Death and state funeral of Gerald Ford grandchildren came to the museum that night and greeted mourners for several hours. Shortly after noon on January 3, Ford's body was removed from the museum and taken by motorcade to Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids, where a private funeral service was conducted Thousands of people lined the entire motorcade route to the church. During the service, eulogies were delivered by Donald Rumsfeld (President Ford's White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense), former President Jimmy Carter, Richard Norton Smith (former Director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum and a close personal friend of
USS Gerald R. Ford 9 November 2013. "Gerald R. Ford" entered the fleet replacing the decommissioned , which ended her 51 years of active service in December 2012. Originally scheduled for delivery in 2015, "Gerald R. Ford" was delivered to the Navy on 31 May 2017 and formally commissioned by President Donald Trump on 22 July 2017. She is expected to leave on her first deployment around 2022. As of 2017, she is the world's largest aircraft carrier. In 2006, while Gerald Ford was still alive, Senator John Warner of Virginia proposed to amend a 2007 defense-spending bill to declare that CVN-78 "shall be