The Impact of the 1984 First Ladies Conference Convened by Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter

Introduction:

The First Ladies Association for Research and Education, FLARE, held it first national conference entitled, “In Celebration of Betty Ford’s 50th Anniversary as First Lady and Betty Ford’s 40th Anniversary of her historic 1984 first ladies conference” on April 26, 2024, at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The conference was held in conjunction with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, and American University’s School of Public Affairs. This essay explores the significance and the ongoing impact of the first conference on first ladies convened by Betty Ford with Rosalynn Carter on April 19 and 20, 1984.

Background Leading up to the Conference:

The awareness, understanding, value and evolution of the undefined role and contributions of first ladies to our nation’s history, and the importance of first ladies studies has taken a long time to earn scholarly recognition.

The field of first ladies studies began in the 1980’s. Dr. Lewis Gould, a prestigious political historian and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, was researching the 1912 election when he discovered that the tension between Edith Roosevelt and Helen Taft significantly impacted their husbands split. Later, doing research on Lady Bird Johnson’s environmental work, he came to understand the power and influence of first ladies not only in relationship to their husbands but also through their own individual contributions.

Gould’s dawning recognition of the importance of first ladies, and the androcentric way history had overlooked the influence of these women and their achievements led him to offer the first ever college course on the history of first ladies. The class, first offered in the fall of 1982 at the University of Texas at Austin received and generated substantial media attention and interest in studying first ladies, especially when Lady Bird Johnson visited and talked with the class.

In July of 1983 the then Archivist of the United States, Don Wilson, began discussions with Betty Ford on a program proposal for a first ladies conference at the Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, MI. Betty Ford was very clear about her concept for the conference writing that there needs to be “…a ‘selling’ point – some purpose for holding the meeting other than just getting lst Ladies together.” [i] Betty Ford decided to title it, “Modern First Ladies: Private Lives and Public Duties.”

The conference would examine their own contributions, and the many roles first ladies are expected to balance. Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter, the planners of the conference, asked Dr. Gould to be the keynote. (Mrs. Johnson was forced to bow out because of illness. Other first ladies were invited but did not attend.) The conference convened at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids on April 19th and 20th of 1984. The planning committee for the conference specifically set aside tickets to ensure that attendees would include some high school and college students; representatives from universities and colleges in Michigan; selected local, state, and national officials; and VIP guests from the White House, the Senate, the Smithsonian and the National Archives.[ii]

The Conference:

President Ford’s welcome letter printed in the conference program recognized the significance of the conference:

To The First Ladies:

Each of you and your families performed a great service to our nation as occupants of the White House. Our country is indebted to you for your countless contributions to the well-being of our fellow Americans. This First Ladies Conference held in your honor is to 
pay tribute to the role of those who stood tall and strong with their husbands during the complex and controversial times of the Presidency. The Gerald R. Ford Museum is proud to present an educational program illustrating the constructive part First Ladies play in our society. The Conference is long overdue recognition of the vitally important role each of you have played in our nation's history.[iii]

It mirrored an earlier statement made by President Truman on the unrecognized role of first ladies in history:

I hope someday someone will take the time to evaluate the true role of the wife of a President and to assess the many burdens she has to bear and the contributions she makes.

Betty Ford clearly stated her purpose for the conference in the printed program saying:

I want this conference to be a substantive and serious inquiry into the evolving role of the First Lady---her public duties, her special interests, and the joys and tensions of an extraordinary responsibility that diminishes but never ends."

Description of the Conference:

Dr. Gould delivered the keynote address and was moderator for two panels, one with Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter, and the other with Liz Carpenter. There were four sessions that illustrated full dimensions of being first lady: the first ladies role and leadership, the first lady and media, family life in the White House, and growing up in the White House. In addition to Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter the panelists included Mrs. Johnson’s Press Secretary, Mary Hoyt; Mrs. Carter’s Press Secretary, Diane Sawyer, co-host of CBS morning news; and two panels with presidential family daughters Luci Johnson Turpin, Lynda Johnson Robb, Susan Ford Vance, and Ellen Seagraves (FDR’s granddaughter).

Betty Ford’s opening remarks for the conference specified clearly her goal in conducting the conference:

Today we have started a new – and I hope – a continuing project. We have set out to look at what the role of the First Lady has been…and what direction that role will take for the future. We are the first – formal group effort to try to bring definition to a job that has no job description…but has been shaped by tradition and individual preferences. I hope our two days together will focus future attention on what just might be one of the most demanding jobs in the Federal Government --- excepting, perhaps, the job of the First Lady’s husband!![iv]

The sessions included fascinating and sometimes humorous remarks. The following transcripts of segments of remarks are from the audiovisual tape for this conference available at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. On the panel chaired by Lewis Gould with Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter both first ladies had interesting things to say in response to a question about how policy is made for a first lady:

Betty Ford:  I used to have a regular meeting on Monday, and I'm sure every First Lady has at least one weekly meeting to coordinate everything with a complete staff. And policy, as you say, is often— some attempt is made to direct what would be best for the lady of the house to get involved in. And that becomes sometimes an issue between the East Wing and the West Wing. [laughter]

Rosalynn Carter: So, I knew what I was wanting to do when I got to the White House and in a campaign speech in Bakersfield, California, I said, that I was going to ask the President to appoint a commission on mental health. And when Jimmy was President, I was going to ask him to do that. And then I went home and told him. [laughter]

On the media panel all panelists stressed that the media and the public really did not acknowledge or were unaware of how hard a first lady works. Diana Sawyer of CBS news commented on the unrelenting nature of the job:

… they're up in the morning in stockings and hairspray before, almost before I am these days and believe me that is early, and they're going until late at night… The demand on a First Lady— that I really don't know how to communicate short of a First Lady chaining herself to the White House fence some day and announcing it publicly that it's, it's, it's really along the lines of deserving some respect because they do.

The two panels with presidential children contained many insightful, historic and humorous remarks. Susan Ford Bales made reflective comments on her time in the White House saying:

Probably the biggest change is at that time, I really didn't know who I was. I was tugged and pulled and attended a lot of receptions and did how many parades and ribbon cuttings. And after it was all over with, I sat back and I thought, who am I? And that took several years to cope with and deal with and, and get into myself because I had grown up as President Ford's daughter. It was a confusing time, but I'm glad I did it.

Lynda Johnson Robb commented poignantly on the mixed emotions she had when she learned her father was not going to run for President again in 1968:

Well, I remember coming back from California and after I'd put Chuck on the airplane to go to Vietnam. And I was pregnant, but it was a secret… And I remember, you know, I went upstairs and went to sleep. And then when I got up, I found that my father had decided he wasn't going to run again.

And I did everything I could to try to get him to change his mind because I felt personally that I was being let down. I mean, I wanted him to continue because, I mean, it was my husband who was over there now, and I felt he would get him home. And I believed in what we were doing, and I, and I felt so very strongly about that.

And that was a big crisis for me. And, you know, to be supportive, to understand, to try to understand why he was doing what he was doing. And yet part of me was saying, but I wish he wouldn't. And I was torn to some extent between my father and my husband…

In Gould’s keynote address, for which he received a standing ovation, he stressed the importance of the conference saying:

This conference is particularly timely because of the growing scholarly interest in First Ladies. After too long a neglect and no little mystery, students of the presidency and of women’s history are recognizing that looking at First Ladies can offer insights and perspectives on many aspects of American history and society.[v]

In his closing he made a powerful statement on the need to study first ladies and other historical contributions by women:

In the most profound sense, the study of First Ladies holds up a mirror to ourselves. And for this male historian, it has also shown the unstated and often unconscious chauvinism about the achievements of women that permeates our society…. History and circumstances make it necessary to evaluate First Ladies as helpmates, appendages, surrogates and partners of the presidents, but these categories should not be barriers to seeing presidential wives for what they were and are—autonomous human beings with as much claim to the attention of the student of our history as their masculine counterparts. We will only understand the past of our presidents and ourselves most fully when we grasp it in all its richness. A history that excludes First Ladies, or the contribution and lives of women generally, will be a record that is limited, false and wrong.

The Impact of the Conference:

The 1984 conference facilitated a time for emerging scholars on first ladies to meet and share ideas generated by what they heard. After the conference the National Archives responded to Betty Ford’s and attendees of the conference’s requests for more information on the papers of first ladies by writing Modern First Ladies: Their Documentary Legacy, edited by Nancy Kegan Smith and Mary Ryan, a book on the first ladies papers. Then Archivist of the United States Don Wilson observed in the book’s foreword that “an exploration of the records of first ladies will no doubt elicit diverse insight about the historical impact of these women on their times.” It was published in 1989 with an introduction and afterword by Dr. Gould and included essays and guides to first ladies materials at the Library of Congress and the Presidential Libraries from Hoover through Reagan, along with short essays on each first lady covered in the collections.

There have been many developments in the study of first ladies generated by the conference, including biographies, edited volumes and studies on first ladies by an interdisciplinary group of scholars including historians, communications scholars, and journalists.

In 1988 Dr. Gould’s book Lady Bird Johnson: Our Environmental First Lady, was published, a synopsis of extensive archival research concentrating on Mrs. Johnson’s environmental contributions – the first book devoted to a First Lady’s substantive issue, rather than a biographical focus. In 1999 Dr. Gould launched his Modern First Ladies bookseries, which now contains 17 books on first ladies from Edith Roosevelt to Hillary Clinton, and two underway on Laura Bush and Michelle Obama.

More recently, every first lady from Lady Bird Johnson to Michelle Obama (except for Pat Nixon and Melania Trump) have written autobiographies that provide the public with an inside perspective on this unique job. First ladies have also become the subject of college courses, dissertations and children’s books.

In October 2000, the National First Ladies Library and Museum opened, fostering research, events and conferences on first ladies. Furthermore, Presidential Libraries from Hoover to Trump have official first lady records and offer a variety of programs on their respective first ladies. In 2011 there was an important recognition of first lady studies when American University’s School of Public Affairs created its First Ladies Initiative, headed by Anita McBride. The First Ladies Initiative publicizes the work and legacies of presidential spouses chiefly with conferences and a lecture series.

In the 21st century multiple television programs, media and popular culture increasingly focused on first ladies and their role in society.

In 2021, the first professional association was established to focus solely on first ladies – the First Ladies Association for Research and Education, FLARE. FLARE’s mission is to create and sustain a network of interdisciplinary scholars and others interested in the field to promote and publicize research and education about the contributions, lives, impact, and lasting legacy of U.S. First Ladies.

In 2023 East Wing Magazine began publication. Founded by journalist Jennifer Taylor, East Wing “is the first journalistic-driven publication dedicated to covering presidential first ladies present and past.”

And finally, there is the recent publication of the first college textbook for teaching courses on first ladies, U.S. First Ladies: Making History and Leaving Legacies by Diana Carlin, Anita McBride, and Nancy Kegan Smith. There is a public version of the book, entitled Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of History-Making Women. 

As the above illustrates, the 1984 conference conceived by Betty Ford was really a critical moment in the evolution and encouragement of the field of first ladies studies. The scores of books, conferences, academic studies, and television programs have helped to expand the public’s knowledge of these women, the importance of the role, and their significant contributions and legacies to our nation and its history.

Nancy Kegan Smith was an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration from 1973 until 2013, retiring as Director of the Presidential Materials Division. She has authored book chapters on Lady Bird Johnson and Michelle Obama, is co-editor of Modern First Ladies – Their Documentary Legacy and lectures on first ladies. She is the co-author of U.S. First Ladies: Making History and Leaving Legacies and Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women. She is a founder and current President of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education.

[i] Wilson to President Ford, 2/10/84, folder”4/19-20/84”, Elizabeth “Betty” Ford Papers-Post-White House File, Box 27, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

[ii] Wilson to President Ford, 2/10/84, folder”4/19-20/84”, Elizabeth “Betty” Ford Papers-Post-White House File, Box 27, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

[iii] Program for the 1984 Conference available from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.

[iv] Ford, Betty, “Remarks First Ladies Conference Banquet, 4/19/84”, Elizabeth “Betty” Ford Papers-Post-White House Files, folder “4/19/84 – First Ladies Conference Banquets – Grand Rapids, MI” Box M3.

[v] Gould, First Ladies Symposium keynote Address, 4/19/84, Gerald R. Ford Library.

By Nancy Kegan Smith

Nancy Kegan Smith is the retired director of the Presidential Materials Division at the National Archives and Records Administration.

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