Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  When the eulogies were finished, Betty got up out of her seat and walked to the casket. She clutched her hands together and placed them on the flag, and quietly bowed her head in prayer. Standing nearby, David Kennerly could hardly contain his emotions as he snapped a photo of the intimate goodbye.

  It had been a grueling day that began before dawn in California, but finally, the public events were over, and the family was taken to Blair House, where they’d spend the next three nights.

  The next day, thousands upon thousands of people lined up, waiting for hours in the cold to pass by the flag-draped casket in the rotunda as President Ford lay in state. Bill Livingood, the sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives at the time, recalled the tremendous outpouring: “There were so many people—even at eleven o’clock at night, the lines were still way toward the White House—so we extended the hours.”

  Even more impressive to him was the decorum of President and Mrs. Ford’s children. For as long as President Ford lay in the rotunda, either Susan, Steve, Mike, or Jack—and sometimes two or three of them at a time—stood at the entrance to personally thank each and every person who walked through the door.

  “I had never seen that before,” Livingood said. “It was a class act. It spoke volumes about that family.”

  On New Year’s Day, Betty stayed at Blair House and received guests all day—ambassadors from the countries President Ford had visited during his presidency; President and Mrs. George W. Bush; former presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, and their wives; Lynda and Luci Johnson; Happy Rockefeller, the widow of President Ford’s vice president, Nelson Rockefeller; and many others.

  Through it all, the doctors were giving Betty multiple antibiotics, but she was running on fumes. Everyone tried to convince her to forgo some of the planned events and get some rest. “But that was not in her,” Susan said. “She would suit up and show up.”

  By Tuesday, January 2, the National Day of Mourning, however, Betty’s condition had deteriorated even further, and everyone was concerned about how she was going to manage another long day. By sheer will and determination, she stood out in the shivering cold as her husband’s casket was brought down the Senate steps of the Capitol, and then took her place in the limousine for the ride to the National Cathedral. The plan was for all the children and grandchildren to walk in a processional to their seats, and then for Betty to be escorted by President George W. Bush down the long central aisle to her seat in the front row. But those around her concluded that there simply was no way she was going to be able to walk the length of the cathedral—more than five hundred feet—in her severely weakened state, so a wheelchair had been arranged.

  When the time came for her entrance, she turned to President George W. Bush and curtly motioned away the wheelchair. “I can do this!” she said emphatically. Then Betty hooked her left arm through his right arm and said, “Mr. President, if you please.”

  Suddenly the giant main doors of the cathedral swung open, and, arm in arm, the two of them walked the entire way to the front row.

  After the services, it was back onto the presidential aircraft, with the family and the casket, to fly to Grand Rapids. There President Ford would have his final resting place on the grounds of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. As the plane approached Ann Arbor, Michigan, the pilot dropped to an altitude of just eight hundred feet and tipped the wings over the University of Michigan football stadium in an airborne salute. Looking out the window, through glassy eyes, Betty couldn’t help but smile.

  When they arrived in Grand Rapids, there was yet another military ceremony at the airport with the University of Michigan Marching Band present and then a motorcade to transport President Ford’s body to the presidential museum that bore his name for a public viewing prior to the services the next day. As the motorcade turned onto Pearl Street, there was a stunning sight: lining the street on both sides, ten and fifteen deep, were men, young and old, aged fifteen to eighty-five, all of them Eagle Scouts in uniform, standing in solemn salute. The family had encouraged Eagle Scouts to attend and had been told earlier that week that several dozen might participate. Instead, more than 470 Eagle Scouts answered the call, coming from all over the Midwest to pay tribute to the only president who had earned the badge of Eagle Scout. As the motorcade passed by the group, an agent in the Secret Service follow-up vehicle was amazed. “I’ve been in thousands of motorcades, but I’ve never seen anything like that gathering of Eagle Scouts—remarkable!”

  Betty woke up the morning of January 3, 2007, in Grand Rapids, the day of the final services and interment, and realized she simply had no more energy to continue. Sitting in her suite at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, she said with a deep sigh, “I just don’t think I can make it any further.”

  Susan held her hand and tried to reassure her that everyone would understand.

  About that time, Lilian Fisher, her best friend from kindergarten and dance school, arrived. Within minutes, the two childhood friends were laughing and telling stories.

  “It was like watching a flat tire inflate,” Susan recalled.

  Lilian finally said, “You can do this, Betty. I know you can!”

  Betty nodded, and to the sheer and utter surprise of her family, she announced that she was going to participate after all. At eighty-eight years old, Betty Bloomer Ford still had the will of a dancer, and on this final curtain call for her husband, she was determined to be there, center stage.

  There was a final church service at Grace Episcopal Church—the same church in which she and Jerry had been married—and then, finally, the flag-draped casket was brought to its final resting place, at the north end of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, to be entombed in a grassy hillside on the banks of the Grand River.

  As dusk fell, the family gathered around “Mother,” clutching together with overwhelming sadness, wiping away tears through one last twenty-one-gun salute, followed by the roaring flyover by a group of twenty-one F-15 fighter jets in the missing-man formation, and the final playing of “Taps.” Bundled in a fur coat, her lips turning blue from the cold, Betty watched as the military honor guard raised the flag from the top of the casket, and, with white-gloved hands, folded it with calculated precision into a tight triangle. Then the officer in charge of the honor guard turned and solemnly handed the flag to President Ford’s longtime friend and advisor Dick Cheney, who was currently the vice president of the United States.

  Vice President Cheney walked over to Betty, and as he handed her the flag, he said, “On behalf of the president of the United States and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for President Ford’s honorable and faithful service to the United States of America.”

  Betty clutched the flag in her hands and, closing her eyes, lifted it to touch her cheek.

  The state funeral tradition is that the widow of a former president is flown back to her residence on a smaller military aircraft. However, because Betty was so ill, President Bush ordered one of the presidential 747s to fly her and the family back to Palm Springs on January 4. Just before landing, Mrs. Ford made a personal request.

  “After we land, can we arrange for the crew to be out on the tarmac? I want to thank them.”

  As her request was passed through the aircraft, the reaction was universal. How does she do this? The woman seated in the presidential compartment was seriously ill; she’d just buried her husband after six days of grueling public pomp and circumstance; and yet she was now insisting on taking the time to personally thank each and every crew member.

  Greg Willard and Special Agent Todd Matanich accompanied Betty from her motorcade vehicle to the now-empty house on Sand Dune Road. Ever since Vice President Cheney had handed her the flag from the casket, it had barely left her hands, and now she clutched it tightly to her chest as they walked to the front door.

  “I think I’d like to lie down for a while,” Betty said.

  “That’s a good idea, Mrs
. Ford,” Greg said as he helped her to the bedroom.

  She sat down on the bed, looked down at the flag in her hands, and began to weep.

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, and then Betty turned and said, “Thank you for everything, Greg. It all went so beautifully. Just like he had wanted.”

  “It’s been an honor,” he replied. “Now, Mrs. Ford, you need to rest.”

  He walked into the hallway and softly closed the door behind him.

  For the first time since Jerry had died, Betty was alone. She didn’t have him, in body, but she felt his presence, and a sense of comfort, in that triangular-shaped flag. She held it against her face, and laid it on the pillow next to hers, in the space where Jerry had slept up until he was moved to a hospital bed in the den. As she lay down, she looked out the window and saw the sparkling white lights on the branches of the olive tree. Closing her eyes, she said a prayer, and finally fell into a deep sleep.

  For the next four and a half years, the white lights remained on the olive tree—“So when he looks down,” Betty said, “he’ll know I’m okay”—and the flag stayed on the pillow next to hers, a constant reminder of the man she’d loved.

  Betty continued to serve as chairman emeritus of the Betty Ford Center, and she relished time with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  “She was always very interested in our lives,” Heather Vance Devers said. “What we were doing, who we were dating. And she loved Dancing with the Stars.”

  But nothing was the same after Jerry died. The question Betty continued to ask herself was, “Why am I still here?”

  “I just want to go see my boyfriend,” she’d say. “That’s all I want to do.”

  On July 8, 2011, Betty got her wish.

  AFTERWORD

  * * *

  On July 14, 2011—what would have been President Ford’s ninety-eighth birthday—Elizabeth Anne Bloomer Ford was laid to rest in the tomb alongside her husband, near the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids. As family and friends mourned the woman they loved and admired, amid the grief there was joy, for no one doubted that Jerry and Betty were together again—laughing, holding hands—and, if there are beds in heaven, they were sharing one.

  For the previous four and a half years, Betty had slept with Jerry’s folded casket flag next to her, on his pillow, but as she neared the end of her life, she had to consider what should be done with it once she was gone.

  Shortly before President Ford died, he learned that the United States Navy was going to name its next aircraft carrier, CVN 78, the USS Gerald R. Ford. It would be the first in a new class of nuclear-powered carriers, and even though he would never see the ship built to completion, President Ford wrote that it was a source of “indescribable pride and humility to know that an aircraft carrier bearing my name may be permanently associated with the valor and patriotism of the men and women of the United States Navy.”

  Betty, knowing that Jerry had always been fiercely proud of his service as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy, directed that the flag’s final home was to be on the USS Gerald R. Ford.

  “Mother’s decision about the flag was characteristically firm,” Susan recalled. “She gave us specific instructions about the flag—very specific.”

  As the ship’s sponsor, Susan was integrally involved in the eleven-year shipbuilding and commissioning process, and it was an emotional moment when she unveiled the still-folded flag, now encased in a wood-and-glass frame etched with her dad’s vice presidential and presidential seals, and presented it to the commanding officer, Captain John Meier.

  “On behalf of Mother,” Susan said, “I hereby entrust the flag of President Gerald R. Ford to you, and the ship’s future captains, to remain at all times aboard the ship until such time as she is decommissioned.”

  The USS Gerald R. Ford was commissioned in July 2017, and while the 2,600 sailors who live aboard the ship have a keen sense of President Ford’s legacy, Betty Ford’s healing spirit is among them too. Ironically, it was at the Long Beach Naval Hospital where Betty learned, in those life-changing four weeks of treatment after her intervention, that sailors are not immune to alcoholism, drug abuse, or mental health issues. So, inside the medical unit of this floating city is a tranquil space filled with inspirational books, behind a door with a plaque that says:

  Betty Ford Counseling and Assistance Center

  This Is a Place Where You Can Go, That You Can Feel Safe and Look Inside Yourself and Discover Yourself.

  —Betty Ford

  It is impossible to quantify Betty Ford’s legacy or to overstate it. So many things we take for granted come as a direct result of her candor and courage.

  For any woman diagnosed with breast cancer today, her chances of survival—especially if it is detected early—are infinitely greater than in 1974 when Betty Ford received that devastating news. Betty made it okay to talk publicly about breasts and cancer—and by encouraging that conversation, and then working tirelessly to keep it going, funding for research, education, and care has grown exponentially. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure; doctors now ask, “Have you had your annual mammogram?”; and cancer is no longer something that’s spoken about in hushed voices. At Betty’s funeral in Grand Rapids, historian Richard Norton Smith remarked, “Where women’s health issues are concerned, American history is divided into two unequal periods: Before Betty and After Betty.”

  The same can be said about treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction. More than a hundred thousand people have been treated at the Betty Ford Center since its inception in 1982, and it remains the only treatment facility in the world that has an equal number of beds for women as for men. The reason for the center’s success and world-class reputation came from Betty’s philosophy that “at the Betty Ford Center, we do it right the first time.” Over the years, people tried to convince her to set up Betty Ford Centers all over the world—New York, Paris, even Saudi Arabia—but, in all cases, she was adamantly against it.

  “We do one thing, and we do it really well,” she’d say. “If you have centers all over the place, how do you control the quality?” It was her name on the center, and she wasn’t willing to risk sacrificing the reputation they’d worked so hard to build.

  “You can’t be all things to all people,” she said. “So we’re going to focus on alcoholism and drug addiction. We’re going to focus on family and children. And we’ll feel good about that.”

  In 1975, when Betty began championing the Equal Rights Amendment, women’s wages were less than 60 percent of men’s. By 2017, women, on average, were earning 80 percent of what men earn—an increase, for sure, though still far from equal.

  It is astonishing that the issues Betty Ford brought into the national conversation in the 1970s and 1980s are just as relevant today. Women are still marching for equal rights and equal pay; breast cancer still claims tens of thousands of lives each year; and addiction to opioid drugs has become a national crisis.

  According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, in 2016 an estimated 11.5 million people in the United States misused prescription opioid pain relievers, and more than 17,000 died as a result of overdosing on commonly prescribed opioids. Millions of people get prescriptions for opioids—from their doctors—to treat chronic pain. One in four misuse the drugs. And of those people, 5 percent will transition to heroin. The problem is systemic, with plenty of blame to go around. But the staggering reality is that there are countless people just like Betty Ford, who become addicted to legal drugs prescribed by their physician. And month after month, the doctors continue renewing prescriptions for drugs that are known to be addictive.

  President and Mrs. Ford never expected or required their children to follow in their footsteps, and none has entered politics. Three of the Ford children serve as trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, and while Jack has chosen to remain out of the public eye, Susan, Steve, and Mike cont
inue to work on behalf of causes that Betty Ford cared about so deeply.

  Susan worked alongside her mother to help launch National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1984 and remains a vocal advocate for women’s health issues. She has been an active member of the board of directors of the Betty Ford Center since 1992 and succeeded her mother as chairman of the board from 2005 to 2010. In 2014 the Betty Ford Center merged with the Minnesota-based Hazelden Foundation, and Susan currently serves on the board of what is now known as the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.

  Steve Ford has proudly remained sober for more than twenty-five years, and finds tremendous satisfaction mentoring young men battling addiction and speaking to groups all over the United States about his personal recovery journey.

  Mike Ford continued his work in the ministry and found his “calling” working with college students. During his thirty-six-year career in administration at Wake Forest University, his primary focus was on the personal and holistic development of students to become enlightened and contributing leaders and citizens.

  The merger between the Betty Ford Center and Hazelden created the nation’s largest nonprofit addiction treatment provider, but, staying true to Betty’s wishes, there remains only one inpatient Betty Ford Center. Despite the change in management, Betty Ford’s aura permeates the campus in Rancho Mirage. Framed portraits of her hang on the walls, along with the artwork she handpicked and placed, while her philosophy and encouraging words are etched into plaques throughout the facility. Patients entering Firestone Hall see these words emblazoned on the wall:

  “Anyone and everyone can escape the hell that addiction has created for them and their families if they dare to take that first big step—reaching out for, and accepting, help.”

  Throughout the writing of this book, I felt Betty’s unmistakable guidance every step of the way. I never knew Betty Ford, but knowing what I know now, there is little doubt in my mind that she orchestrated this entire process.