Tucson was a familiar place for Gerald Ford.
From golf to Republican fundraisers to international conferences, the former president, who died Tuesday at 93, made numerous stops in the Old Pueblo over the years.
And Tucsonans seemed to appreciate the attention.
During a high-profile visit in 1974, Ford met with then-Mexican President Luis Echeverría in Tubac, drawing 7,000 people to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to watch his departure.
Times haven't changed much. A top priority of the meeting was discussion of illegal immigration — or the "alien situation," as it was called then.
The location of the meeting was picked by Warren Rustand, a prominent local businessman and former University of Arizona basketball player who worked for Ford as appointments secretary.
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"He enjoyed the desert," said Rustand, who lives in town. "He always liked Tucson."
A few years after the Echeverría meeting, Ford was back in Tucson, but things had changed.
Faced in part with criticism for his blanket pardon of Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal for any crimes he committed as president, Ford had lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Henry Ruth, a former Watergate special prosecutor and U.S. Justice Department attorney who now lives in Tucson, remembers being frustrated by the pardon. Now he recognizes that it helped the country find closure.
"George W. Bush might call himself a 'uniter, not a divider,' but Ford was the real uniter," said Ruth. "The only thing I regret was that Nixon was able to keep saying, 'Yes, I made a mistake but didn't commit a crime' for the rest of his life."
But former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, a Tucson Democrat, still considers the pardon a big mistake. There was no excuse for short-circuiting the process even before federal prosecutors got a chance to decide if Nixon should be indicted for obstruction of justice, he said.
"To do it ahead of any charges was, to me, saying, 'It's OK if you do these sort of things,' " said DeConcini, a former prosecutor.
By 1979, Ford was flirting with another run against Carter, and at a Republican fundraiser in Tucson that February he characterized the Democrat's economic policies as a "disaster." Later, Ford announced he would not run.
He'd be back in 1984 to stump for Jim Kolbe in his successful bid for Congress.
But while Ford expected to be asked questions about international or domestic policy during the visit, "almost invariably," he mused at the time, "people asked, 'How's your golf game?' "
Indeed, it was golf — not just politics — that drew Ford here.
Bill Kipling, now a local schoolteacher, was working at the Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa golf course in 1996 when he caddied for Ford during a charity event.
"He was a gentleman," Kipling said. "He didn't make you feel like you were in the presence of a president."
• In person: You can sign a public register in honor of former President Gerald R. Ford at South Lawn Mortuary and Cemetery, 5401 S. Park Ave., 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Call 294-2603 for information.
• Online tribute: dignitymemorial.com
