EVERETT – Gerald R. Ford loved spaetzle.
He asked for the European noodles when he went out to dinner at the Alpenrose Restaurant in Vail, Colo., where he maintained a vacation home throughout his political career.
“He liked basic Swiss food,” said Peter Boden, a native of Switzerland and chef who owned the restaurant.
Boden now lives on Whidbey Island, where he owns P.S. Suisse, a pastry shop. He moved from Switzerland to Colorado in 1968 to become a ski bum, and ended up chef and cake baker to the former president.
Ford died Tuesday at the age of 93. He was among a small group of former presidents, including John Adams, Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan, to live beyond the age of 90.
Ford was a congressman when he first visited Boden’s restaurant. He loved Boden’s European comfort food and soon became a frequent guest and catering client.
“I catered Betty Ford’s first Christmas party in Vail,” Boden said. “It was a buffet-style dinner with quite a bit of locals. (Gerald Ford) was very much liked by the locals.”
Ford’s private chef turned to Boden, a master of pastries and desserts, for the president’s birthday cakes for four or five years in a row in the mid-1970s. There were multiple layers and tiers, red, white and blue frosting – something different every year, but always chocolate. That was Ford’s favorite.
Boden was happy to oblige. Ford, he said, was a thoughtful man who didn’t forget the people who served him.
“He was the kind of man (who) came behind the curtain to the back and said ‘thank you’ for the little things,” Boden said. “I gave them the dessert they liked, chocolate mousse, and he always had to come and say, ‘Thank you.’”
Other area residents who met Ford remember his strength and sense of humor.
Paul Elvig, a longtime Republican activist in Snohomish County, met Ford several times, including at a private fundraiser on Mercer Island.
“He had a wonderful smile, with a gap in his lower teeth,” Elvig said. “Just a little gap, but enough so that I noticed it and wanted to ask him if it was a football injury.”
Elvig likes to tell people he was one of fewer than a dozen people in Washington state who can prove that he voted for Ford in 1976.
Ford was facing Ronald Reagan in the Republican Party’s primary election. Elvig, who was then chairman of Whatcom County’s Republican organization, was also chairman of the state’s electoral college.
Ford won the Republican primary, but lost the election to Jimmy Carter.
Ford had a strong handshake, Elvig said Wednesday. He remembered watching the former president hop out of a vehicle before it had stopped moving to begin making his way through his waiting admirers.
When comedians teased Ford for his clumsiness on national television, the ex-president laughed right along with the rest of the audience, Elvig said.
Joe Miller, a ranger at Squire Creek County Park near Darrington, was in his 70s in 1999 when he told The Herald that he met Ford in the 1970s while working as a security guard for entertainer Bob Hope.
Everett High School’s band scheduled an extra practice in 1976 to prepare for a performance for Ford’s visit to Seattle’s Waterfront Park, band Director Meryl Phillips told The Herald.
In 1978, two years after he lost his bid for a full-term presidency, Ford visited Paine Field in Everett, where he stumped for Republican congressional candidate John Nance Garner and berated Carter’s policy on inflation.
On Wednesday morning, Elvig bought copies of each different newspaper that was available at his local coffee shop. It’s his tradition to save the front page whenever something important happens.
“It’s just watching history parade by you, that’s all,” he said.
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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