Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  Two former first ladies, whose husbands had been fierce political rivals, showing that it was possible to find common ground and work toward the greater good.

  As the years went by, Betty was honored with hundreds of awards for her tireless work to help others and make positive changes. In 1991 she was shocked when she got a call from the White House notifying her that President George H. W. Bush had chosen her, as one of ten people that year, to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was the nation’s highest civilian award, the same award she had urged her husband to present to her role model Martha Graham fifteen years earlier—an award she’d never sought and never imagined she would ever do anything worthy of being its recipient.

  Now seventy-three years old, she was back at the White House, with Jerry beaming proudly in the front row.

  “Her courage and candor have inspired millions of Americans to restore their health, protect their dignity, and shape full lives for themselves,” President Bush said. Millions of Americans. She, Betty Ford, had made an impact on millions of American lives. It was difficult to fathom, and impossible to quantify, the magnitude of her contributions to society.

  Eight years later, the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award bestowed by the legislative branch of the US government, was presented jointly to President and Mrs. Ford. At the formal ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda, President Bill Clinton praised President Ford for his decades of leadership in Congress and for the tough decisions he had to make in an effort to heal the country after Richard Nixon’s resignation.

  Then President Clinton turned to Betty. “Perhaps no first lady in our history, with the possible exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, has touched so many of us in such a personal way. Because I lost my mother to breast cancer, Betty Ford is a heroine to me. Because my family has been victimized by alcoholism, and I know what it’s like to see good, fine people stare into the abyss of their own personal despair, I will be forever grateful to the Betty Ford Center—and for the millions of other people whose lives have literally been turned around and often saved . . . You gave us a gift, and we thank you.”

  As they grew older, both Betty and Jerry continued to work on behalf of causes that were important to them, but most important, always, was their family. They had the house in Rancho Mirage, and a couple of years after leaving the White House, they’d built a large home—big enough for all the children, spouses, and increasing numbers of grandchildren, to gather at Christmas and over Fourth of July—in Beaver Creek, Colorado, next door to their best friend Leonard Firestone.

  Jerry Ford passed along his love for swimming to his grandchildren—he’d stand at the edge of the pool saying, “Show me your breaststroke”—and almost from the time each of them could walk, he had them on skis. Skiers at Beaver Creek would do a double take when they’d see a man who looked just like former president Jerry Ford walking to the ski school, carrying five pairs of skis on his shoulders, with five little girls trailing behind him.

  Whenever the family was all together, there’d be competitive games of Pictionary and Balderdash, with Betty leading one team and Jerry the other. “Grandpa used to spell out curse words in front of us,” Susan’s daughter Heather Vance Devers recalled with a laugh, “long after we were all teenagers.”

  There were always lively debates about politics and current events, and even the grandchildren were expected to have an opinion. “It was an open platform,” Susan’s other daughter, Tyne Vance Berlanga, said. “This conservative Republican family had raised five confident, headstrong granddaughters who weren’t afraid to stand up to our much older uncles with differing opinions. There were definitely some right leaners and some left leaners.”

  Betty loved to sit back and let the conversation play out. “She always encouraged us to speak up and say what we felt,” Tyne said. But if she felt like her granddaughters were getting ganged up on, Betty would step in.

  “There wasn’t a stronger voice at the table than Gramma’s,” Tyne said. And no one respected or adored their grandmother more than their grandfather.

  “Grandpa always referred to Gramma as his bride,” Heather recalled. “I’d be sitting with him, and Gramma would walk into the room, and he’d say, ‘Look how beautiful my bride looks this evening. Isn’t she beautiful?’ ”

  As the years ticked by, age began to take its toll, but the romance never faded. The grandchildren would remember seeing their grandparents sitting together on the sofa watching television, their hands clasped together like courting teenagers.

  By 2006, President Ford had suffered a series of minor strokes and had congestive heart failure. That summer, as he approached his ninety-third birthday, everyone was concerned that perhaps going to Beaver Creek wasn’t a good idea, because of the high altitude. Jerry wouldn’t hear of it. He and Betty were going to their beloved Colorado, just as they’d done every summer for more than forty years.

  They celebrated the Fourth of July—watching the parade go by from Sheika and Pepi Gramshammer’s second-floor balcony in Vail—and were surrounded by friends and family ten days later as Gerald R. Ford celebrated his birthday.

  Shortly thereafter, President Ford’s health began failing rapidly. His heart wasn’t going to hold out much longer. When Susan and her second husband, Vaden Bales, came to visit, the family was facing two options. It was time to bring in hospice, or there was a chance the president’s life could be prolonged with surgery. A doctor from the Mayo Clinic had successfully performed aortic valve replacements in elderly patients using a new procedure, and he was optimistic that President Ford was a good candidate.

  The family discussed it, and finally, President Ford said, “I’m inclined to proceed with the surgery.” Then, turning to Betty, he asked, “What do you think, Mother?”

  Betty looked at her husband, his once strong, muscular body now weakened by age. She knew the risks of surgery in someone his age, and yet, if they did nothing, she was going to lose him very soon.

  “I’ll support whatever you want to do, dear,” she said.

  Despite the risks and pain that would come with the surgery, President Ford decided he wanted to go forward with it.

  “Our quick weekend changed drastically in forty-eight hours,” Susan said. The plan was for Susan to fly with her parents from Eagle Vail Airport on a plane provided by the Mayo Clinic, to Rochester, Minnesota, two days later.

  The next day, as they were getting organized, Betty began complaining of horrible pains in her legs. When the nurse examined her, she said, “Mrs. Ford, you need to get down to Denver right away. If you don’t get down to a lower elevation and get the circulation back in your legs, they’re going to have to be amputated.”

  “I can’t go to Denver,” Betty said. “I’ve got to go to Mayo tomorrow with Jerry.”

  By evening, Betty was in such pain, she could hardly move.

  “Mom, I’m taking you to Denver. We’re going now,” Susan said. “Vaden will fly with Dad to Mayo.”

  After staying overnight in Denver, Betty had stabilized, but it was determined that she’d developed a blood clot, and she, too, needed surgery. By this time, President Ford was at Mayo, getting ready to have heart surgery. No one wanted them to be apart. If one of them died, the other needed to be there. Their love affair couldn’t end this way.

  So, after a whirlwind of phone calls—it helped to have Secret Service agents with the ability to make spur-of-the-moment logistical changes—Betty and Susan were on a plane from Denver to Rochester so that Betty and Jerry could have their surgeries in the same hospital.

  Ultimately, the doctors determined that President Ford could not survive the surgery, so instead, they inserted a pacemaker and a couple of stents to alleviate some of his symptoms.

  For ten days, the former president and first lady were in the Mayo Clinic, although the public never knew that Betty was also a patient. Both of them completed their treatments and, finally, were able to go home. Then came the crushing news: the Mayo doctors told
them that because of the altitude, they couldn’t return to Beaver Creek. Not now, not ever again. They’d seen the mountains of Colorado for the last time, and now they were headed back to their home in the desert.

  The next few months were tough for everyone as they began to face the inevitable. Susan and Ann Cullen went through the house in Beaver Creek, clearing through all the belongings that had been accumulated over the course of Jerry and Betty’s life together—nearly sixty years of memories—so that the house could be put up for sale. Mike, Jack, Steve, and Susan, and all the grandchildren picked out the things that meant the most to them, and the rest would either go to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library or be sold.

  In the weeks leading up to Christmas, it was clear that President Ford was not going to be on this earth much longer. It was a matter of days or weeks. Betty spent every waking hour by her husband’s side, often just sitting and holding his hand, stroking his forehead, and bringing whatever he needed. It seemed odd to be in the desert for Christmas, but Betty tried to make it as festive as possible—decorating with lights and garlands, hanging stockings, and playing Christmas music throughout the house. She knew it would be her last Christmas with her husband, and she wanted it to be as special as it always had been.

  The Secret Service agents who had been with the Fords had grown close to them, and they knew what a difficult time this was. One evening, they had a surprise for Mrs. Ford.

  “Come on out and look,” they said.

  They’d taken dozens of strands of little white lights and carefully wrapped them around each branch of the big olive tree at the front of the house. It was magical, and Betty loved it.

  On December 26, 2006, at six forty-five in the evening, Betty was at Jerry’s side, in their home, when he took his last breath.

  “He had been kind of in and out of consciousness for several days,” Susan said. “But he waited. I am truly convinced that he chose not to die on Christmas Day because Christmas was so special to us.”

  Jerry and Betty had spent fifty-eight Christmases together, and now Betty could not imagine life without him. He had been everything to her, and she to him. All she really wanted to do was grieve quietly, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, but she knew that wasn’t possible.

  For every sitting president, and every former president, there is a formal funeral plan in place, so that when the president dies—whether it be sudden and unexpected, or, as in this case, after a steady, predictable decline—the state funeral can move forward in an orderly manner. Greg Willard, who had been President Ford’s aide in the White House and had stayed for a short while postpresidency, had been designated President and Mrs. Ford’s personal representative for the state funeral. Over the past several years, he had worked closely with both President and Mrs. Ford on the myriad of details, adding their wishes and personal touches to the military’s seven-page standard state funeral template, and overseeing what eventually became the final 538-page funeral plan.

  Several hours after the president’s death, Greg arrived at the Fords’ home and sat down with Mrs. Ford in the living room for the discussion they’d both dreaded: implementing the funeral plan.

  After reminiscing for a while, Betty managed a smile and said, “Well, I think you and I have a little bit of work to do, don’t we? What do we need to do?”

  Greg took her hand and said, “You don’t need to do anything, Mrs. Ford. The plan we developed with the president can go exactly as planned, with a single exception: we’ll need to stay at Blair House one extra day.”

  He explained that if they followed the plan and the original timeline of events, the National Day of Mourning and the service at Washington National Cathedral would fall on New Year’s Day, which, obviously, wasn’t appropriate.

  “We can simply extend one additional day to the lying-in-state period at the Capitol Rotunda, and then have the National Day of Mourning and services on January 2.”

  With weary eyes, Betty nodded. “Yes, that will be lovely. It’s what needs to be done. He would be pleased for you to do that for him.”

  Within minutes, the world learned of the plans for America’s farewells to Gerald R. Ford, the thirty-eighth president of the United States. President George W. Bush declared a thirty-day period of national mourning and decreed that January 2, 2007, would be a National Day of Mourning. Flags across America were lowered to half-staff.

  The solemn dignity of a presidential state funeral had occurred only five times in the previous sixty years: John F. Kennedy in 1963, Herbert Hoover in 1964, Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1969, Lyndon Johnson in 1973, and Ronald Reagan in 2004. For the next six days, President Ford’s casket would be accompanied by an armed forces honor guard as the state funeral went from Palm Desert to Washington, DC, and finally to Grand Rapids.

  On Friday, December 28, thousands of people lined the streets, holding signs and waving flags as the funeral motorcade passed through Palm Desert. Friends from all over the West, including many from Vail and Beaver Creek, came to pay their respects at the private visitation at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, which the Fords had attended since moving there in 1977.

  Betty sat on a stool near the casket and personally greeted everyone as they filed by to pay their respects. She was genuinely comforted and strengthened by the outpouring of love from so many people who had traveled from near and far during this holiday period. But at the same time, it was apparent to those around her that she was already physically spent.

  That night, back at the house, it became evident to everyone that Betty was not well. She had developed a deep, nagging cough, and now, on top of that, she had a high fever. Everyone was worried about how she was going to hold up the next day, much less get through the rest of the week.

  Meanwhile, nearly 57,000 people streamed through St. Margaret’s Friday night and Saturday morning, some waiting up to four hours for a few moments to pay their respects to the former president who had, along with Betty, become pillars of this close-knit community.

  Betty arose early Saturday, December 29, and prepared for what would be a long, grueling day, filled with motorcades and military ceremonies steeped in tradition. It was all in tribute to her husband, and although she felt terrible, she was determined to stand by his side—the devoted wife she had been for fifty-eight years.

  President George W. Bush had sent one of the presidential aircraft to Palm Springs the day before to transport President Ford’s body, and the Ford family, back to Washington, DC, for the services there. There was a military ceremony at Palm Springs International Airport as the flag-draped casket was uploaded onto the blue-and-white Boeing 747, followed by a long, somber flight to Andrews Air Force Base.

  Knowing that Mrs. Ford was ill, President Bush had sent some of the White House medical personnel to monitor her condition, and on the flight, they determined she had a severe lung infection. Amid the grief of losing their father, Susan and her brothers were now deeply worried about their mother.

  It was dark when the plane touched down in Washington around five thirty that evening, and as everyone stepped off the aircraft, the biting cold cut like a knife. Betty stood, shivering, through another military ceremony as the president’s casket was off-loaded into a hearse, and then she and the rest of the family and staff piled into a string of cars for a motorcade through the streets of the nation’s capital. There was a planned stop, just for a moment, at the National World War II Memorial—a ceremonial pause in mutual tribute to President Ford and his fellow World War II veterans. Sitting in the back of her limousine, Betty was surprised, and deeply touched, to see thousands of mourners and a large group of female naval officers—graduates of the US Naval Academy—who had spontaneously come in uniform to the memorial to say goodbye, and thank you, to her husband for being the first president to admit women to the academy. As the hearse pulled to a stop, the female officers drew their hands to their foreheads in simultaneous salute. Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, Betty nodded and waved. It was an une
xpected and poignant tribute, one she knew Jerry would have appreciated.

  When the motorcade arrived at the US Capitol, the casket was carried by military honor guard up the east steps of the US House of Representatives and through Statuary Hall, in a symbolic tribute to President Ford’s twenty-five years in Congress, before being placed in the rotunda on the Lincoln Catafalque. The state funeral proceeded with heartfelt eulogies recalling the touchstones of President Ford’s life, from combat in the Pacific, to a career he cherished in Congress, to a vice presidency and presidency he did not seek.

  Being there brought back memories for each of Betty and Jerry’s children of those many Saturdays playing hide-and-seek through the big statues, getting lost in the maze of underground tunnels, and the requisite thank-you notes typed to Mother.

  For Betty, this was where her life had changed course. Growing up in Grand Rapids with dreams of being a dancer, she’d forsaken her own goals when she married Gerald R. Ford Jr., and together they’d moved to Washington. “If I hadn’t been married to my husband,” she had said, “I never would have had the voice that I did . . . Being married to him was probably the biggest decision I made and the best decision I made.”

  The memories of her life with Jerry flashed through her mind, like a roller-coaster ride with dozens of twists and turns, accentuated by moments of extreme highs and lows. All those years as the dutiful congressman’s wife; the unimaginable events that catapulted them into the White House; the outpouring of love following her openness about her breast cancer battle; speaking up for women’s rights and the ERA; the devastating defeat of the ’76 presidential campaign; returning to testify to Congress on behalf of Americans battling alcoholism and substance abuse. They had supported each other—always striving to follow the 70 percent rule to give more than you receive—and it had been a wonderful life together.