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
Inauguration of Gerald Ford administered to Ford by Chief Justice Warren Burger in the White House East Room. Chief Justice Burger was traveling in the Netherlands at the time, and was flown back to Washington on an Air Force plane. The first phone call that President Ford, a former center on the University of Michigan football team, made after his inauguration was on Saturday, August 10, 1974, to Ohio State University football coach Woody Hayes, who had just recently suffered a heart attack. Immediately after taking the Presidential oath, Ford gave a speech (authored by Counselor to the President Robert T. Hartmann) alluding in