James Ford
Class of 1964
James Ford graduated from Belleville High School as the class salutatorian in 1964. During his years at Belleville he played varsity football for three years, was captain of the track team, was conference champion in the pole vault as a sophomore, was a Merit Scholarship finalist, and served as president of the student council. After high school he attended the University of Michigan in the honors college, competed as a pole vaulter for the University of Michigan track team, and graduated in 1968 with a degree in history.
After graduation from the University of Michigan, he went through a year of Air Force pilot training at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas where he won the commander’s trophy as the top graduate in his class. He then spent three years as an aircraft commander flying a C-141 jet transport all over the world, followed by a year of flying electronic surveillance missions in Vietnam and Laos during the Vietnam War. He was recognized in February 1973 as the air crew of the month in Southeast Asia for successfully recovering from an inflight fire, the loss of an engine, and the loss of all lights and electrical instruments during a night combat mission over Laos.
After the Air Force he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Georgia Law School in 1975, spent two years as house counsel for the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company, and then practiced law for forty years as the owner of his own law firm in Kalamazoo, Michigan where he lived with his wife and three children. During his career he received a number of awards for cases that changed the law in Michigan, including a case that changed how juries are selected to ensure that minorities are adequately represented, and a First Amendment case that was included in Molly Ivin’ last book, Bill of Wrongs. In 1999 he was selected by the Michigan Lawyers Weekly as one of their ten “lawyers of the year” in the State of Michigan.
When not practicing law he published a book of memoirs titled I Lived in Those Times and volunteered as a pole vaulting coach for thirty years at Loy Norrix High School. After extensive research he returned to Vietnam in 2019 with his wife where, in an act of reconciliation, they found and shared tea with the Viet Cong soldier that had executed her helicopter pilot first husband in a small hamlet south of Danang fifty years earlier to the day. It became a front-page story in most newspapers in Michigan and many military and out of state publications as well.