GRAND RAPIDS AS CHARACTER WITNESS

As the Democrats are attempting to make an issue of Gerald Ford's probity, the community that helped shape him stands as a kind of character witness. Just as Plains, Ga. (pop. 683), is typical of the Deep South, small-town style, Grand Rapids, Mich. (pop. 195,000), epitomizes many of the enduring qualities that typify the Midwest. TIME Detroit Bureau Chief Edwin Reingold visited Grand Rapids, while White House Correspondent Strobe Talbott talked with Ford's friends from his home town on the White House staff. Their report:

The staff at Grand Rapids' solid old Pantlind hotel is buzzing with excitement because the Secret Service agents are coming to check it out for Jerry Ford's visit. He plans to stay there when he returns to vote on Election Day. In the hotel coffee shop, a visitor can buy a religious record or a book of Bible stories--or a tumbler emblazoned with Ford's image. Route 131, which cuts through downtown, was christened the Gerald R. Ford Freeway in 1975, and the President's name also adorns the gym at the Grand Rapids Community College. Despite the uproar over Ford's alleged campaign fund manipulations, his supporters in Grand Rapids shrugged off the charges and were hanging tough with their hero. In the heart of the city, Republican women work a phone bank--they expect to make 50,000 calls by Election Day--under a banner identifying them as "Jerry's Angels." Croons one: "We don't have any trouble getting volunteers. People walk in off the street. Everybody knows Jerry Ford."

Indeed everybody does, although he and Betty have not lived in Michigan's second city in almost 28 years. Some old-timers remember him as the towheaded youngster who played center on the South High football team. Others recall him as the industrious fellow earning $2 a week plus lunches waiting on tables during the Depression. Mrs. Ella Koeze Weed, an early supporter of Ford's, recalls his boldness; he dared to importune her with the risque wolf whistle. "I used to think, 'Well, that big kid in the dirty coveralls has a nerve--whistling at me like that!' "

During his 25 years in Congress representing western Michigan's Fifth District, which includes Grand Rapids, Ford kept in close touch through frequent trips home. "Sometimes he would give a breakfast speech and then fly to Washington for a crucial vote and return for an evening meeting," recalls Maury DeJonge, a newspaperman who has covered Ford for many years. Many summers Ford spent two weeks crisscrossing his district in a trailer to talk with home folks. He was regarded as an effective Congressman, though he seldom bagged rich federal projects for his district. His straight-shooting constituents would have thought it a bit wasteful if he had done more.

While he was House minority leader, the National Endowment for the Arts helped bankroll a huge Alexander Calder stabile, which was erected in front of city hall and appears in many renditions--of widely varying artistic quality--on everything from sanitation trucks to official city stationery.

Since he has become President, Ford has visited Grand Rapids only twice. But the Fords keep in close touch with old friends, and Betty has said that she wants to return there to live when Jerry leaves politics. They often lure their old friends to Washington with invitations to state dinners or overnight stays at the White House. He also showers Grand Rapids pals with White House souvenirs--pens, paperweights, letters. Remembering that Mrs. Arthur Brown, wife of one of his former high school teammates, collects elephant figurines, Ford brought her one made of soapstone from his visit to China last year.

For his White House staff, Ford recruited two Grand Rapids cronies: Philip Buchen, presidential counsel, and William Seidman, executive director of the White House Economic Policy Board. Both believe that the President's attitudes and philosophy were molded by his growing up in Grand Rapids, then as now a staunchly conservative, middle-class community that valued hard work, private property and free enterprise.

Seidman feels that the President's economic views were shaped by his home town. "Grand Rapids is not a one-company town," he explains. "It's a town of diversified, relatively small industries. The President's own views on the business world tend to emphasize maximum participation and control by lots of people rather than absentee management and big business. When the President says that America's third century should be the century of the individual, he is talking about Grand Rapids."

Built straddling a fast-flowing stretch of the Grand River, the city is a homey hodgepodge of oldfashioned, squarish buildings and shiny new glass structures, the product of urban renewal projects. Grand Rapids is an amalgam of ethnic neighborhoods. The Dutch, who began arriving in about 1840, hammered together their frame houses on high ground and scrubbed them to a shine. On the other side of the river, the Poles, who arrived at about the same time, made their home and built Catholic churches. The Lithuanians settled in the northeast, the Italians in the south-central section, and far to the south lived the blacks.

Originally the city's economy was built almost exclusively on furniture making by nimble-fingered Dutchmen. Hardwood logs were floated down the river from Michigan's great forests of oak and maple. Later, General Motors put up three metalworking plants in the city, and employment diversified. Yet Grand Rapids has remained a stronghold of the small businessman and artisan. Most of the 38 wood-furniture plants are relatively small; Baker Furniture Co., the biggest, employs only 464 people. Some 375 manufacturing firms have fewer than ten workers each.

Grand Rapids remains predominantly Calvinistic, and white, with non-whites comprising 11% of the population. There is a distinct attitude of tolerance. The present mayor, Abe Drasin, is a Jew; his predecessor was a black. Says Drasin, as he gazes from his office in Vandenberg Center: "This is a city of contrasts. It is a bastion of the radical right, and yet there is a substantial liberal population." Lyndon Johnson, for example, took 57% of the vote in 1964, v. 43% for Barry Gold water. In 1972 Richard Nixon beat George Mc-Govern by almost exactly the same margin. All the while, Ford kept his seat with majorities of 60% or more. Even so, Jerry Ford's successor in Congress is a Democrat, Richard Vander Veen.

Typically, the city has a growing blight of porn shops and very blue movies. Parts of the black ghetto are spreading into decaying white neighborhoods, and unemployment is high among the city's Latinos and blacks. Yet Grand Rapids also boasts cultural accouterments that would be the envy of many a larger city: a fine symphony orchestra, directed by Spanish-born Theo Alcantara, a ballet troupe and a civic theater. Jerry and Betty Ford buy season tickets, but they are used by his half brothers, Jim, an optometrist, and Richard, who works as manager for the Ford Paint and Varnish Co., which the Ford family sold to Standard Detroit Paint Co. in 1970.

Grand Rapids is the home of several colleges, including Calvin College, mecca of Christian Reformed scholarship. There are almost more churches than anyone can count (479 Protestant, 42 Catholic and two synagogues). One stanza of a song glorifying Grand Rapids rhapsodizes:

Sunday morning bright and early Streets of maple, oak and birch Populate themselves with people On their quiet way to church.

Among Grand Rapids residents, perhaps the most frequently heard praise of the city is that it is a good place to work, bring up children and get an education. Under a voluntary integration plan, which is going fairly smoothly, some 2,000 to 3,000 of 30,000 children are bused to achieve integration. Though 29% of the children are black, all but six of the 51 elementary schools are well integrated. There is a special school for highly talented kids, an environmentally focused school at the zoo, a high school completion program in which 12,000 people are enrolled. Says Superintendent Phillip Runkel: "Programs like this turn alienation around."

Lutheran Martin Marty, an associate editor of the Christian Century, attributes the city's equanimity to a special combination of poise and pride. "Grand Rapids chic is not worrying about what New Yorkers think chic is. and not talking about it, hoping and knowing it will soon go away," he writes. "Grand Rapids chic is not knowing that anyone else cares about chic."

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