President Gerald R. Ford (July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) who gently led the United States out of the tumultuous Watergate era but who lost his own bid for election after pardoning President Richard M. Nixon, died on December 26, 2006. He was 93, making him the oldest former president.

Thrust by Mr. Nixon’s resignation into an office he had never sought, Mr. Ford occupied the White House for just 896 days. But they were pivotal days of national introspection, involving America’s first definitive failure in a war and the first resignation of a president. It was Mr. Ford’s uncommon virtue to have presided with a common touch.

After a decade of division over Vietnam and two years of trauma over the Watergate scandals, Jerry Ford, as he called himself, radiated a soothing familiarity. He might have been the nice guy down the street suddenly put in charge of the nation, and if he seemed a bit predictable, he was also safe, reliable and reassuring. He placed no intolerable intellectual or psychological burdens on a weary land, and he lived out a modest philosophy. “The harder you work, the luckier you are,” he said once in summarizing his career. “I worked like hell.”

When he took the oath of office at a quickly arranged ceremony at noon on Aug. 9, 1974, the economy was in disarray, an energy shortage was worsening, allies were wondering how steadfast the United States might be as a partner and Mr. Nixon, having resigned the presidency rather than face impeachment for taking part in the Watergate cover-up, was flying to seclusion in San Clemente, Calif.

There was a collective sense of relief as Mr. Ford, in the most memorable line of his most noteworthy speech, declared that day, “Our long national nightmare is over.”

Two years later, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination and began a campaign that would end in his first failure in an election, Mr. Ford scarcely seemed to be indulging in hyperbole as he recalled what it had been like to take office as Mr. Nixon’s heir.

“It was an hour in our history that troubled our minds and tore at our hearts,” he said. “Anger and hatred had risen to dangerous levels, dividing friends and families. The polarization of our political order had aroused unworthy passions of reprisal and revenge. Our governmental system was closer to stalemate than at any time since Abraham Lincoln took that same oath of office.”

Upon assuming office, Ford inherited the cabinet Nixon selected during his tenure in office. Over the course of Ford's relatively brief administration, only Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon remained. Ford appointed William Coleman as Secretary of Transportation, the second African American to serve in a presidential cabinet (after Robert Clifton Weaver) and the first appointed in a Republican administration. Ford's transition chairman and first Chief of Staff was former congressman and ambassador Donald Rumsfeld. In 1975, Rumsfeld was named by Ford as the youngest-ever Secretary of Defense. Ford chose a young Wyoming politician, Richard Cheney, to replace Rumsfeld as his new Chief of Staff and later campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign.

It was supposed to be Ford's Cabinet, but Watergate will always unite Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, and a trove of unpublished letters reveals that the disgraced Nixon quietly advised his successor on matters large and small. To put it bluntly, Gerald Ford was a team player, Richard Nixon was the coach, and the Ford administration was like overtime.