by Anne Edwards
As the press was taking its leave, she turned to them and pleaded, “Please do not refer to me as the former child star. I prefer to be identified with my present job or my work with the United Nations.”
“How about ‘a former actress,’” one man asked.
“Alright,” she smiled, “but not in the lead paragraph.” The reporter, who was with United Press International, included the entire exchange at the end of his release. He had cannily won his point through her own quote and yet satisfied her request.
As she prepared for the homeward journey, the U.S.–U.S.S.R. treaty on pollution having been signed, she steeled herself for the medical procedure she was about to face. Her breast had become sensitive to her touch, and occasionally she awoke in her Moscow hotel room with a burning sensation in the area around the lump. She later recalled telling herself, “I bet this isn’t going to be so good.” She arrived home three weeks before her appointment at the Stanford Medical Center. Her parents, who now lived with her, were a grave concern. Gertrude had not been well, and Shirley did not want to alarm her. She also “could not bring herself’ to talk with Charles about the suspicions she had about the possible outcome of the procedure.
She engaged in what she called “surreptitious” research, reading all she could on breast cancer, including the pros and cons of the various kinds of mastectomies. She asked her brother Jack, who was now working in the field of hospital administration, to send her pertinent material, and did a thorough job of researching all the options open to her if a malignancy was found. To make the subject easier to broach with Charles and the girls (Charlie was on a deep-sea fishing trip off the coast of Central America), she began to leave news articles about breast cancer around the house. “We discussed the clippings and were sobered by what we read,” she recalled. Her fears were not eased by the grim knowledge that three of her close friends had died of breast cancer. She had also known women who had gone in for a biopsy and, without realizing the importance of a medical release they had signed, awakened from the anesthesia without a breast. Determined this would not happen to her, Shirley signed papers agreeing only to an excisional biopsy, which meant the final decision would be hers if the tumor was found to be malignant.
On the afternoon of November 1, the day before the procedure, she drove alone through strong wind and overcast skies to the hospital. The next morning, Charles was beside her when she came out of the anesthetic. He told her as gently as he could that one section of the tumor was malignant. She went back to sleep, not yet able to absorb the full impact of what he had said. “When I came out of that sleep, out again of the haze of anesthesia wearing off, and faced it, I cried. My daughters came and we held on to each other and we all cried,” she admitted. She soon pulled herself together and was ready to make her decision.
Her surgeon, Dr. Frederick P. Shidler at the Stanford Medical Center, recommended a modified radical mastectomy.* Requesting and receiving from the hospital a detailed report of her biopsy and reviewing what she had studied about her options, Shirley refused to undergo this procedure but “signed a release paper giving . . . permission for a simple mastectomy, plus, if necessary, the removal of a few lower nodes.” From her medical reports, she felt optimistic that the malignancy had not spread. Her choice would lessen the cosmetic deformity of the original recommendation. “I felt . . . if the tumor had spread so far that more drastic surgery was necessary, it probably would be too late to save my life,” she explained.
The operation was successfully performed on Friday, November 3. She admitted there had been “some intermittent weeping.” She owned up bravely to the truth—the operation had been an amputation. By Monday, she had formulated plans to turn her “adversity into some help for [her] sisters.” In 1972, mastectomy was a whispered word. Fear, shame and doubts about their womanliness plagued those who had had the operation. No well-known woman had gone public about having had her breast removed.† Unlike with the loss of a limb, a woman can conceal a breast amputation with a good prosthesis and well-made clothes so that no observer need know. But as Shirley later stated, this only made the emotional pressures on the woman greater.
Once she had decided to speak out, a direct, widespread way of doing so had to be found. Four days after her operation, she called Dave Shultz, the editor of the local Redwood City Tribune. He came immediately to the hospital. She presented him with a well-prepared and very personal statement and asked him “to get it on the wires” to all the news services. Then, her hair held back by a becoming ribbon, she allowed pictures of herself lying in her hospital bed to be taken. The fabled dimpled smile and laughing eyes were caught easily by the camera.
With great candor, she discussed her uncomplicated recovery from “a simple mastectomy, the surgical removal of one breast . . . I am telling this because I fervently hope other women will not be afraid to go to their doctors when they note any unusual symptoms. There is an almost certain cure for this form of cancer if it is caught early enough.” She acknowledged that she had waited six weeks from the time of discovering the lump until her biopsy, and she stressed that other women should not be that lax. She added that she had personally made the decision to have the whole breast removed when informed of the malignancy.
The public response was overwhelming. The telephone board of the hospital was jammed. Some fifty thousand letters arrived for her within a week. Flowers overflowed her room, and she distributed the many additional bouquets she received to the various wards in the hospital. More important, the American Cancer Society reported a 30 percent increase in women seeking information on how to test themselves for breast tumors in the month following Shirley’s disclosure. Only three weeks after surgery, she wrote a moving and well-informed article about her experience for McCall’s magazine.
“Coming out of a hospital is to breathe freely again,” she wrote. “I could smile and have a few wry thoughts.” She then admitted to being one of the few Hollywood actresses who had never needed falsies. She joked about learning some Hollywood tricks in getting used to a prosthesis. “. . . as I look in the mirror I feel quite unattractive . . . I will accommodate to the look and to the feel. My arm hurts less each day. And my mirror looks back at me more kindly.” With these confessions came precise information about breast cancer, the choices women victims had and how they could obtain counseling as well as medical help.
While Shirley had been hospitalized, Richard Nixon had been reelected president. In a series of articles beginning on October 10, 1972, the Washington Post had made the Watergate break-in a major moral issue, a lead followed by the rest of the East Coast media. It failed to stop a Nixon landslide. Yet within twenty months, the electoral verdict of 1972 would be negated.
Richard Nixon was, however, riding high in January 1973, when Shirley’s strength returned; and she was hopeful that the president she had so loyally supported would recognize her diplomatic potential and name her to a prestigious post. The wait was long, and the assignment—when it did come—was not what she had expected. By then, Nixon had tearfully resigned in disgrace, and Gerald Ford, his Republican replacement, made the appointment.
Footnotes
*The following day, the United States State Department officially commented, “We find it incomprehensible that a head of government of the host state should have interjected the Vietnam issue, which we consider extraneous at the United Nations Conference.”
*The concrete results of the conference were: approval of an action program to monitor climate change and oceanic pollution; promotion of birth control and preservation of the world’s vanishing species; the approval of an environment fund to cover the part of the international effort not paid for by specialized agencies and national governments; establishment of administrative machinery to coordinate worldwide environmental efforts; and an agreement on a declaration of principles.
*The removal of the breast, lymph glands and nodes located under the arm and in the armpit.
†In recent years, many wom
en have courageously shared knowledge of their mastectomies with the public, including First Ladies Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan and American television personality Betty Rollins.
17 FOLLOWING THE WATERGATE DEBACLE and Richard Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974, Vice-President Gerald R. Ford, who had also filled Spiro Agnew’s vacated office when he had resigned after pleading “nolo contendere” to the charge of income-tax evasion, was approved by Congress to become the thirty-ninth U.S. president. No sooner had he moved into the White House than President Ford made his first three diplomatic appointments: George Bush, in the sensitive post of ambassador to China; Peter Flanigan (a former Nixon aide), ambassador to Spain; and Shirley Temple Black, ambassador to Ghana.
Under the Nixon administration, the curious American presidential custom of dealing out ambassadorships “as if they were party favors” had turned into something akin to tobacco auctions. During the House Judiciary Committee’s presidential-impeachment inquiry, Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, testified that Peter Flanigan had asked him to “contact a Dr. [sic] Ruth Farkas in New York. She is interested in giving $250,000 for Costa Rica.”
According to Kalmbach’s testimony, when he met with Mrs. Farkas over lunch in New York, she said, “Well, you know I am interested in Europe, I think, and isn’t $250,000 an awful lot of money for Costa Rica.” Then Mrs. Farkas contributed three hundred thousand dollars, and became American ambassador to Luxembourg.*
About the nomination of Flanigan for the embassy in Spain, William Shannon of The New York Times wrote that “President Ford identified himself with the corrupt, cash-on-the-bar-relhead practices of his predecessor.” He added that “Mr. Bush . . . knows as much about China as the usual rich Texas tourist* . . . there are rare instances in which a President will reasonably appoint a distinguished outsider to a diplomatic post. But these should be persons so eminent and so uniquely qualified that their nominations would be immediately recognized as a stroke of imagination.” President Ford’s choice of Shirley, he stated, did not “fall in that category.”
But there was much to be said in support of Shirley’s appointment. Her work at the United Nations had given her a special understanding of African problems, and she had made many close friends among representatives from the Third World. Ghana was a strongly matriarchal society, where a woman would be well accepted, and a well-known American ambassador would help the nation’s flagging self-esteem. Certainly, Shirley had proved her intelligence and diligence at the UN, and Africa held a great fascination for her.
When queried about Shirley’s appointment, President Ford later replied, “I do not recall if there were other specific individuals who were under consideration. Most likely there were other career Foreign Service candidates but . . . Ghana was a very upward African nation during that continent’s turmoil in the 1970’s. It was important that the new Ambassador be identified as a personal choice of the White House. Mrs. Black was so recognized. Her appointment was a clear indication of Presidential concern for the problems in Africa.”
White House Press Secretary J. F. terHorst commented that the president was simply carrying out former President Nixon’s desire to name “Mrs. Black to the diplomatic post,” a statement that did not blunt the barbs of the press.
Ford’s friendship with Shirley “was longstanding [and was] both social and political.” They had been golf buddies, and she had compaigned for him in past elections. But Ford would prove right about Ghana’s reaction to her appointment. Although her close ties to the president and her celebrity were to give Ghana a sense of “being favored,” the American press continued to think otherwise.*
“As a developing country Ghana deserves to be treated as more than a dumping ground for political appointees,” the Washington Post stated. “Black, like Bush, received a United Nations post after unsuccessful political pursuits; this career pattern is an unsatisfactory substitute for professional diplomatic experience, and will not enhance respect for the United States abroad.”
Other newspapers implied that Shirley had purchased her new post with political contributions. At her request, the State Department arranged a news conference at which she told the journalists that she and Charles had contributed merely $1,167 since 1970 to various political organizations, ony $310 of which had gone to the Republican party. “I think that proves I didn’t purchase the post,” she said. “But if I could have picked a place to serve it would have been in black Africa.”
Her friendship with Angie Brooks and other representatives of African nations at the UN had not diminished, and she had a great respect for, and interest in, the continent and its people. She sincerely believed she was qualified and that her work for the UN had provided her with “a good deal of diplomatic experience.”
Diplomacy, she said, had been a business she had known since childhood, and spoke of the time when she was seven. On a publicity tour, a mayor had accidentally slammed a car door on three of her fingers. The door was immediately opened, and Gertrude whispered, “Don’t cry!” “My mother put my fingers in her mouth. She was afraid to look. [The fingers were] cut . . . but not badly. It was an early [diplomatic] lesson.”
She had been anything but inactive since her cancer operation. Her work in environmental matters had continued, and she had entered industry and big business as a member of the boards of the Del Monte Corporation (“the largest canner in the world”), the Bank of America and the Disney Corporation. Plans were made for Charles to accompany her to Accra, Ghana’s capital, and to conduct his marine-resources business from there during her two-year planned tour-of-duty. Charlie was at Stanford University, Lori studying music, and both would join them on holidays, but Susan was to come with her parents.
“In a big double feature at the State Department yesterday [Friday, September 20] Shirley Temple Black was sworn in as Ambassador to Ghana and John Sherman Cooper [former U.S. Ambassador to India] was sworn in as Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic,” the Washington Post reported. “His ceremony drew a bigger crowd but hers was more of a show and included refreshments . . . Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the former child actress and later U.N. Delegate that he had always wanted to ‘get movie stars into a position where they had to come when I called them, and now that I’ve solved the problem, I’m married.’” The remark brought only a wry smile to Shirley’s face.
In the two-and-one-half months before her departure, she attended fifty-five official State Department briefings on Ghana, studying pertinent material dealing with the people, their history, economic condition and relations with the United States. She took a “crash, brush-up course” in French (English is Ghana’s official language; French is spoken in Ghana’s neighbor Togo) and learned a smattering of the main African tongues spoken there. The family gathered in Woodside for Thanksgiving, and on November 28, Shirley, Charles and Susan flew to Accra.
Ghana was the birthplace of black Africa’s dreams. Once a prime shipping point for slaves going to America and known as the Gold Coast during its years as a British colony, it was the first West African country to break from colonial rule, a feat engineered by the political skill of one man—Kwame Nkrumah. Educated in the United States, his early thirties spent in London, where he mixed with leftist friends, Nkrumah was a reformist rather than a revolutionary. He returned to his home in Accra at the end of 1947, and within two years formed the Convention People’s Party (CPP). After leading a disruptive general strike, he was taken political prisoner by the British. Despite his incarceration, his power increased, and in 1951 the CPP won a general election. Released by his captors, Nkrumah was offered the leadership of a CPP government with internal autonomy. His achievement was seen “as a proof to all Tropical Africans that real progress against colonial rule was possible.” Nine years later, the Gold Coast became a republic and was renamed Ghana, after an ancient country of the western Sudan. Nkrumah emerged as one of the most powerful African leaders and became the inspiration for many other African nation
alist movements.
The grand visions for his country that Nkrumah implemented—new roads, expensive state buildings, the expansion of his personal guard into a regiment—led to reckless spending, unbridled corruption and unpaid debts to Western creditors. In February 1966, while he was in Hanoi on his way to China, the Ghanaian police and army led a coup that toppled him from power, and he never was to return to the country he had liberated.*
The military ruled Ghana for three years before leadership was handed over to the former head of the party opposition, the erudite, Oxford-educated Dr. Kofi A. Busia.† This government was overthrown in 1972 by a military coup headed by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. Ghana’s government was now a military dictatorship but not entirely a police state, for the press was tolerated, as were trade organizations.
Nevertheless, corruption and mismanagement plagued the Ghanaians under the despotic Acheampong. Most of the country’s cash crops, particularly cocoa, were smuggled out of the country, and half the nation’s foreign-exchange earnings were unable to be accounted for. Food shortages were desperate. Stores displayed empty shelves. The transportation system had broken down, and few buses were in service. Acheampong and his huge staff drove Mercedes-Benzes (flown into Ghana at a cost of $110,000 each plus shipping charges) for their personal use and squandered “so much money . . . there was no more foreign exchange.” Widespread demonstrations against the government were rampant, and Acheampong retaliated with all the brutality at his disposal.
Ghana was not inherently poor. Had the money from cocoa exports remained in the country, it would have amounted to nearly one billion dollars a year. Diamonds, bauxite, gold and manganese remained to be mined. But there were no open mines or equipment. During Acheampong’s regime, “Ghana had been stripped bare, cannibalized like a car whose working parts had been stolen by thieves,” according to African historian David Lamb. “As the economic situation worsened [in the 1970’s] the country produced its own version of boat-people, peasants fleeing not repression but poverty, moving north in little home-made boats to the Ivory Coast and Liberia. When the government offered free transportation home to the 50,000 Ghanaians [the country had a population of eleven million] living and working in Nigeria, no more than a handful accepted.”
