Jack Ford grew up in Alexandria, attending MacArthur Elementary School and graduating from T.C. Williams High School in 1970. He was a summer park ranger at Yellowstone National Park between terms as a forestry student at Utah State University when his father became president. He will be the keynote speaker on Nov. 12 at a 4 p.m. dedication of President Gerald R. Ford Park at 1422 and 1426 Janney’s Lane. He owns a marketing company in California.

What was Crown View Drive like when your parents moved there in 1955?
When we first moved there, there was only two or three houses on the street, and it was mostly dirt fields and woods behind the house. That was great as a kid. Gradually the neighborhood was built up, and it is what it is today — fully developed and other than the woods still left there on Janey’s Lane. That’s about all that’s left of the original makeup of the neighborhood. It was a great neighborhood that was predominantly families with kids of all different kinds of ages. You felt very comfortable and very safe to jump on you bike and ride down to a friend’s house and spend the day playing there and then be home by dark.

What was your parents’ relationship to the city?
They were active in the PTA at MacArthur Elementary School and Immanuel on the Hill Episcopal Church as well as all of the sports teams and all of the things that you do as your kids grow up. In terms of political activities, they were familiar with Mayor Frank Mann. It was interesting because there were a lot of people in the neighborhood who were active in military or government at various levels. Once they got home and parked the car, politics was the last thing they wanted to be focused on. It was a very family-oriented neighborhood. It was a great place to grow up.

You graduated T.C. Williams when it was still a very new school. What was it like at that time?
I was co-captain of the football team in 1970, so I know a lot of those guys portrayed in the movie "Remember the Titans." It was in 1971 when the school system made that big transition where they shut down George Washington High School and Hammond High School to put everybody at T.C. Williams. So I left the year before all that happened. I think the movie captures a good portion of what was going on back then, but it’s still Hollywood. So you know they are going to dramatize parts of it. People always seem surprised when I tell them that T.C. Williams was fully integrated when I went there.

How do you feel about the old neighborhood?
I still drive past the neighborhood and the house. When the funeral ceremonies were going on in Washington for my dad, I took my two young sons out to show them the house. It had a lot more meaning to me than it did to them obviously. We went to Douglas MacArthur, where we used to play basketball every afternoon after school. So I have wonderfully fond memories of that whole time. But the truth is that they are my memories, not theirs.

How would you say that Alexandria has changed since you graduated high school?
When I lived there, the Torpedo Factory was just an old factory. None of the gentrification of that whole area had occurred at all. And so that’s probably the most dramatic change. Then of course the neighborhood where I grew up was mostly woods and dirt fields. That’s long gone. It’s probably hard for people to believe but where we lived was kind of out in the country in many people’s minds. It was a kid’s delight because you could build tree forts and there were acres and acres of places to go and explore. That’s all gone, but it still has the flavor of when I grew up. One of the things I used to love to do when I was growing up was go to a hardware store on King Street near the train station. That area was on the fringes of being seedy. I remember the World War I tank that sat in front of the train station. As kids, we used to love to go down there and climb around on that.

Your father lived in the Crown View Drive for the first 10 days of his presidency. Do you think of it as a makeshift White House?
It was, and we’re talking about a very unique time and place. The Trumans lived in Blair House while they were renovating the White House. Certainly in modern American history it’s unusual for a sitting president to live somewhere other than the White House. And of course we all remember the crazy nature of that. Here you have the president of the United States living in this relatively modest suburban home. Then you’ve got the Secret Service and the news media camped out there even though the neighborhood isn’t really set up to accommodate all of that. But it worked.

How did you get involved in coming to Alexandria to speak at the dedication of the park?
Mayor Euille and my older brother graduated from the same class at T.C. Williams in 1968. He reached out and said there was something the city would like to do to honor my father, and over time this opportunity developed. The part that means something special is that the park is really is in the neighborhood, kind of the old stomping grounds. So when the mayor contacted me and said the park was ready for dedication, it was good timing because on Saturday there will be a ceremony in Newport News for they laying of the keel for an aircraft carrier that will be named after Dad. That created a natural opportunity this week for the dedication of the park.

What do you think your father would think about having this park named in his honor?
Well he was about the most low-key modest guys you’d ever want to meet, and so in some respects he’s probably laugh to himself and say it was crazy. But everybody in the family is thrilled by it, and we’re looking forward to having it as part of the legacy.