My favorite part of winter break is five days in, which is the second day of having nothing to do; this day has some sort of special charm. This year, I made four trips to Dunkin’ Donuts on that day. I forgot the phone number listed on a help wanted ad for frog race referees. After I forgot it the first time, I decided I should bring a piece of paper inside the delicious donut den to write down the phone number, but I was too enthralled by the idea of watching a lot of frogs jump around to remember, so I had to drive back again.

The biggest news on the best day of break this year, besides my learning that frog racing is still alive and well in New Jersey, was when Gerald Ford died. A few years ago, a friend and I realized that Gerald Ford, who everyone sort of liked, was in fact a great president. His most famous moment involved falling down a set of stairs. He also pardoned a guy who everyone was tired of looking at, and he was on The Simpsons. After he died, my friend and I sprung into action as members of the only pro-Gerald Ford Facebook group to exist while the great man was still alive.

Gerald Ford’s presidency was like hooking up with someone you meet at Afterhours. After so many years of serious presidents, America finally needed a relationship in which the other side (the president) didn’t take itself way too seriously. Kennedy was wonderful, Johnson was tragic and Nixon was nuts. Ford was Ford, though. He was gone the next morning, and everyone just felt better.

Some people might say that my view of history is misinformed, that I’m oversimplifying, that Afterhours has nothing to do with presidential politics anyway. But America was sort of bummed at losing Ford, old as he was. Two of our living presidents are now named Bush. One, and possibly the next, are named Clinton.

Ford was that breath of fresh air that everyone remembered at the same time that ridiculous night at a strange party on Eddy Street that ended up with some kid trying to fly.

After Gerald Ford died, fellow Sun columnist Charlie “Peacin’ Town” Niesenbaum ’08 dialed my digits. “It’s a sad day, man,” he said, with all the gravitas of someone whose Christmas night festivities had been ruined by the passing of this popular president. Charlie sold his yellow Ford Focus about a week after the President died, because it hurt to look at. Suddenly, fording the river in the Oregon Trail became an impossible task.

But it was nice to see America really pour out its heart for Gerald Ford. I was a bit surprised, pleasantly of course, that Ford got the same amount of attention as “famous" presidents like Nixon or Reagan.

It was also good to see that Cheney, Rumsfeld and plenty of the other characters in politics today (boy, are they characters!) got their start in the Ford Administration. Has anyone else noticed that Cheney sort of has a lazy eye? I’m surprised that none of the columnists/humorists/political hacks who make their living off mocking the Bush Administration have figured that out.

I was in Washington for a few days and thought about filing past Ford’s coffin while it lie in state in the Capitol. But I realized that I had no personal connection to him, that I didn’t really remember Watergate and that I wasn’t still angry over his pardoning Nixon. So I picked up and went to Atlantic City instead to play some blackjack.

As I moped my way through a series of Atlantic City casino corridors with friends who were doing much, much better than I was, as I grieved the loss of $40 that I needed to buy gas to get home and not be stuck in the marshes of South Jersey, something hit me.

I think it was the spirit of Gerald Ford, America’s most saintly president. Gerald Ford never let a few bad hands get to him. Ford lost a presidential election to Jimmy Carter, possibly America’s least effective president ever. But Ford never rolled over. He went back out there and won. I went back to the craps tables and, with the grace of Gerry, started rolling well for all the wannabe gangsters and assorted shady types that Atlantic City seems to attract. I was up five hundy by midnight.

The legacy of Gerald Ford isn’t that he was a klutz — he won two national championships when he played college football, making him America’s most athletic president — or that he pardoned Richard Nixon.

It’s that he was the can-do guy at a time when America’s self-confidence was down. A month after we lost Ford, we’re starting to forget him, relegating him to a place in history where he’ll be sultrily examined by bespectacled presidential historians. Let’s not forget him. After all, he was the Afterhours president.

Justin Weitz is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jdw42@cornell.edu. Free Weitz appears alternate Wednesdays.