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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Jan. 3 � Gerald R. Ford was buried on Wednesday on a grassy hill beside the rushing waters of the Grand River as the sun set, a final farewell in a week of remembrances for the nation’s 38th president.
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Kristi VanVuuren relighted one of the many votive candles in front of the Ford museum.
An impromptu shrine at the museum on Tuesday said, "Thank you President Ford for a job well done."
Though Mr. Ford had lived elsewhere for decades, Grand Rapids made it clear that it still considered this his true home and that it still considered him one of its most beloved, famous � and yet ordinary � men.
In a city of 195,000 residents, some 57,000 waited since Tuesday evening in a line that wound through two miles of downtown to walk silently past Mr. Ford’s coffin inside his presidential museum, steps from where he would be buried.
In temperatures that dipped into the low 30s, some people cheerfully waited six hours, deep into the night and morning, for a minute or two beside the former president, who died on Dec. 26 at age 93.
“We needed to be here � this is how we feel about him here,” Mary Castro said shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday, still waiting to reach the museum after four hours in line. A family, carrying a 2-year-old in blankets beside her, nodded.
“He was an everyday, down-to-earth guy, so accessible, not one of these politicians nowadays who needs all sorts of bodyguards,” said Ms. Castro, 62, of suburban Comstock Park. “And he understood the importance of forgiveness.”
If the nation remembered Mr. Ford for his sudden arrival as president in 1974 in the midst of turmoil over the Watergate scandal and for his decision to pardon President Richard M. Nixon, Grand Rapids’s memory was utterly different. Here, he was the boy who grew up on these streets, who played football for South High School, who became an Eagle Scout and who this region sent to the House of Representatives from 1949 until the 1970s.
He had taken the time to speak to elementary school government classes, to write birthday cards, to present crowns to homecoming queens. He was, some said, a perfect reflection of what people here are about.
“He was one of us,” said Dwayne Hiljer, 69 and a retired salesman who drove three hours from his home near Detroit. “I’ve been around for presidents since Roosevelt, and this is the only one that was always totally honest with you.”
Even after Mr. Ford’s body was driven away from the museum � the lines cut short when time ran out � Grand Rapids followed him. Residents lined the streets, Boy Scouts in uniforms (and no coats) saluting, as his hearse and motorcade led the way to a final funeral service. The city gathered again along the bridges and the roofs of downtown buildings at dusk when the burial service began.
Mr. Ford was actually born in Omaha, but moved here as an infant with his mother. He had lived, at various times, in eight homes in the area.
During the funeral at Grace Episcopal Church, gleaming with stained glass, in East Grand Rapids, mourners remembered his modest roots and modest approach.
“There’s an old saying in Washington that every member of the United States Congress looks in the mirror and sees a future president,” Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary and chief of staff to Mr. Ford, said in a eulogy. “Well, Jerry Ford was different. I suspect that when he looked in the mirror even after he became president, he saw a citizen and a public servant.”
The Fords had been longtime members of the church. Mr. Ford married his wife, Betty, at the parish’s earlier building in 1948. Their first three children were baptized there. The funerals for Mr. Ford’s mother and stepfather were held there.
The service on Wednesday, before 400 people, was more intimate, more personal than some earlier events.
Mr. Ford’s grandchildren read prayers. Honorary pallbearers included a list of community leaders and friends from Grand Rapids, as well as Jack Nicklaus, the golfer; Mary Sue Coleman, the University of Michigan president; and Pepi Gramshammer, the skier. A University of Michigan blanket, yellow and blue, was left on a pew in honor of Bo Schembechler, the longtime Michigan football coach whom Mr. Ford had chosen to be an honorary pallbearer but who died late last year. Mr. Ford played for Michigan in the 1930s.
Richard Norton Smith, who used to be the director of the Ford museum and presidential library, described a man who knew how to laugh at himself and to get along despite divisiveness and partisanship.
“No one ever called Gerald Ford an imperial president,” Mr. Smith said. “Perhaps that was because no figure in memory was so immune to Washington’s besetting disease of self-importance.”
Mr. Ford, a longtime member of Congress, succeeded Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and then Mr. Nixon after both men left office because of scandals.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who defeated Mr. Ford in 1976 but later became his close friend, said the precise words he used in his own inauguration � 30 years ago � remained the most appropriate tribute he could make to Mr. Ford, whose decision to pardon Mr. Nixon had drawn angry critics as well as supporters, who said he had helped spare the country more turmoil.
“For myself and for our nation, I want to thank my predecessor,” Mr. Carter said on Wednesday, pausing to gather his emotions, “for all he did to heal our land.”
As dusk fell on a cold, clear afternoon, Mr. Ford’s family, emotional and holding on to one another, gathered for the burial outside the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, near the grass beside the Grand River. The Army chorus somberly sang “Goin’ Home.” The Rev. Dr. Robert G. Certain said a prayer. Canons sent a cloud of thick smoke and loud echoes across a silent downtown. F-15s zipped loudly past in formation, traveling north along the river’s edge.
Vice President Dick Cheney handed the flag � the carefully folded flag from Mr. Ford’s coffin � to Mrs. Ford, who nodded and clutched it briefly to her face.
