The Fighting First Lady - Betty Ford

She was one of the most candid women to ever come to Washington, and her public battles with breast cancer and alcoholism gave other women courage and hope. This is the story of First Lady Betty Ford. She was a woman who made a difference.

Their contributions made the world a better place. This is women who made a difference. The story of one of the most consequential American first ladies in history has its start in the Windy City. Elizabeth Ann Bloomer was born in 1918 in Chicago, the only girl in a family of three kids. Growing up, her parents called her Betty.

Now, the family moved a couple of times when she was just a young girl, first to Denver for just a brief time. And then her parents took Betty and her two brothers to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she would have her formative years. When she was just eight years old, Betty's mother enrolled her at a local dance studio.

Now, before she was even a teenager, young Betty was learning several different styles, including ballet and tap dancing. And as she grew into a teenager, she grew in her love Of dance and decided that she wanted to become a professional dancer when she got out of high school, but she didn't even wait until she graduated high school to get started.

In the years after the start of the Great Depression and before World War II broke out, Betty started her own dance studio while still in high school. Now, you'd think that a high school girl would only be teaching kids her age, maybe younger. Surprisingly. She was also instructing adults in various styles of dance.

She was a true female entrepreneur in the early part of the 20th century. In addition to her passion for dance, Betty had a heart for the disabled. She volunteered to work with kids suffering from disabilities, and her dedication to helping others would last a lifetime. Just after her 16th birthday, tragedy struck the family, as young Betty's father died from carbon monoxide poisoning while working underneath the family car, and everyone was shocked because the garage doors were open.

It was a truly devastating loss for Betty and the entire family. This tragedy affected young Betty's plan for her own future. She had dreamed of moving to New York in pursuit of her dancing career. However, In light of what had happened, her mother wouldn't let her go. With the loss of her husband, she did not want her young daughter moving away permanently.

But Betty did reach a compromise with her mother. She did want to go away and study dance. So it was agreed that for the summer months, she could go to the Bennington School of Dance in Vermont, which she did for a couple of years. Now she never did fulfill her dream of becoming a dancer in New York.

Betty became comfortable with her life in Grand Rapids. In 1942, Betty married William Warren, an insurance salesman. He would move her to Ohio in pursuit of other jobs. He went from selling insurance to selling cars, to selling furniture. Eventually Betty returned home to Michigan and having not been so thrilled with those early years of marriage and moving around a lot and the job changes, she decided she wanted a divorce.

Now, a few years before that, a young man named Gerald had enlisted in the Navy right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war ended, he came home to Michigan and through mutual friends, he met Just over a year after their introduction, Gerald Ford married Betty. Their bond would last a lifetime.

Now, at the time they were married, Gerald, who was by profession a lawyer, was applying for another job, Congress. He was running for the U. S. House of Representatives, and his application with the voters was approved. The couple were married in the Episcopal Church, and they would go on to have four children, Michael, John, Stephen, and Susan.

After Jerry's successful political campaign, the family moved to Arlington, Virginia, and it wasn't a bad place in those days to raise a family. Now, Gerald Ford, or Jerry as his friends and family called him, had big ambitions. He wanted to become Speaker of the House. His big dreams would never pan out, but bigger ones would.

A scandal involving the Vice President of the United States led to Jerry Ford being appointed to the second highest office in the land by Richard Nixon. This was two decades after he had entered Congress. No one could have known then, that when President Nixon picked him to become Vice President, That another scandal would elevate him to the presidency itself the following year.

At his swearing in, Betty Ford held the Bible as her husband took the oath of office as President of the United States. Finding herself in the most prominent role for a woman in the United States, Betty Ford became an outspoken advocate for her passions. The Arts and the Equal Rights Amendment. She was very candid in interviews as both Second Lady and First Lady, sometimes to the consternation of the White House staff.

More than a few of her comments caused a bit of controversy. On topics like marijuana use and psychiatric treatment, Betty Ford was open about her support of both, and this was very controversial for a First Lady to say in the first half of the 1970s.

Betty Ford found herself in the limelight during what would become her darkest days. She had been battling breast cancer and she was losing the battle. It was just a few weeks after becoming First Lady that she underwent a mastectomy. As always, she was candid. She shared details about what it was like to go through such an ordeal and the journey through the treatment. She said at the time that battling breast cancer as First Lady raised awareness of the issue to an all time high and hopefully That would save the life of at least one person.

Now, despite her openness with her political opinions and her health issues, Betty Ford was hiding one of her own demons one. She didn't want to come to light. Namely it was a battle with alcohol. and pills. More than a decade after leaving office, she'd write in her memoir that she liked alcohol. She liked pills.

It was something friends and members of the press had speculated on. Some had noticed Betty slurring her speech on more than one occasion when she was first lady. The turning point in her addictions came in 1978, when the Ford family staged a full fledged intervention. Her addictions had grown stronger after the Fords left the White House in early 1977, and her family considered her addictions life threatening.

As she had been in her fight with breast cancer, Betty Ford was open with her addictions. She successfully underwent treatment and only a few years after sobering up, she founded the Betty Ford Clinic to help those with drug addictions. Four decades later, it's still in operation, and it's now known as the Hazleton Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California.

And it's still helping people fight life threatening addictions. Betty Ford's advocacy for women's issues in the 1970s led to Time Magazine dubbing her the Fighting First Lady. And she didn't just fight her own battles with addiction, breast cancer, and later heart disease. She won those battles and became an advocate for others, for those fighting addictions, and for those fighting HIV AIDS in the early years of the disease.

President George H. W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. In 1999, Gerald and Betty Ford both won Congressional Gold Medals. She lived a long life. Betty's marriage to Jerry Ford lasted 58 years until his death in 2006.

In the years after, she faded from public view and died at the age of 93 in Rancho Mirage. In one of her press conferences as First Lady, Betty Ford said she wanted to be remembered as kind, but also as a contributor to society. History recalls her as both.

Historians also consider her the most outspoken First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. Betty Ford was the fighting First Lady, and she was a woman who made a difference.