Home › Government & Politics › Political Leaders & Statecraft
Betty Ford
1918–2011 · 93 years Tier II
She said the words breast cancer and alcoholic out loud
Dance was the plan. Elizabeth Bloomer was born in Chicago on April 8, 1918 and raised in Grand Rapids, where on Christmas Day 1933 she found her father dead of carbon monoxide under the family car — nobody ever established whether it was an accident. She had been studying dance since she was eight. She spent two summers at Bennington, was taken on by Martha Graham in New York in 1940, modeled for the Powers agency to pay for it, and danced with Graham's auxiliary group at Carnegie Hall. Her mother wanted her home. She went, taught dance, and in 1942 married an insurance salesman, Bill Warren, a diabetic who drank. She had decided to divorce him when he fell into a coma. She nursed him for two years first.
Six weeks into a presidency nobody had voted for, Betty Ford had a mastectomy and told the country about it. That was September 28, 1974. She released her own medical reports, the first First Lady to do so since 1922, and explained the decision as a matter of Watergate — there had been enough covering up. Screening surged. Reported cases spiked so sharply that clinicians named the effect after her. Then she used the room she had. She telephoned state legislators to push the Equal Rights Amendment. On 60 Minutes in August 1975 she called Roe v. Wade a great, great decision, said she assumed her children had tried marijuana, and refused to walk any of it back. Her husband joked that it had cost him votes. The polling said otherwise.
The pills had begun in 1964 with a pinched nerve in her neck. By the White House years she was taking as many as 20 a day and drinking on top of them, and she had already had a breakdown in 1965 and two years of psychiatric care. On April 1, 1978, 14 months out of Washington, her children and her husband walked into the house at Rancho Mirage and told her what they had been watching. She was furious with them. She checked into the naval hospital at Long Beach on April 11, disclosed the prescription addiction that week and then, days later through a spokesman, the alcoholism, which startled friends who had thought her a social drinker. In 1982 she and Leonard Firestone opened a treatment center in the desert with her name on the door.
Putting her name on the building was the point. It made admitting to treatment survivable for people whose livelihoods depended on silence, and Betty Ford entered the language as a place you went rather than a person you were. She took the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 and a Congressional Gold Medal alongside her husband in 1999, chaired the center's board until 2005, and handed the chair to her daughter. She died on July 8, 2011 at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, at 93, and was buried beside her husband on the grounds of his museum in Grand Rapids. In 2014 the center merged with the Hazelden Foundation. Her bequest of 500,000 dollars went with it.
Lifespan
Betty Ford's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The 60 Minutes interview
television
August 10, 1975 — on abortion, marijuana, premarital sex and the Equal Rights Amendment 1975 -
The Equal Rights Amendment campaign
other
She telephoned state legislators directly and was still marching for it in the 1980s 1975 -
The Times of My Life
book
Published the year she got sober 1978 -
The Betty Ford Center
company
Co-founded with Leonard Firestone. She chaired the board for 23 years 1982 -
Betty: A Glad Awakening
book
Written with Chris Chase on the intervention and the recovery 1987
Life in brief
with age at each point- April 8, 1918 aged 0 Born Elizabeth Anne Bloomer in Chicago The family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, while she was small.
- December 25, 1933 aged 15 Finds her father dead of carbon monoxide in the family garage Whether it was an accident was never established.
- 1940 aged ~22 Accepted as a student by Martha Graham in New York She modeled for the Powers agency to pay for the lessons.
- October 15, 1948 aged 30 Marries Gerald Ford weeks before he is first elected to Congress He had asked her to wait — he was unsure how voters would take a divorced former dancer.
- 1964 aged ~46 A pinched nerve in her neck starts a decade of prescriptions At the worst of it she was taking as many as 20 pills a day.
- September 28, 1974 aged 56 Undergoes a mastectomy and makes the diagnosis public The first First Lady to release her own medical reports since 1922.
- April 1, 1978 aged 59 Her family stages an intervention at Rancho Mirage She entered the naval hospital at Long Beach on April 11 and disclosed the addiction that week.
- 1982 aged ~64 Opens the Betty Ford Center with Leonard Firestone
- July 8, 2011 aged 93 Dies at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage at 93 Buried beside her husband at his presidential museum in Grand Rapids.
Related
Contemporaries
Government & Politics, born within 25 years
John F. Kennedy 1917–1963Government & Politics35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program.
John Paul Stevens 1920–2019Government & PoliticsLong-serving justice whose opinions shaped civil liberties, administrative law, and limits on executive power.
Robert McNamara 1916–2009Government & PoliticsSecretary of Defense who applied systems analysis to the Pentagon and escalated the Vietnam War.
George McGovern 1922–2012Government & PoliticsSouth Dakota senator and 1972 presidential nominee who led opposition to the Vietnam War.
William Westmoreland 1914–2005Government & PoliticsCommander in Vietnam whose attrition strategy and optimistic troop estimates collided with the Tet Offensive.
Bob Dole 1923–2021Government & PoliticsWounded veteran and Senate leader who helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act.