Military personnel from Michigan

Jack_Robert_Lousma

Jack Robert Lousma (born February 29, 1936) is an American astronaut, aeronautical engineer, retired United States Marine Corps officer, former naval aviator, NASA astronaut, and politician. He was a member of the second crew, Skylab-3, on the Skylab space station in 1973. In 1982, he commanded STS-3, the third Space Shuttle mission. Lousma was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997. He is the last living crew member of both of his spaceflights.
Lousma later was the Republican Party nominee for a seat in the United States Senate from Michigan in 1984, losing to incumbent Carl Levin, who won his second of six terms.

Gerald_Rudolph_Ford

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( JERR-əld; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He previously served as the leader of the Republican Party in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 to 1973, and as the 40th vice president under President Richard Nixon from 1973 to 1974. Ford succeeded to the presidency when Nixon resigned in 1974, but was defeated for election to a full term in 1976. Ford is the only person to become U.S. president without winning an election for president or vice president.
Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the school's football team before eventually attending Yale Law School. Afterward, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as the House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after Spiro Agnew's resignation, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After the subsequent resignation of President Nixon in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.
Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession. In one of his most controversial acts, he granted a presidential pardon to Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. Foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the president. Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the collapse of South Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War essentially ended. In the 1976 Republican presidential primary, Ford defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic challenger, Jimmy Carter.
Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party, but his moderate views on various social issues increasingly put him at odds with conservative members of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also set aside the enmity he had felt towards Carter following the 1976 election and the two former presidents developed a close friendship. After experiencing a series of health problems, he died in Rancho Mirage, California in 2006. Surveys of historians and political scientists have ranked Ford as a below-average president, though retrospective public polls on his time in office were more positive.

William_C._Gribble,_Jr.

William C. Gribble Jr. (born May 24, 1917 in Ironwood, Michigan – June 2, 1979) graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1941 and was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers.
During World War II, he served on the staff of the 340th Engineer General Service Regiment as it first built a section of the Alaska Highway in western Canada and later assisted MacArthur's drive in New Guinea and the Philippines. At the end of the war he commanded the 118th Engineer Combat Battalion, U.S. 43d Infantry Division.
Gribble then worked in the Los Alamos laboratory and in the Reactor Development Division of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. As Alaska District Engineer he oversaw construction of a nuclear power plant at Fort Greely, Alaska. He headed the Army's nuclear power program in 1960-61. In 1963 he was the Corps' North Central Division Engineer. Gribble's scientific skills led to his service as Director of Research and Development in the U.S. Army Materiel Command in 1964-66 and as the Army's Chief of Research and Development in 1971-73. In 1969-70 he commanded the Army Engineer Center and Fort Belvoir and was Commandant of the Army Engineer School. He became Chief of Engineers in 1973, and retired in 1976.
Gribble received a master's degree in physical science from the University of Chicago in 1948 and an honorary doctorate in engineering from Michigan Technological University. He was also an honorary member of the United Kingdom's Institute of Royal Engineers. His decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Brazilian Order of Military Merit. General Gribble died at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, on June 2, 1979. He is interred in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.