Gerald Ford visited campus on Sept. 23, 1986
Gerald Ford had been out of the White House for nearly 10 years when he spoke to a packed Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 23, 1986, but that occasion was nonetheless the first visit to UConn by someone who had served as President of the United States. Ford, a Michigan congressman who became vice president after the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973, would become the country's 38th president the following year, after Richard Nixon's resignation. At UConn, Ford addressed issues of the day – the Soviet Union, the apartheid regime in South Africa, the federal budget – and joked about his "Saturday Night Live" portrayal as a clumsy oaf. "I knew I was a fairly decent athlete, and most of those critics were much less capable," said Ford, a star linebacker on two national champion University of Michigan football teams in the 1930s. "I enjoy a good laugh." Nine years later, Bill Clinton became the first sitting president to visit UConn, for the dedication of the Dodd Center for Human Rights.
