Jerald terHorst dies; he quit over Nixon

WASHINGTON - Jerald terHorst, who resigned as White House press secretary rather than defend President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, is dead at age 87.

A longtime Detroit News journalist, terHorst served for a month as Ford's spokesman in 1974 before quitting to protest the president's decision not to hold his predecessor accountable for any crimes in the Watergate scandal.

TerHorst told Ford in his resignation letter he could not credibly speak for him in defending the pardon while young men who evaded Vietnam military service as a matter of conscience had to pay for their actions.

TerHorst died Wednesday night of congestive heart failure at his retirement community in Asheville, N.C., and was attended by his grown children, according to his son Peter.

Ford issued the pardon as a way to heal a nation badly shaken by the scandal that drove Nixon from office after the 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters by burglars tied to Nixon's re-election committee.

The pardon opened a national rift, but Ford said for the rest of his life that it had been the right decision.

In his Sept. 8, 1974, resignation letter, terHorst objected to the absence of pardons not only for draft resisters, but for other figures in the Watergate affair who ended up behind bars.

"These are also men whose reputations and families have been grievously injured," he wrote. "Try as I can, it is impossible to conclude that the former president is more deserving of mercy than persons of lesser station in life whose offenses have had far less effect on our national well-being."

Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., terHorst began covering Ford in the late 1940s as a reporter for the Grand Rapids Press, when the future president won his seat in Congress from Michigan. TerHorst joined the Detroit News in 1953 and moved to Washington in 1958, becoming the paper's bureau chief here in 1961.

He returned as a syndicated columnist after his short stint with the president and went on to serve as Washington public affairs director for another Ford - the automaker.

In a Detroit News interview last year, terHorst lamented that the job of White House press secretary has become less about telling Americans what the president is doing and why, than about peddling the presidential party line.