Pipe Up for Veterans – Ford in Focus

Happy (early) Veterans Day – thank you to all the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, past and present!

A well-known fact is that President Ford was a pipe smoker. But did you know that he picked up this habit during his own military service aboard the USS Monterey? In 1975, the “Washingtonian” magazine asked the President how long he had smoked a pipe. The answer: “Since 1944 when I started onboard USS Monterey (CVL 26) while we were in the Pacific during WWII (World War II).”

_{Dorothy Downton’s Correspondence Files, “Correspondence (3).”
NAID: 30806071
Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library}

Sure enough, we start seeing him with pipe in hand not long after the war, as in this 1948 photo.

_{Photograph of Gerald R. Ford, Jr., watching as campaign aides tally votes during the Fifth District Republican primary election on September 15, 1948.
H0038-04 / NAID: 186989
Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library}

Authors: Brooke Clement and Dr. Richard Weld