Betty Ford

Betty Ford was such a popular first lady, she once said she wished she could give her husband, President Gerald Ford, some of her approval rating in order to help him win the 1976 election against Jimmy Carter. She was an outspoken woman who made her own troubles with breast cancer and alcohol and drug addiction public, in order to help other women.

Born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer on April 8, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois, she was one of three children born to a traveling salesman and his wife. When Ford was eleven, she began modeling and also giving other children dance lessons while she was still studying dance herself. Her father died of carbon monoxide poisoning while working on the car in the family's garage when Ford was sixteen, but it's unclear whether it was an accident or suicide.

After graduating from high school, Ford wanted to further her studies in dance by going to New York, but her mother wouldn't allow it. Instead, she went to the Bennington School of Dance in Bennington, Vermont, and studied under the legendary Martha Graham and Hanya Holm. She then moved to Manhattan, working as a fashion model to help pay for more studying under Graham, yet her mother was calling for her to come home. She reluctantly moved back to Grand Rapids after she wasn't able to make it in New York.

Working at department stores and teaching dance, Ford married a local boy, William G. Warren, whom she'd known since childhood in 1942. Because Warren was an insurance salesman, they moved around frequently, and in 1947, they were divorced. Just one year later, she married Gerald R Ford Jr. back in Grand Rapids; they made sure to wait until close to election time, as he was running for the House of Representatives, and was unsure how the voters would feel about him marrying a divorced ex-dancer.

Winning the election, the newly married Fords moved to the Washington, D.C. area and had four children, Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs, and Susan Elizabeth. Ford's husband served in the House of Representatives for twenty-four years, and after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, President Richard Nixon appointed Gerald R Ford as his vice president. Before the Fords could even move into the vice presidential residence, he became president as Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal.

Despite the fact her husband was never elected to either office, Ford moved into the White House and the role of first lady with no fears and not holding back. Shortly after her husband took office, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Weeks later, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's wife, Happy, underwent a mastectomy as well. Ford talked on a CB radio with the handle of First Mama, wore a mood ring, and talked unabashedly about her and her husband having sex. Standing up for women's rights, Ford also supported the Equal Rights Amendment and the legalization of abortion. She was also behind her old teacher, Martha Graham, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A year after her husband left office, Ford's family staged an intervention, forcing her into a treatment program for her alcohol and painkiller dependency. She had been taking pills for as long as the early 1960s for a pinched nerve and said she liked that they took away her tension and pain, and that alcohol made her feel warm. After her treatment, she went on to establish and maintain the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California; a treatment facility for alcohol and drug dependency. She held onto the chairmanship of the facility until 2005 when she relinquished it to her daughter, Susan.

In 1978, Ford published her autobiography, The Times of My Life. In 1987, she wrote about her chemical dependency treatment in Betty: A Glad Awakening, and in 2003, she wrote Healing and Hope: Six Women From the Betty Ford Center Share Their Powerful Journeys of Addiction and Recovery. In 1987, Ford was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame, and in 1999, she and her husband received jointly the Congressional Medal of Honor.

On December 26, 2006, Ford was at her husband's bedside, along with three of their children, as he died peacefully in their home in Rancho Mirage.

YUDDY