The consensus is that the networks' coverage of Gerald Ford's funeral won't begin to near that of the nation's most recent farewell to a fallen president. "It will not be of the magnitude of Ronald Reagan, who had two terms and was a dominant figure in American politics," NBC News' Tom Brokaw tells Reuters. "[And] I think the Ford family knows that." Said TV coverage plans have yet to be firmed up, but it is expected that there will be at least some coverage of Ford's laying in state under the Capitol rotunda, and of his state funeral, planned for Tuesday at the National Cathedral in Washington.
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Chevy Chase, who famously lampooned the then-president during Saturday Night Live's early days, remembers Gerald R. Ford, who died Tuesday night, as "a very, very sweet man." Speaking to Reuters, Chase says his bumbling take was born of Ford's status as the United States' first nonelected commander in chief, and Nixon's successor and eventual pardoner. "I never felt that he deserved to be there to begin with," he says. "That was just the way I felt then as a young man and as a writer and a liberal." Years later, Chase says, he and Ford became friends. "He took my wife and I on a whole lovely trip through Grand Rapids to show us where he had been as a child and whatnot. We kept in touch, and he was just a terrific guy."
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