Ford had special connection with Bath
By ROB PRICE THE COURIER-ADVOCATE

PHOTO PROVIDED Former President Gerald Ford, who died last week, is pictured above at the opening ceremony of the Dormann Library in 1998. Sitting with Ford from left are, retired television newscaster Walter Cronkite; the late Warren Hopkins, then-mayor of Bath; Courier-Advocate publisher Colleen Neeley and then-state Sen. John “Randy” Kuhl.

BATH — Many Bath area residents had a personal connection with former president Gerald Ford, who died last week.

Ford visited the village in 1998 to attend the opening of the Dormann Library. His speech before more than 800 people celebrated the pleasures of reading and the new library as “an antidote to the fragmented ways of the late 20th century.”

It was a speech Ford crafted himself, recalled Henry Dormann, who hosted the former president and television newscaster Walter Cronkite at the library’s opening ceremony.

“It was such a good speech, we arranged for every library in the country to have a copy,” Dormann told The Courier. “It was inspirational, and he told me, ‘I sat down and wrote that myself.’”

“Anyone who opens a book dwells there and no where else,” Ford said. “Open a book and the calendar becomes irrelevant.”

For also praised the Dormann Library, noting, “This building , as useful as it is ornamental, is a bridge to what has been, and a gateway to what might yet face us down the road.”

Dormann Friday said he had visited Ford in 2005 — one year before his death Tuesday at the age of 93.

“He was just as sharp as he could be mentally,” said Dormann. “We reminisced, and he was in very good shape.”

Dormann also saluted Ford as a down to earth individual whose pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974 spared the country further trauma from the Watergate scandal.

“What you saw was Gerald Ford. When he pardoned Richard Nixon, he knew it would hurt him politically, but he did it for the good of the country.”