Betty Ford Dies at 93 – Biography & History of this Famous Woman

Prior to the latter half of the twentieth century, the First Lady didn’t really assume a high public profile. Instead, she often stood in the shadows of the President and quietly influenced some of his political and personal decisions. In the 1960s with the “Camelot” era, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis broke this tradition with her independent spirit, graciousness, style and ability to socialize with people of various countries. In addition to this, she fostered a love of the arts and promoted this by bringing musicians to the White House. But there was another First Lady who was non-traditional in her views and she brought this to the presidency in 1974. Betty Ford, the wife of former president Gerald R. Ford, was someone who was passionate about equal opportunities and equal rights for women and her background may provide some insight into how she became the person she is today. Elizabeth Ann Bloomer Warren Ford was born on April 8, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois but when she was two years old the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her father, William Stephenson Bloomer, was a salesman of factory machine parts who struggled with alcoholism and eventually died from carbon monoxide poisoning while working on the car. Her mother, Hortense Neahr Bloomer, came from a wealthy furniture manufacturing family in Grand Rapids, and she held an unsalaried position as the president of the Crippled Children Association of Grand Rapids. Without realizing it, she had been planting seeds of community service in Betty by bringing her to the association and having Betty volunteer her time with the children there. Hortense remarried, and she later supported herself and the family by working as a real estate agent. Betty later said in a 1987 interview that she became inspired by her mother’s independence, and that this led to her lifelong campaign for women’s rights. As for Betty Ford’s career, she enjoyed dancing so in the mid-1930s she enrolled in the Bennington College School of Dance and funded her education by working odd jobs. She also went to New York to study with dance pioneer Martha Graham and she even performed on some tours with Graham’s dance company while staying there. After her marriage to her first husband William Warren, she returned to Grand Rapids where she worked as a fashion buyer and coordinator for a local department store. She was also a part-time dance instructor, and because her husband’s job required extensive travel, they lived in different cities. But their marriage wasn’t a happy one and like Betty’s father, Warren was also an alcoholic. She divorced him in 1947 and that same year she met a young lawyer named Gerald R. Ford who had political ambitions. In fact, he didn’t marry Betty until he won the Republican nomination for the local seat in the U.S. Congress because he was concerned that his conservative district wouldn’t agree with his marriage to a divorced woman who had a dance career. Although her marriage to Gerald Ford was good overall, as his political career got into full swing, she experienced more stress as a political spouse. Because he spent much time away from home, a lot of the household responsibilities fell on her. Soon she became overwhelmed by it and in 1965 she suffered an emotional breakdown. Also during this time her dependence on prescription pills started after she suffered a pinched nerve in her neck, and she was given the pills to help relieve the pain. And soon she began to develop an alcohol addiction as a way of coping with the stresses of family life. This continued until 1978, when a family intervention led to the treatment of and recovery of both her addictions.When Betty Ford became the First Lady in 1974, she expressed her support for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion rights, and the increasing of funds for arts programs throughout the country. In addition, she was also open to the public about having been married before as well as her visits to a psychiatrist. But she especially paved the way for women ‘s health issues that same year when she discussed her own battle with breast cancer. She also mentioned ways that women can learn about treatment options for this illness. This was groundbreaking because for many decades, you didn’t hear a lot of media outlets or healthcare experts discuss breast cancer with the American public even though many women were suffering and dying from this illness. We have cancer-related organizations such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation because of Betty Ford’s willingness to go public and teach others about this illness. She was also one of the first few first ladies who stayed up to date with popular culture and this is not surprising given her background in modern dance. She would try some of the new disco steps, use a CB radio and she appeared on the Mary Tyler Moore show, the first time a First Lady had been on a sitcom. But her greatest achievement for women’s rights was the creation of the Betty Ford Center in 1982. What’s remarkable about this is that she was still in the early stages of her own recovery but she still found the strength to offer other recovering addicts the same quality treatment, particularly women and families. To round off her lifelong causes of women’s rights and equal healthcare access, she appeared before Congress in 1991 and 1994 to make a case for increased federal funding of mental health and drug addiction treatment programs.