Wendell Ford

OWENSBORO, Ky. — Vice President Joe Biden knew former Kentucky governor and U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford as a trusted adviser and Bill Clinton knew him as the man who first introduced Clinton as President of the United States.

But Leroy Lamar knew him for his love of Coke Classic and peanut butter crackers.

A commercial pilot from Hawesville, Lamar is used to putting up with demanding needs of his clients. But whenever Ford called him for a ride, he was happy with just a Coke and crackers.

“If he had never been senator or governor, he would have been just the same,” he said.

From presidents to pilots, the theme at Ford’s funeral Tuesday in his hometown of Owensboro was his ability to make things happen at the highest levels of government without compromising his love of Kentucky or its people. Biden, who served in the Senate with Ford for 25 years, marveled at how Ford could know a state so well, and how a state could know him even better.

“You knew he knew what your problem was. You knew he knew, and he understood. ... He could smell it, taste it, feel it,” Biden said during Ford’s funeral. “Technically, I was senior to Wendell (in the Senate.). ... But I was smart enough to know I was junior in every other way.”

Biden hailed Ford as “the most effective legislative leader I have ever worked with” and said he worked behind the scenes on Biden’s Violence Against Women Act in the mid-1990s.

He said it was Ford’s idea to attach the bill to a larger crime bill to ensure it would pass.

Clinton said Ford was in charge of his presidential inauguration, and recalled that Ford’s was the “very first voice I ever heard saying I was president.” Clinton said he remembers every speech Ford gave during his two campaigns for president, where he won Kentucky both times by narrow margins — the last time a Democratic presidential candidate has won Kentucky.

“It is unlikely I would have won had he taken a different view of things,” Clinton said.

And yet, Clinton said he remembered Ford most for his staunch defense of his policies when he believed Clinton was right, and for his stern lectures when he thought Clinton was wrong.

“I had a lot of those (lectures) over the eight years,” Clinton said. “But he knew nobody was right all the time. If he did fail, he would make a deal. We got a lot done in those years.”