Betty Ford: Champion of Breast Cancer and Addiction Awareness

Featured

Dec 7

In the middle decades of the 20th century, there were topics that people just didn’t talk about in polite company. One was breast cancer. As reported in the 2010 book The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, when a woman called the New York Times to place an ad for a breast cancer survivor group, she was rebuffed and told, “We can’t place such an ad because it uses the words ‘breast’ and ‘cancer.’ What if we call it a disease of the chest wall?” Another topic was addiction. In Otto Preminger’s 1955 film, The Man with the Golden Arm, the main character, played by Frank Sinatra, is struggling with a drug habit, but the drug itself, heroin, could not be named for fear of precipitating a scandal.

Leaving such diseases undiscussed, their very names unspoken, leads to many problems – inadequate screening, underdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, insufficient support for research and treatment, and the isolation and even ostracization of individuals suffering from such conditions. Breast cancer and addiction languished in silence for decades, resulting in the preventable suffering of patients and their families and loved ones. To overcome the taboos surrounding such subjects, scientists, physicians, and public health officers have important roles to play, but other voices, especially prominent and respected ones, are needed.

One such voice that emerged during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s was Betty Ford, the wife of the 38th president of the United States, Gerald Ford, and one of the most respected first ladies in US history. The story of how Mrs. Ford came to play such a prominent role in raising public awareness of both breast cancer and addiction is a tale of suffering and grief, but also one of courage and candor. The story features one woman’s resolve not to allow herself or her disease to remain in the shadows but instead to forthrightly share the situation and draw attention to it, in the hopes that doing so would help to improve the lives of others.

Elizabeth Ann “Betty” Bloomer was born in Chicago on April 8, 1918, the daughter of a traveling salesman, and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As a child, she began studying dance, and as a teenager she also worked as a model. When she was 16, her father died, which forced her mother to go to work in real estate. Eventually, she relocated to the east coast, where she studied with Martha Graham, paying her way by modeling. Returning to Grand Rapids, she taught dance and included among her students children with disabilities. She married an insurance salesman, but his alcoholism drove them apart, and they divorced in 1947.

That same year, she was introduced to Gerald “Jerry” Ford, a World War II veteran and Yale-educated lawyer who was then running for his first term in the US Congress. They married the next year, but not until the election had been decided in Jerry’s favor, despite his fear of repercussions if his new wife was portrayed in the newspapers as a divorced former dancer. Their union resulted in four children, three sons and a daughter, and the family lived in Washington DC and nearby Alexandria, Virginia. Jerry focused most of his time and energy on government service, including campaigning for other Republican candidates around the country, largely leaving Betty to maintain the household and raise the children.

During the 1960s the many stresses of Betty’s life began to catch up with her, and she developed a pinched nerve in her neck that landed her in the hospital. Part of her treatment included prescription pain relievers, to which she ultimately became addicted. Soon Jerry assumed the office of House minority leader, which only increased the stress further, contributing to Betty’s nervous breakdown. She sought the services of a psychiatrist and, in an effort to keep her anxiety at bay, developed a reliance on alcohol. She fondly longed for the day when her husband would retire from politics, allowing the family to retire to a quieter life back in Grand Rapids.

It was not to be. In 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency under corruption allegations, and Richard Nixon was advised by leaders of the legislative branch to nominate Jerry to serve as vice president, a call he accepted. When he was questioned during his confirmation hearings about a purported history of psychiatric care, Betty clarified publicly that he had attended psychiatric sessions with her, but that she was the patient. Confirmed as vice president, before less than a year had passed, Jerry ascended to the presidency when Nixon resigned. At his swearing-in ceremony, Betty held the Bible on which he placed his hand while taking the oath of office.

Just weeks after Betty became first lady, she underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer. With her illness and treatment occurring in the wake of the Watergate scandal and heightened public suspicion over government transparency during the Vietnam War, she decided that she needed to adopt a policy of openness. Because she was the wife of the president, she hoped, it had “put it in the headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I’m sure I’ve saved at least one person – maybe more.” Her candor led to an increase in public awareness and the rate of breast cancer diagnoses, the “Betty Ford blip.”

Betty displayed unusual candor in other areas connected to women’s rights. For example, she strongly supported the Equal Rights Amendment and expressed her support for abortion rights, regarding the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade as a “great decision.” She urged Jerry to consider appointing a woman to the Supreme Court and select as woman as a running mate in his 1976 presidential campaign. She became so prominent and enjoyed such high public approval ratings that Ford supporters sometimes sported campaign buttons bearing slogans such as “Keep Betty in the White House.” The day after the election, she delivered her laryngitic husband’s concession speech.

After the Fords left the White House, Betty began taking high doses of prescription pain relievers, arousing concern among family members and friends. In 1978, her family carried out an intervention, persuading her to agree to treatment at the Naval Medical Center in Long Beach, California. As she had done before, she made no effort to hide her illness, publicly admitting that she had developed addictions to both painkillers and alcohol. She wrote, “I expect this treatment to be a solution for my problems. I embrace it, not only for myself, but for all the many others who are here to participate.” She would later say that the years after she began treatment were the best of her life.

In 1982, Betty joined with Ambassador Leonard Firestone and Dr. James West to found what has become known as the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, which provides both inpatient and outpatient treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Decades later, the administrator of the center wrote that Betty created “a long-overdue national dialogue about the disease, lifting some of the shame and stigma associated with it, and unlocking the door to recover for millions of others, especially women and families.” She famously resisted efforts to portray her as a victim, instead declaring herself a survivor and reminding others not to be afraid to ask for help when they need it.

Betty Ford died in 2011 at the age of 93, five years after her husband’s death in 2006, also at the age of 93. During her later years, she continued to advocate for causes she believed in, including gender equality, women’s healthcare, and addiction treatment. She received many accolades over the course of her life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. She and Jerry are buried beside one another at the Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids. She is remembered as one of the most outspoken and forthright of all first ladies, a woman of courage who drew upon her own travails to attract attention and resources to some of the nation’s most vexing challenges.

Discussion Questions:

Why were Americans so skittish about talking about matters such as breast cancer and addiction?
Is there a difference between forthrightness and self-display? How can Mrs. Ford’s candor help illuminate the difference?
How publicly visible ought first ladies to be?

Photo courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford read a petition, signed by all 100 members of the United States Senate, in the President's Suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD, following the First Lady's breast cancer surgery. October 2, 1974.