Gerald Ford dies at 93

updated 6:58 p.m. ET Dec. 27, 2006

LOS ANGELES - Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th president and the only one never elected to nationwide office, has died. He was 93.

“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” former first lady Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”

He died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, his office said in a statement. No cause of death was released. Funeral arrangements were to be announced Wednesday.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93.

“The American people will always admire Gerald Ford’s devotion to duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his administration,” President Bush said in a statement Tuesday night. “We mourn the loss of such a leader, and our 38th president will always have a special place in our nation’s memory.”

Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

“I was deeply saddened this evening when I heard of Jerry Ford’s death,” former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement. “Ronnie and I always considered him a dear friend and close political ally.

“His accomplishments and devotion to our country are vast, and even long after he left the presidency he made it a point to speak out on issues important to us all,” she said.

An accidental president
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

Minutes after Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal and flew into exile, Ford took office and famously declared: “Our long national nightmare is over.”

NBC VIDEO 'He's still my dad' Dec. 27: Former President Ford's daughter Susan speaks with NBC's Tom Brokaw about her father. MSNBC

But he revived the Watergate debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Ford was the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew, who also was forced from office by scandal.

Ford’s Virginia home for sale President Ford's former home in Alexandria, Va., has been put on the market for $999,000. The listing for the four-bedroom home, which was built in 1953 and has been designated a national historic landmark, shows several family pictures along with images of the comparably modest home. View the listing here.

He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

She remained one of the country’s most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and said she had become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.

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