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Go Home Patriotic Ritual

OPEN UNIVERSITY JANUARY 2, 2007

Patriotic Ritual

BY TNR STAFF

by Richard Stern
I think Americans are every bit as good as the English, French, and Italians at the public ceremonies that express and reinforce national loyalty. A former president's death, even more than a presidential inauguration, brings out the discipline finery and power, physical, musical and verbal, out of which a presidential family extracts the elements which leave personal signatures on official commemorations. Gerald Ford and his family eschewed the caisson and the riderless horse which the history-stamped young widow of John Kennedy, having read about them in accounts of Abraham Lincoln's funeral, had made two of the most famous elements of that most famous American funeral (the others being the salute her 2-year-old son gave his father's coffin, which, the day before, his 6-year-old sister had kissed and the irregular march of world leaders headed by the towering Charles de Gaulle). Ford's body was carted around in a more or less standard hearse. The carting, though, was done by the well-rehearsed sextet of soldier, sailor, marine, air and coast guardsmen, marching in slow, coordinated rhythms in and out of the cathedral, in and out of the planes from California and from Andrews Air Force base. There were the 21-gun salutes, the funeral procession of limousines on the route selected by the family through Alexandria, Virginia, where he'd lived while a congressman, a pause at the WWII memorial and another at the House of Representatives
chamber, the waiting line of honorary pall bearers, many of them
sept-and-octogenarians, sustaining each other's endurance and proud in each other's famous company. No figure was more moving than the 88-year-old widow, Elizabeth Bloomer Warren Ford, the ex-Powers model and Martha Graham dancer, whose father had killed himself when she was 16 and whose five-year marriage to a furniture salesman ended months before she married Jerry Ford
weeks away from his first election to Congress. Tiny, stoic, bent and beautiful, she walked down the long aisle of the National Cathedral on the arm of President Bush, then stood among her children, grand and great-grand children as episcopal prayers were recited and hymns were played and sung. The eulogies clearly pleased her, particularly when the details were personal. So her husband's refusing to play football against Georgia Tech until Will Ward, the black teammate who'd been dropped for the game after pusillanimous Michigan officials yielded to a Georgia Tech protest, insisted that he play drew a smile from her as did the memory of her husband's keeping his word to speak to local farmers despite a storm and saying to their surprise, "The cows get milked every day. And I gave my word." She was absorbed by Henry Kissinger's detailed account of Ford's varied, underrated and largely forgotten foreign policy achievements (they were also Kissinger's), and she relished the humor, affection, and sincere respect in all the talks. In a way, the most emotional moment came
in the soprano Denyse Graves's fabulously pure and powerful rendition of the Lord's Prayer, but it was the entire ceremony with the cathedral full of the most famous faces in American politics of the last 40 years which made one feel as well as understand the profundity of patriotic ritual, a fortress facing the necessary as well as the contingent, perhaps unnecessary, tragedies of the national and the human condition.

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9 comments

out of outta outta sentence: "brings out the (______) out of which (_______) extracts..." huh? also, what is "discipline finery"?

- teplukhin

January 2, 2007 at 2:51pm

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...admirable sense of proportion and situation in declining to be celebrated in the tragic and heroic fashion exemplified by the riderless horse. In addition to his and his family's natural modesty, much commented upon, he seems to understand that there is a difference between a man dying peacefully after a long and fulfilling life, and a young president being brought down violently at his height. The symbolic equivalent of a leader falling in battle. Ford's humility is even more impressive to me after reading a story I'd never heard until his death. Apparently Ford is given credit for saving his aircraft carrier, the Monterey, from sinking in the great 1944 typoon that sank several ships in Halsey's fleet and drowned 800 sailors. The typhoon caused aircraft below decks on the Monterey to break loose from their cables and exploded in flames. Orders were given to abandon ship but Ford declared tht the fire was manageable and lead a party below to suppress the flames, which they did. As the story was written, he "neither asked for special recognition for this heroism, nor was he given them." Now, if Joe Kennedy had been Ford's old man, this story would be famous with books and movies celebrating it.

- ChanRobt

January 2, 2007 at 10:50pm

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...easier to read if either you or your TNR editors would break up your excellent account into paragraphs. And online, the more paragraphs the better.

- ChanRobt

January 2, 2007 at 10:53pm

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For some reason I can't react with patriotism to the national sobriety of President's Ford Funeral. These last six years have been so miserable for our country. It is hard to wave the flag, and believe in Lincoln's American any more. What we have is a few corrupt men in Washington running our national heritage into the ground. President Ford was a good man, who put his country first. That cannot be said for the man who sits in that office today.

- xian

January 3, 2007 at 11:14am

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I liked ChanRobt's comments but womder why he had to take a shot at the Kennedy's (no pun intended). You cannot be suggesting that President Kennedy's actions when his ship was sunk were not heroic, are you? Also, as much as I strongly disagree with the crowd running Washington this past six years, I cannot join Xian in her (?) condemnation. It may be naive, but I could not sleep at night if I felt that the current president and his minions did not believe they were putting their country first. They are gravely and foolishly mistaken but I do not think that they are evil men (and women).

- tleinenweber

January 3, 2007 at 11:48am

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intending to take a shot at him. But it is well known, and sometimes resented by JFK himself, that his father, Joe, pushed his son with "vigah" towards the presidency, and made sure by pulling strings that the son's exploits-- whether his writing or his Navy adventures-- got the requisite publicity. Gerald Ford apparently saved an aircraft carrier and its thousands of men in the midst of a typhoon. There was neither publicity nor even a citation for him, and he doesn't seem to have minded. His modesty is laudable. Meanwhile, I didn't even realize until after his death, that Ford had a law degree from Yale. The media in his presidential days made Ford out to be this very ordinary midwesterner, often portrayed as bumbling and of mediocre intellect. It's funny, but when Democrats are in the White House-- whether Kennedy or Clinton-- you are constantly reminded of their Ivy League credentials when they have them so that it becomes intrinsic to their identity of excellence (Kennedy-Harvard.). Not so with GOP presidents whether Ford (Yale) or bush (Yale & Harvard).

- ChanRobt

January 4, 2007 at 8:33am

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xian, not matter what you think about the current administration, it is just one administration. When George Bush's 8 years are up, he and his people will exit peacefully as all before him have done, and be replaced by a new democratically elected president and a cabinet that will have to be confirmed by the Senate. Why would your patriotism be diminshed, or your love of the country and its form of government, just because you don't like a particular set of politicians? Our system and our nation endures. And, as the past November proved, if the people are not happy with their government, they can change it with their votes. Meanwhile, the ceremonies for President Ford are a reminder of the continuity of our nation and its institutions. It ought to have heartened you, not have left you in anger and despair.

- ChanRobt

January 4, 2007 at 8:39am

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...xian, no matter what you think about the current administration, it is just one administration.

- ChanRobt

January 4, 2007 at 8:41am

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...you are constantly reminded of their Ivy League credentials when they have them so that it becomes intrinsic to their identity of excellence (Kennedy-Harvard, Clinton-Yale).

- ChanRobt

January 4, 2007 at 8:46am

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