Betty Ford, a self-proclaimed "ordinary" woman who never cared for political life but made a liberating adventure out of her 30 months as first lady, died Friday at age 93. Details of her death and where she died were not immediately available.
"I decided that if the White House was our fate," she once said of Gerald Ford's brief presidency, "I might as well have a good time doing it."
To the surprise of some and the consternation of others, Ms. Ford evolved as an activist first lady whose non-threatening manner coupled with her newfound celebrity provided the women's movement with an impressive ally. Undaunted by critics, she campaigned for ratification of the ill-starred Equal Rights Amendment, championed liberalized abortion laws and lobbied her husband to name more women to policymaking government jobs.
"Perhaps it was unusual for a first lady to be as outspoken about issues as I was, but that was my temperament, and I believed in it," she said in an interview at her Rancho Mirage (Riverside County) home in 1994. "I don't like to be dishonest, so when people asked me, I said what I thought."
For . Ford, a frank, plain-spoken Midwesterner, going public became a pattern of action that would also punctuate her post-White House years. In 1978, she disclosed that her use of alcohol and mood-altering prescription drugs had become a serious dependency.
In what she has described as a painful "intervention" when her family confronted her with her problem, she agreed to enter the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program at Long Beach Naval Hospital. Of that experience came the momentum to establish the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a live-in treatment program for alcoholics and drug abusers.
Her husband, who died in 2006, was a longtime Michigan congressman who became House minority leader. He served as Richard Nixon's vice president before the Watergate scandal led him to succeed Nixon, who resigned Aug. 9, 1974, and become the nation's 38th president. Ms. Ford had not wanted her husband to be president, but once he took office, she was determined that Americans know him as one with integrity.
"I was against a pardon," she said of Ford's decision to release Nixon from his Watergate offenses, which critics viewed as a secret deal between the two men in exchange for Nixon's resignation.
Fearing the pardon would undermine Ford's still-fragile presidency, she said she argued that "it would be very detrimental." In the end, she acquiesced to Ford's rationale that he needed to "get the country going." Impeachment proceedings "would have taken months in court, and he didn't think the country could stand that kind of thing," she said. Within weeks after Watergate claimed Nixon's political life and the Fords were settled at the White House, she soared from nonentity to national heroine because of her candid disclosure that she had a nodule in her right breast and was entering Bethesda Naval Medical Command. When a biopsy showed the lump to be malignant, she underwent a radical mastectomy.
Women across the country began seeking checkups for breast cancer.
Born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer on April 9, 1918, in Chicago, she was the only daughter and youngest of three children of William Stephenson and Hortense Neahr Bloomer. When she was 2, they moved to Grand Rapids, Mich.
Her father's death by carbon monoxide poisoning in a garage accident when she was 16 came at the height of the Great Depression. By then she had an after-school job modeling in a local department store and on Saturdays gave dancing lessons in her aunt's basement. Survivors include three sons, Mike, Steve and Jack Ford; a daughter, Susan Ford Bales; and her grandchildren.
No comments:
Post a Comment