By the time he died on Tuesday afternoon, former President Gerald R. Ford had come to epitomize a long-ago period of civility, honest governance and remarkable healing after both a vice president and a president had resigned in disgrace.

He became president in the midst of the Vietnam War and after the Nixon administration had plunged into criminality. Richard Nixon chose Mr. Ford to replace Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who was found to have accepted $268,000 in bribes, partly in envelopes handed to him when he was governor of Maryland. Later, Mr. Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment charges targeting his alleged crimes of burglaries, wiretapping and coverup in the Watergate scandal.

So Gerald Ford, a genial and popular longtime U.S. representative, whose only ambition was to be speaker of the House, landed in the presidency. He told a shaken nation: “Our long national nightmare is over.” Always a hard worker, he set about trying to bring the Vietnam War to a satisfactory conclusion, to combat first inflation and then recession, and above all to instill a sense of decency, honor and normality after such a dreadful upheaval.

But his own good nature had kept him for many months from realizing that President Nixon condoned and even ordered his administration’s conspiracies and crimes. The same qualities may have played a major part in his prompt decision as president to pardon Mr. Nixon – an action that triggered a political furor even though it has since been widely applauded.

Although Mr. Ford was generally well liked during his 29 months as president, the pardon remained an issue. It probably was decisive in the 1976 election, when Gov. Jimmy Carter, a little-known peanut farmer from Georgia, narrowly defeated him.

Of the pardon, Democratic National Chairman Robert S. Strauss said at the time: “People always assumed there was a deal, even though there was no evidence of one.”

A similar judgment, plus details about the pardon, has come from James M. Cannon, a journalist, political adviser, Ford biographer, and presidential assistant in the Ford White House. Mr. Cannon wrote in an essay that when Mr. Nixon knew he was finished he sent Alexander Haig, the White House chief of staff, to see Vice President Ford with the suggestion that he would resign as president if Mr. Ford would agree in advance to pardon him. Mr. Cannon wrote that Mr. Ford pondered the proposal for 24 hours, as his wife and other advisers begged him to reject it. Finally, Bryce Harlow, who had counseled every president since Eisenhower, persuaded him that any deal would be tainted. “So Ford called Haig and told him no deal.”

Still, there were suspicions in the Democratic controlled Congress. To quiet them, Mr. Ford took the unprecedented step of testifying before Congress. Before the House Judiciary Committee, one representative asked him if there had been a deal. Mr. Ford replied bluntly: “There was no deal. Period. Under no circumstances.”

Questions will persist, but most authorities take Jerry Ford at his word, a measure of their admiration then and now.