"High-note highlights," Time Out Chicago, December 28, 2006. High marks for Nixon in China, Daniel Barenboim's Chicago Symphony farewell, and more.
I grew up doing my homework each night on a glass-topped desk which had a picture, taken in 1984, of my dad and and Gerald Ford beneath the glass. Ford was always held up as an example of decency, which seems to be true from the obituaries now being published. My dad's family comes from Grand Rapids, as did Ford, which always made him seem a little more like us than other politicians and presidents. My grandfather was a few years behind Ford in high school, and remembered him as "the big man on campus."
I think I met Ford once, but I'm sad to say that I was so young that I don't remember it. That is my loss, and his death is both mine and our country's.