Betty Ford remembered as role model
PALM DESERT, Calif. — She was more than just a first lady, admirers said of Betty Ford. She was a role model for every presidential wife who followed her into the White House, not to mention a tireless advocate for women's rights and other causes that improved many lives.
Ford, who died Friday at age 93, was memorialized Tuesday by some 800 friends and family members, including no fewer than four current and former first ladies and one ex-president.
On Wednesday she was to leave her adopted Southern California home for the last time, headed to Grand Rapids, Mich., where her husband, President Gerald R. Ford, who died in 2006, is buried.
A second service was scheduled today in Michigan. On Thursday, Ford is to be interred at her husband's presidential library on what would have been his 98th birthday.
During the service Tuesday, former first lady Rosalynn Carter and journalist Cokie Roberts, among others, hailed Ford as a force of nature whose boundless energy and enthusiasm, coupled with a steadfast determination to do what was right, pushed the country toward a commitment to equal rights for women and other causes.
Ford, the accidental first lady, was thrust into the White House when Richard Nixon resigned as president on Aug. 9, 1974, and her husband, then vice president, assumed the nation's highest office. Although she always said she never expected nor wanted to be first lady, she quickly embraced the role.Her candidness, unheard of at the time, helped bring such previously taboo subjects as breast cancer into the public discussion as she openly discussed her own battle with the disease. She was equally outspoken about her struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, and her spearheading of the creation of the Betty Ford Center to treat those diseases has benefited thousands.
