? The future, Mr. Gitts, the future. And this stuff, it's not altogether different from what we saw in Flint a few years back. Uh, can, can I get some water? I want a glass of water. I really didn't need a glass of water. This is not a stunt. Right.

Leveraging something as basic as clean water for political ends. It's, I think, a fundamental strategy in American politics. Tried and true. And where he really made it was through the liquor trade, both during and after prohibition. He was the state treasurer for a period of time from 1925 to 1930, and par for the course was suspected but never charged with misuse of state funds. His role as a political operator was not so much a formal role as it was a guy behind the scenes, right? He was the guy that was sort of

pulling the strings in an unofficial capacity, if you will. So his success and his influence towering over this great state of Michigan, perhaps maybe two on the nose, was that he also built a literal huge tower in Grand Rapids, in downtown Grand Rapids, called the McKay Tower, and named after himself, and at the time was the tallest building between Detroit and Chicago. That's right. In fact, I think he bought the building and didn't build it from the ground up, But after he bought it, he added a few floors on top to make it even bigger. Hell yeah. It kind of Trumpian in that respect, you know?

Definitely. Definitely. Well, a musicer, the next 1960-upon-en-chall-Platte, the big boss man under the blues-sangern, Jimmy Reed, out Leland, in Mississippi, a living-de-legende-in-the-bos-man. Jimmy Reed, Big Bossman. Well, Jerry Ford did not like Frank McKay. Remember, he basically gave Jerry Ford the brush off when Jerry approached him about

getting a spot in the Michigan State Republican Party campaign on behalf of candidate Wendell Wilkie for the presidency in 1940. And that chip weighed heavily on Jerry Ford's shoulder. And not only did it weigh heavily on Jerry Ford's shoulder, there were many men in the Grand Rapids community who similarly saw Frank McKay as a pariah. And one of those men was none other than Gerald Ford Sr. Remember, Gerald Ford Sr. was a prominent Freemason, right? And he was in communication with a fella by the name of Doc Vermewell, a dentist, as well as another fella by the name of Paul Goebel. Yes. Who owned a sporting goods store, right?

Yeah, Goebbels is funny. He was like a pro football player returned to Grand Rapids. had a sporting goods store that was popular. Kind of like what Gerald Ford might have been if he would have chosen to pursue those pro offers. Well, those three men, right? Gerald Ford, Sr., Paul Goebel, Doc Vermeul, those guys formed the center of what became known as the Michigan Republican Home Front.

And I can only guess that all of these, men were involved in the Malta Lodge, which is the name of the local Grand Rapids Free Masonic Temple. And they set their sights on ousting McKay from his role kind of at the top of Michigan politics. Because at this time, other than, you know, perhaps some local issues in Detroit, which may have been trending. in a Democrat direction in the wake of FDR, Michigan was a solid Republican state. So to be in charge of the Republican Party machine meant to control the political system in Michigan. For example, McKay really pulled the puppet strings on the Republican Governor Fitzgerald of Michigan in the 1930s, right? He was a stumbling block to any kind of

change of personnel or of policy that Michiganders might want for themselves. And so this group found an opportunity to make a move when in 1944 to 1945 there was a massive statewide investigation of McKay and his organization. And this was related to his role controlling the state liquor board after prohibition, right? So in Michigan after prohibition, the state liquor board determined all sales of liquor within the state of Michigan. And McKay used that as a cash register to extort bribes from all would-be sellers of beer, wine, and booze in the entire state of Michigan. Norton Smith said something like he was charging a dollar 50 off the top of every single case of liquor sold in Michigan, which you could imagine would

amount to quite a lot. Yep. So a particular state senator was his name Dick Hooper? Yes, Hooper. Hooper had agreed to turn state's witness against McKay. And this, was viewed as the decisive event in the investigation because Hooper had been involved in this whole racket, right? And was going to snitch and tell everything that he knew. In fact, as a result of this, Hooper was offered round-the-clock protection by the state police. Right. Because everyone knew at the time, like, you don't. fuck with McKay, right? So they're like, this guy

is going to need some protection. Yeah, McKay was known to walk around with a three-man security contingent made up of some of the toughest thugs from Detroit's Oakland Sugarhouse gang, which

Dick, you and I've talked about this offline, but basically it's the same as the purple gang. It's kind of all one big network of small-ish, largely Jewish-run mob cells throughout the state of Michigan, largely centered in Detroit and Ipsilante, but, you know, networked, obviously, with McKay in Grand Rapids. And so he was, yeah, he was the equivalent of a maid guy, right? But what did Hooper

say when he was offered protection yeah he so he goes i wouldn't want to live where a man's safety is threatened by his telling the truth and mckeye obliges him right he says you don't have to live uh and hooper's just found shot dead in his car before he's able to testify yep And it's that old purple gang again. Basically, McKay controls not only the state police who arm the shooters and drive them to and from the hit. McKay controls the state prison from which the shooters were temporarily released in order to carry out the hit. Right? This is like just Scorsese film shit happening in real ass life in Michigan in the 1940s.

And the only reason, listener, that we tell you this tale is because Gerald Ford Jr., throughout his military service, continuously encouraged. his stepdad, Gerald Ford, Sr., to stay in the group with the Republican Home Front, to keep the fight going, because as soon as I get back, Dad, I'm going to jump in there and take your place. On this point, there's one thing, it's from the Richard Norton Smith book that I, it was an excerpt I really enjoyed, and it's sort of like. the origin of the home front organization and how it started in Goebel's sporting goods store, right? And it's the summer of 1941 before Jerry goes off into the Navy is back in town

after graduating from Yale. And Paul Goebel and Doc Vermeulen are talking about ways to take on the machine. This is the early days. of the sort of contingent of folks that took on the McKay machine and they were talking in Gobel's sporting goods store and Vermeulen said something to the effect of like I just need 10 solid guys

and Goebel's he's like well who are you thinking and wouldn't you know it in walks Jerry Ford as if he heard his call time or something and he just walks into the store and literally verbulin's like what about jerry ford and it was important to them one of the things that they would talk about and we'll get into this I'm sure but it was important for these 10 men that they were talking about for them not to

be employees they needed to be business owners they needed to be people who had sort of made their own way and were not beholden to the McKay machine and were not sort of didn't have their jobs on the line to have to worry about it and to have to be run the risk of being influenced or exploited by the McKay machine. And our boy Jerry, he gears himself up to go head to head with the McKay machine, which emerged intact, albeit perhaps somewhat weakened, but not much from the 1945 investigation, right? To be clear, listener, McKay emerges unscathed. There's eventually some indictments issued for the actual shooters, but they are never connected back to McKay himself. And it turns into like a cold case, right?

Like an unsolved murder. It's wild. Listening and researching, researchers that have looked into the purple gang and the mob scene in Michigan and in Detroit and throughout the state, it's definitely true that that's so under explored. Like, you got New York City, right? You got Capone in Chicago, but this Michigan stuff was nuts. Yeah. Like the gang wars in Michigan, they racked up a body count of like something like 500 in the 30s. They were apparently using the Tommy gun well before it gained fame in Chicago with Capone's outfit.

Like these guys were, these guys were real tough. And I think it's also it's also just very interesting the whole Jewish angle. of it as well right like well anyways that's a conversation for another day but needless to say the stakes for gerald ford junior to launch a political career in confrontation with the mckay machine were life and death we could we could safely say that right dick i think that's right right but for a man like Jerry, again, who subscribes to predetermination. I think he had a sound mind saying, I'm going to put my hat in the ring, and everything is going to be all right.

Yeah, if he had any doubts about predetermination before his experience on the Monterey, I think after that experience, he had firmly told Jesus, to take the wheel. Yeah. Right. He was serving a higher purpose. And, listener, that's exactly what we're going to probe next time on Jerry World as we cover the rest of the 1940s, culminating in Jerry's first congressional campaign in 1948.

We'll also cover his courtship. and marriage to the love of his life, Betty Blumer. For now, I'm Dick, and I'm Don. Say farewell. And keep digging. machines I know she can beat them Oh Yoshime

They don't believe me But you won't let those Robots email They don't believe me But you won't let those robots Don't let those robots are feed me. Those evil nature robots are getting us. They're programmed to destroy us.

She's got to be strong to find them. So she's taking lots of vitamins because she knows that it'd be tragic if those evil robots win I know she can leave them on your she may me they don't believe me they don't believe it but you won't let those robots To feed me They don't believe me