Dorothy Ayer Gardner Ford
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Dorothy Ayer Gardner King Ford (February 27, 1892 - September 17, 1967) was the mother of U.S. President Gerald Ford.
She was born in Harvard, Illinois and married, as her first husband, wool trader Leslie Lynch King, on September 7, 1912. The couple moved into the Victorian mansion of King's parents, banker Charles Henry King and his wife, the former Martha Alicia Porter, at 3202 Woolworth in Omaha, Nebraska.
Gerald Ford was born on July 14, 1913 at 12:43 AM CST. His birth name was Leslie Lynch King, Jr., a name he was to legally keep until 1935 when he legally changed it to Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. in honor of his stepfather.
According to Associated Press reports, Leslie King, Sr. was abusive and had a drinking problem. Ford later described his father as having frequently hit his mother.[1] James M. Cannon, the executive director of the domestic council during the Ford administration, has written that the future president's father threatened Dorothy Gardner King with a butcher knife a few days after their son's birth and announced his intention to kill her, their son, and the baby's nursemaid.[2] Ford later stated that his father's first act of violence against his mother was in 1912, on their honeymoon, when Leslie King hit his wife after she smiled at a man on an elevator.
Sixteen days after the birth, Ford's mother took him to the Oak Park, Illinois home of her sister Tannisse and her husband, Clarence Haskins James. From there she moved to the home of her parents, Adele and Levi Addison Gardner, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.[3]
On December 19, 1913, an Omaha court granted a divorce to Ford's parents. His mother married Grand Rapids businessman Gerald Rudolff Ford on February 1, 1916. They would call her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr., although he was not formally adopted and did not legally change his name until 1935; he also would adopt a more conventional spelling of his middle name.
Dorothy Ford bore three more sons during her second marriage: Thomas Gardner Ford (July 15, 1918 - August 28, 1995), Richard Addison Ford (born June 3, 1924), and James Francis Ford (August 11, 1927 - January 23, 2001).[4]
She and Gerald Ford, Sr. are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Grand Rapids.
