Betty Ford, 1918–2011
The First Lady who elevated candor to a public virtue
Betty Ford believed in speaking her mind. In 1975, she appeared on 60 Minutes to answer questions about her family and her life as First Lady to President Gerald Ford. Asked what she would do if her then 18-year-old daughter, Susan, told her she’d had premarital sex, Ford replied, “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. I would think she’s a perfectly normal human being, like all young girls.”
Socially conservative Americans were outraged, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. But even they must have seen that Ford’s “genuineness and candor” were a “refreshing rebellion against the convention of politics.” Having a First Lady willing to cut against the grain showed the country it could “absorb the social changes of the previous decade without falling apart.” In the end, her outspokenness would go far beyond sex to cancer, abortion, and, most famously, addiction.
Ford was born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer, and brought up in Grand Rapids, Mich., said the Grand Rapids Press. After working as a model and a dancer in New York City, she returned to Michigan to marry insurance salesman William Warren in 1942. That marriage ended in 1947—just months before she met Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., a Grand Rapids lawyer five years her senior.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The two were engaged to be married in 1948, said The Washington Post, and Ford only learned of her fiancé’s political ambitions on the day he announced his candidacy for Michigan’s 5th Congressional District seat. “If I had known he was going to run for Congress,” she later said, “I don’t think I’d have married him.” The future president waited until after he won to tie the knot so that “what he feared might be unpopular with Republican voters, marrying a divorced woman, would no longer pose a problem for him.”
It was not until Ford was thrust into the presidency in 1974 that his wife actually did begin to pose a problem with Republican voters, said CBSNews.com. “Funny and down-to-earth,” the First Lady quickly got a reputation for saying what she really thought, whether it was about sleeping with her husband “as often as possible,” praising Roe v. Wade as “a great, great, decision,” or fighting for equal rights for women. When she contracted breast cancer in 1974, she discussed her mastectomy “in the days when people didn’t say the ‘C’ word out loud.” Her outspoken nature got her into trouble with conservatives, but she quickly became a feminist icon. When her husband ran for president in 1976, campaign buttons said, “Elect Betty’s husband for president.” More than one commentator later voiced the suspicion that the president’s controversial wife may have cost him the election.
Candor was always one of Ford’s “defining characteristics,” said USA Today, and never more so than when she “revealed a longtime addiction to painkillers and alcohol” a few months after leaving the White House. The former First Lady admitted to taking as many as 25 pills a day, washed down with vodka and tonics, and said her family had encouraged her to seek help. She balked, calling them “a bunch of monsters,” but did go for a stint in rehabilitation at Long Beach Naval Hospital. That experience inspired her to establish the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in 1982. Since then, it has treated 90,000 people and helped develop advanced techniques for treating addictions.
Although Betty Ford “claimed a more public role than any previous First Lady,” said David Frum in CNN.com, she was also one of the last “old-fashioned First Ladies,” taking a modest political role outside of the president’s orbit. But while the likes of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama may have chosen not to emulate Ford’s unvarnished openness, you can bet they envied the free space she created to speak her mind. “That was my temperament, and I believed in it,” she later said. “I don’t like to be dishonest, so when people asked me, I said what I thought.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
In what countries is assisted dying legal or in consideration for being made legal?
In the spotlight More countries are granting more people the right to die
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published
-
5 captivating books to read in May
the week recommends Brittney Griner tells her own story, a coming-of-middle-age novel and more
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
The secretive practice of 'catch-and-kill' tabloid journalism
The Explainer Outlets such as the National Enquirer have become infamous for using the practice
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
Why Everyone's Talking About Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'
By The Week UK Published
-
Shane MacGowan: the unruly former punk with a literary soul
Why Everyone's Talking About The Pogues frontman died aged 65
By The Week UK Published
-
'Euphoria' star Angus Cloud dies at 25
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Legendary jazz and pop singer Tony Bennett dies at 96
Speed Read
By Devika Rao Published
-
Martin Amis: literary wunderkind who ‘blazed like a rocket’
feature Famed author, essayist and screenwriter died this week aged 73
By The Week Staff Published
-
Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk legend, is dead at 84
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published
-
Barry Humphries obituary: cerebral satirist who created Dame Edna Everage
feature Actor and comedian was best known as the monstrous Melbourne housewife and Sir Les Patterson
By The Week Staff Published
-
Mary Quant obituary: pioneering designer who created the 1960s look
feature One of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century remembered as the mother of the miniskirt
By The Week Staff Published