The Gerald R. Ford Foundation and Grand Valley State University Wednesday presented the symposium, When Campaigns Were (Mostly) Fun, at the Richard M. DeVos Center on the Grand Rapids Campus.
The event, assembled by Ford Foundation Director and GVSU Distinguished Professor of Political History Richard Norton Smith, featured a series of informal discussions among journalists and political insiders of the last half-century of American politics.
President Ford was a participant, along with such other notables as Sam Donaldson of ABC News, Lyn Nofziger, and Newton Minow. Betty Ford also attended.
This event kicked off the 20th anniversary of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, in Grand Rapids, and also celebrateed the recent addition of Smith, the eminent American historian, to Grand Valley State University's faculty.
This was the first event of this kind in the new Richard M. DeVos Center, the recently opened home of GVSU's graduate programs.
