Fond memories of a president, a friend

When Paul Salata attends the Rose Bowl today, his thoughts will be with the late President Ford.

Not because of any of the 38th president’s achievements in office or even on the football field, but rather because of a personal connection: Ford was one of Salata’s closest friends, and the former college football players — Ford for the University of Michigan and Salata for USC — placed bets whenever their teams met in the Rose Bowl.

In December, Salata mailed his money to Ford for the last time.

“I just sent him $20,” said Salata, a Newport Beach resident who played for USC in the Rose Bowl in 1945 and 1948. “I said, ‘If you win, keep it. If you don’t win, give it to the Betty Ford Clinic.’ ”

Shortly afterward, Salata — and the rest of the world — received the news that Ford had died at age 93. While pundits dredged up their memories of the Cold War, the Nixon pardon and the 1976 presidential race, Salata and his family remembered the former Michigan linebacker in different ways: a skiing partner, a dog lover, and of course, a football fan.

Those connections came in a way that had nothing to do with politics or sports. In the mid-1970s, Salata’s daughter, Melanie Fitch, dated the president’s son, Steven, while she was a USC student. Eventually, the romance fizzled, but Salata and Ford remained close over the years. And as USC and Michigan faced off at the Rose Bowl in 1977, 1979, 1989, 1990 and 2004, the money for bets passed back and forth.

“He was a person’s person,” Salata said. “He was like you and I and didn’t make out like he was the president.”

A PERSON’S PRESIDENT

When Ford took office in 1974, he set a new mark for presidential casualness when he invited a group of reporters into his kitchen while he made his own breakfast. To Salata’s family, however, he was even more down-to-earth than that. During the three years that their children dated, the Salatas and Fords took ski trips together, exchanged Christmas presents and hung out at the White House.

And Fitch had an experience that probably few Americans can boast: getting help with her homework from the country’s leaders. One year, she had to write a term paper while on vacation with the Fords, and needed a hand to make it look professional.

“The professor wouldn’t let me take it early, so I had President Ford and Henry Kissinger and some of the Secret Service agents help me type my term paper,” said Fitch, who also lives in Newport Beach. “I got an A.”

Fitch remembered other details of Ford in person, few of which contradicted his image as one of America’s humblest chief executives. She said he often addressed his wife, Betty, as “Mom,” and would sometimes unnerve Secret Service agents when he got up to walk his dog alone around the neighborhood.

Once, while Ford was in the thick of campaigning against Jimmy Carter, he stopped by Fitch’s sorority to check on his son’s romantic life. Men weren’t allowed upstairs in the sorority house, so the president and his bodyguards sat downstairs and shared lunch with the students.

“Everyone was going berserk, but he just said, ‘I want to see where my son’s hanging out,’ ” Fitch said.

AT THE GAME

On Monday, Salata — who founded Irrelevant Week, the annual celebration of the last pick in the NFL draft — plans to travel to Pasadena with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren and several friends. The family has another connection to the New Year’s festivities: Mary McCluggage, the 2007 Rose Queen, is the daughter of one of Fitch’s sorority sisters.

Salata said he expects the University of Michigan to pay tribute to its most famous alumnus during the game. If so, he’ll stand with the rest of the crowd, but he’ll miss the postgame phone call.

“He was a good football player, and he liked the game,” Salata said. “He talked about it all the time.”