NATION : No Takers for Ford’s Old Home
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Former President Gerald R. Ford’s boyhood home, which has stood empty for nearly 20 years, will be sold because efforts to turn it into a museum have failed.
“It’s almost a lost cause,” said Steele Taylor, chairman of the Grand Rapids Arts and Museum Commission. “We can’t get anybody interested in fixing it up.”
The Veterans Administration acquired the four-bedroom house in 1972 when the owner defaulted. Three years later, after Ford had become President, the VA gave it to the city.
The commission had trouble raising the estimated $51,000 to renovate the home into a museum because Ford lived in at least eight homes in Grand Rapids, said Jim Kratsas, curator of the Gerald R. Ford Museum.
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