posted December 28, 2006 11:56 AM            

When my son Freddy and my mother died within five days of each other, President Gerald R. Ford and his wife Betty - told of their deaths by his longtime secretary Mildred Leonard - were quick to send us a letter of condolence.

Although it was the only contact I had with him when he was the nation's chief executive, we had a close relationship when he was a member of the House of Representatives, and it is as such that I'll always remember him.

I first met Jerry Ford in 1960, when I had been asked to come up to Capitol Hill and handle the public relations for the GOP's Task Force on American Strategy & Strength, then about to release its report, which rejected Nelson Rockefeller's charge that a "missile gap" existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with the U.S. on the short side.

Rep. Mel Laird, later to be Nixon's defense secretary and then a member of the task force, suggested that because Ford was the task force chairman the report should be called The Ford Report, and that's what it became. It was the first step in Jerry's emergence as a national figure and no longer as just another Republican congressman.

But on Capitol Hill Jerry was anything but just another member of the GOP minority. To Republicans and Democrats alike he was already a legend, a man famous among his colleagues as one of the hardest working members of the House and the leading expert on the Hill on all things military. He was the ranking GOP member on the all-important Subcommittee on Defense of the House Appropriations Committee, the panel that supplied the money to the Pentagon and kept a close eye on how it was spent.

If a new weapons system was being recommended by the Pentagon, for example, Jerry would examine it from all its aspects, forcing its supporters to justify it from all angles. His word was often final on whether it would go forward of be denied funding.

His reputation was such that his was usually the final word on matters touching on the armed forces, and it made him a natural to chair a Republican Task Force established to provide the first complete articulation of the Eisenhower defense and foreign policies in the Cold War.

The report, which made the front pages of every major newspaper in the U.S., touched off a hot debate between those who supported President Eisenhower's strategies in fighting the Cold War and those, such as New York governor and presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller, who disagreed with Ike. It also gave Jerry Ford a platform from which to spring from being just a member of congress to being a leading candidate for the vice presidency under his close friend Richard Nixon.

Back in his hometown in Grand Rapids, Mich., his friends and supporters had set up the Ford for Vice President Committee, and when the GOP assembled in Chicago for the 1960 Republican National convention the group sprang into action, determined to convince Dick Nixon that choosing Jerry as his running mate would guarantee that he'd carry Michigan and much of the Midwest.

Jack Stiles, a wealthy Grand Rapids businessman and Jerry's closest friend, was one of the top men in the Nixon campaign, having corralled the majority of the delegates committed to nominating Nixon. He was also Jerry's biggest supporter and the strategist behind the campaign to get him the vice presidential nomination.

I came into the picture when I got a midnight phone call from Jack Stiles to my home in Fredericksburg, Va., telling me to pack up and get a plane to Chicago first thing in the morning. I was to serve as Jerry's press secretary and take on the job of making his a household name.

The next week was about the most hectic of my life as I strove to convince a skeptical press contingent that Jerry had a real chance of getting the nod. The late David Brinkley, an old friend, reminded me that Jerry was not yet well-known enough to be a VP candidate. "But," he added, "we can take care of that."

We had every good reason to hope that lightning would strike. After all, Jerry and Dick Nixon went back a long way. Nixon came to the House in 1946, and Jerry two years later. They were both leading members of the Chowder and Marching Society, a select group of Republican House members organized by Nixon after his election to the House, and the two men worked closely together after Dick became Ike's vice president. Moreover, Nixon gave me a lot of help when he lent a hand in publicizing the release of the Ford Report and praised Jerry personally.

All of this gave us good reason to believe that Jerry would be on Dick's ticket in the fall, and Nixon actually encouraged us to continue our efforts in Jerry's behalf. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that Nelson Rockefeller, who wanted the presidential nomination for himself, and had taken a strong stand against the Eisenhower Nixon Cold War policies, could be a threat to Nixon in the fall campaign by sabotaging his campaign from behind the scenes. As a result Nixon made his infamous trip to New York, where in the so-called Treaty of Fifth Avenue he made peace with Rockefeller, agreeing to many of his demands among which was giving the vice presidential nomination to Henry Cabot Lodge.

It was a hard pill to swallow, but Jerry took it like a good soldier. I stood at the back of the platform and watched him make a seconding speech to Lodge's nomination at the convention, knowing how much he had been hurt by his friend Dick Nixon's rejection.

Thanks to my work on the Ford Report and at the convention as Jerry's press secretary, in January I was asked to take on the newly created job of director of public relations and special projects for the House Republican Policy Committee, working under Chairman John Byrnes and his number two man, Arizona Rep. John Rhodes. I was thrown into almost daily contact with Jerry, a contact made closer by the fact that the committee staff director Dr. Don Ackerman had come from Jerry's Congressional office staff.

When Jerry won the post of Minority Leader in the House in a close race with then leader Charlie Halleck, I was in the House cloak room as the vote ended. I immediately picked up a phone and called Jerry's office where Betty and the staff were waiting for word on the outcome. Betty Ford answered the phone and I told her to tell Jerry's administrative assistant Frank Meyer to get ready to move to the Capitol.

I remember Jerry as a very sober-sided, quiet and thoughtful man who worked his fingers to the bone. Nothing came easy to him, he insisted on looking at every issue from every angle. He was the consummate member of Congress, utterly dedicated to his work and a model today's members would be well-advised to follow. He never forgot his friends and associates. He was in the White House only a few days before he asked Jack Stiles, who had been his man on the Warren Commission, to come to Washington and live and work with him in the White House.

In my case he made it clear that he never forgot whatever I might have done on his behalf, once taking an active role in seeking to win a key post as a House minority officer for me in the face of heavy opposition from the Rockefeller forces who had helped win him the Minority leader job. That letter on the death of my mother and son, years after I had ceased to have any contact with him, showed me that he had not forgotten.

The last time I saw Jerry he had come to Boca Raton where I live. He was there as a former president to speak to some business group. We spent a couple of minutes talking and then he was gone.

Jerry Ford was a good and decent man, and the nation owes him a huge debt of gratitude not merely for the great things he accomplished as a President of the United States - helping end what he called "our long national nightmare" - but as a storied member of the House where he labored long and hard on their behalf behind the scenes.

More than anybody else, Jerry Ford was most responsible for making and keeping America the strongest military power on the face of the earth.