Betty Ford

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Elizabeth "Betty" Ford
Betty Ford in her official White House photograph, 1974.
Born	April 8, 1918 (age 88) Chicago, Illinois, USA
Occupation	Former First Lady of the United States
Predecessor	Pat Nixon
Successor	Rosalynn Carter
Spouse	(1) William G. Warren (married 1942, divorced 1947) ( 2) Gerald R. Ford (married 1948, died 2006)
Children	Michael, Jack, Steven, Susan

Betty Ford's official White House portrait, painted in 1977 by Felix de Cossio

Elizabeth Ann Bloomer Warren Ford (born April 8, 1918) is the widow of former United States President Gerald R. Ford and was the First Lady from 1974 to 1977. She is the founder and former chairman of the board of directors of the Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and addiction.

[edit] Early life

Born in Chicago as Elizabeth Ann Bloomer and known from childhood as Betty, she was the third child and only daughter of William Stephenson Bloomer, Sr., a travelling salesman for Royal Rubber Co., and his wife, the former Hortense Neahr. She had two older brothers, Robert and William, Jr., and after living briefly in Denver, she grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she graduated from Central High School.

After the 1929 stock market crash, when Betty Bloomer was eleven, she began modeling clothes and teaching other children dances such as the foxtrot, waltz, and big apple. She studied dance at the Calla Travis Dance Studio, graduating in 1935.

When Bloomer was sixteen, her father, an alcoholic, died by carbon monoxide poisoning, reportedly while working on the family car in the Bloomers' garage; whether it was an accident or suicide remains unknown.^[1] In 1933, after she graduated from high school, she proposed continuing her study of dance in New York, but her mother refused. Instead, Bloomer attended the Bennington School of Dance in Bennington, Vermont, for two summers, where she studied under Martha Graham and Hanya Holm.

[edit] Career

After being accepted by Graham as a student, Betty Bloomer moved to Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood and worked as a fashion model for the John Robert Powers firm in order to finance her dance studies. She joined Graham’s auxiliary troupe and eventually performed with the company at Carnegie Hall.

Her mother, now remarried to Arthur Meigs Godwin, opposed her daughter’s choice of a career and insisted that she move home, but Bloomer resisted. They finally came to a compromise: she would return home for six months, and if nothing worked out for her in New York, she would return to Michigan, which she did in 1941. She became the fashion coordinator for Herpolsheimer's, a local department store. She also organized her own dance group and taught dance at various sites in Grand Rapids, including to children with disabilities.

[edit] Marriages and family

In 1942, Bloomer married William G. Warren, a furniture salesman, whom she had known since she was twelve. She and her husband, who soon began selling insurance, moved frequently because of his work. At one point they lived in Toledo, Ohio, where she was employed as a demonstrator at Lasalle & Koch, a department store, a job that entailed being a model and saleswoman. They had no children and divorced on September 22 , 1947, on the grounds of incompatibility.

On October 15, 1948, Elizabeth Bloomer Warren married Gerald R. Ford Jr., a lawyer and World War II veteran, at Grace Episcopal Church, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ford was then campaigning for what would be his first of thirteen terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the wedding was delayed until shortly before the elections, because, as The New York Times reported, "Jerry was running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced ex-dancer."^[2]

First family, 1974

The couple, who were married for 58 years, had four children:

• Michael Gerald Ford (b. 1950)
• John Gardner Ford (a.k.a. Jack, b. 1952)
• Steven Meigs Ford (b. 1956)
• Susan Elizabeth Ford (b. 1957)

The Fords moved to the Virginia suburbs of the Washington, D.C., area and lived there for twenty-five years. Ford rose to become the highest-ranking Republican in the House, then was appointed Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned from that position in 1973. He became president in 1974, upon Richard M. Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

[edit] First Lady of the United States

Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as the 38th President of the United States by Chief Justice Warren Burger as Betty Ford looks on.

In the opinion of The New York Times, "Mrs. Ford's impact on American culture may be far wider and more lasting than that of her husband, who served a mere 896 days, much of it spent trying to restore the dignity of the office of the president." The paper went on to describe her as "a product and symbol of the cultural and political times—doing the Bump along the corridors of the White House, donning a mood ring, chatting on her CB radio with the handle First Mama—a housewife who argued passionately for equal rights for women, a mother of four who mused about drugs, abortion and premarital sex aloud and without regret."^[3] In 1975, in an interview with McCall's magazine, Ford said that she was asked just about everything, except for how often she and the president had sex. "And if they'd asked me that I would have told them," she said, adding that her response would be, "As often as possible."^[4]

She was open about the benefits of psychiatric treatment, she spoke understandingly about marijuana use and premarital sex, and the new First Lady pointedly stated that she and the President shared the same bed during a televised White House tour. After Betty Ford appeared on 60 Minutes in a characteristically candid interview in which she discussed how she would counsel her daughter if she was having an affair and the possibility that her children may have experimented with marijuana, some conservatives called her "No Lady" and even demanded her "resignation", but her overall approval rating was at 75%. As she later said, during her husband's failed 1976 presidential campaign, "I would give my life to have Jerry have my poll numbers".^[5]

During her time as First Lady, Ford also was an outspoken advocate of women's rights. She supported the proposed Equal Rights Amendment and the legalization of abortion. For a time, it was unclear whether Gerald Ford shared his wife's pro-choice viewpoint. However, he told interviewer Larry King that he, too, was pro-choice and had been criticized for that stance by conservative forces within the Republican Party.

Weeks after Betty Ford became First Lady, she underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer on September 28, 1974. Her openness about her illness raised the visibility of a disease that Americans had previously been reluctant to talk about. "When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines," she told Time magazine. "But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person—maybe more." Further amplifying the public awareness of breast cancer were reports that several weeks after Betty Ford's cancer surgery, Happy Rockefeller, the wife of vice president Nelson Rockefeller, also underwent a mastectomy.^[6]

Betty Ford was an advocate of the arts while First Lady, and was instrumental in Martha Graham receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976.

The Fords in a limo, 1963

[edit] The Betty Ford Center

Main article: Betty Ford Center

In 1978, the Ford family staged an intervention and forced Betty Ford to confront her alcoholism and an addiction to opioid analgesics that had been prescribed in the early 1960s for a pinched nerve. "I liked alcohol," she wrote in her 1987 memoir. "It made me feel warm. And I loved pills. They took away my tension and my pain". In 1982, after her recovery, she established the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, for the treatment of chemical dependency. Again, her candor in dealing with substance abuse and recovery led to an improvement in how Americans talked about such matters. She wrote about her treatment in a 1987 book, Betty: A Glad Awakening. In 2003 Ford produced another book, Healing and Hope: Six Women from the Betty Ford Center Share Their Powerful Journeys of Addiction and Recovery.

In 2005, Betty Ford relinquished her chairmanship of the center's board of directors to her daughter, Susan.

[edit] Later life

Betty Ford (right) with President George W. Bush and former President Ford on April 23, 2006.

Betty Ford currently resides in Rancho Mirage, California, where she lived with her husband until his death on December 26, 2006.

In 1978 Ford published her autobiography, The Times of My Life.

In 1987 Betty Ford was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.

In 1999 Betty and Gerald Ford were jointly given the Congressional Gold Medal, "in recognition of their dedicated public service and outstanding humanitarian contributions to the people of the United States of America." [1]

[edit] See also

• List of notable breast cancer patients
• List of famous people with breast cancer

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ Tucker, Neely, "Betty For, Again Putting On a Brave Face", The Washington Post, 29 December 2006
2. ^ Jane Howard, "The 38th First Lady: Not a Robot At All", The New York Times, December 8, 1974
3. ^ Steinhauer, Jennifer, "A First Lady Whose Legacy Rivals Husband's", The New York Times, December 30, 2006
4. ^ Tucker, Neely, "Betty For, Again Putting On a Brave Face", The Washington Post, 29 December 2006
5. ^ Steinhauer, Jennifer, "A First Lady Whose Legacy Rivals Husband's", The New York Times, December 30, 2006
6. ^ "Breast Cancer: Fears and Facts", Time, November 4, 1974

[edit] References

• Betty Ford Biography. Ford Library & Museum. Retrieved December 29, 2006, University of Texas: http://www.ford.utexas.edu/grf/bbfbiop.htm
• First Lady: Elizabeth "Betty" Bloomer Ford. First Lady: Biography. American President.org. Retrieved December 29, 2006, The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia: http://www.americanpresident.org/history/geraldford/firstlady/
• Ford, Betty. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 29, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9096417
• First Lady Biography: Betty Ford. firstladies.org. Retrieved December 29, 2006, The National First Ladies Library: http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=39 National First Ladies' Library biography]
• Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Martha Graham. MedalofFreedom.com. Americans.net. Retrieved December 29, 2006, http://www.medaloffreedom.com/MarthaGraham.htm ]