Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  “What’s all this powder?” Penny asked Chris. She’d never seen or heard of such a thing. Chris explained that it was cocaine, and she’d be better off ignoring it.

  That night, when they got back to the Waldorf, Betty and Penny were laughing and talking about the evening, and Penny told Mrs. Ford about the lines of powder in the bathroom.

  “What did you do?” Betty asked.

  “I just sucked in a breath and then blew it all away!” Penny said.

  Betty’s eyes widened. “Oh no! You didn’t!”

  Penny started laughing. “No, I didn’t. I’m just kidding.” Betty burst out laughing. It had been a wonderful night. A milestone indeed.

  Shortly after the trip to New York, Betty hired a new assistant named Marion Evans, who had worked in Delaware governor Pete du Pont’s office. Around that same time, some members of the Republican Party were strongly encouraging Jerry Ford to take another run for president in 1980. If he entered the race, he’d need to hire additional staff, so Marion convinced her friend Ann Cullen, a former colleague in Governor du Pont’s office, to move out to Rancho Mirage, with the expectation that Ann could get a position working on the campaign.

  Jerry put together a task force, and while he was seriously considering it, Betty had grave concerns.

  “My new life was precious to me, and I was glad to be done with politics,” she said. But she had always been a dutiful wife, and she told Jerry she would support him in whatever he decided.

  In June 1980, Jerry announced that he was not going to run. There were numerous reasons, but in the back of his mind, he was deeply concerned about what it might do to Betty. They had been through too much to risk going backward.

  “Betty’s recovery was never talked about,” he said, “but if I had run, and in the process it had interfered with her recovery, I would never have forgiven myself.”

  Meanwhile, Ann Cullen had been doing small projects for the Fords—such as going through all their photo albums from the White House and identifying people in the pictures—while Marion had fallen in love with one of the Secret Service agents and was planning to get married and move back east.

  “There I was,” Ann recalled. “Mrs. Ford wasn’t sure I was the right person to replace Marion, but we agreed to try it for thirty days.”

  The job was undefined other than “you name it, I did it,” Ann recalled. “There were invitations every day asking Mrs. Ford to speak and do things, requests for autographs, all kinds of stuff that needed responses. I wrote her speeches. I did all of her scheduling. I traveled with her when she went on events. I traveled with them when the two of them went together. I took the dogs to the vet. I did her hair when we were on the road. It was a little bit of everything.”

  It was a perfect match. Ann Cullen would be Betty’s personal assistant for the next seventeen years.

  Jerry and Betty flew to Detroit for the Republican National Convention in mid-July to support Ronald Reagan as the uncontested Republican nominee. The former film actor and California governor had not yet chosen his running mate, and as soon as the Fords arrived, Reagan called Jerry for a meeting. Reagan handed Ford a peace pipe and asked if he’d consider running with him on the ticket as vice president. Jerry agreed to consider it.

  Meanwhile, as the Ford and Reagan camps were negotiating, an ERA march had been organized to demonstrate against the Republicans, who were planning to drop support of the amendment in their platform. Betty had known about the march, and because the marchers had been asked to wear white, she had specifically packed a white dress because she wanted to be a part of it.

  “I can’t tell you how many Republicans came to try and talk me out of it,” she recalled. “They said it wouldn’t reflect well on the party if I marched.” She was upset with the party because the GOP had been the first to support the ERA.

  Finally, Jerry asked her not to go. “As a favor to me,” he pleaded.

  “He didn’t tell me not to,” Betty said, but his sentiment was strong enough that she did not march.

  As eleven thousand men and women marched in solidarity, carrying placards that said “Wake Up GOP It’s 1980” and chanting, “Hey, hey, what do you say? Ratify the ERA!” Betty stood at the window of her suite at the Renaissance Center Hotel and “watched the parade go by, a dutiful wife and a disappointed feminist in one quivering package.”

  In the end, Jerry Ford declined Reagan’s offer, George H. W. Bush was selected to run with Reagan on the Republican ticket, and Betty breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was a turning point for Gerald Ford as well.

  “I really saw a change in him,” Mike Ford recalled. “He said, ‘You know, this woman has been faithfully by my side for thirty-five years and loved me and cared for me and raised these kids and done all these things for me, made many sacrifices for me. It’s my time to encourage her in her passion to do something of great public service.’ So that’s when he started getting real involved in fund-raising.”

  With Betty’s public image and Leonard Firestone’s connection to wealthy circles, “They were a pretty dynamic duo,” Ann Cullen said. “They had a lot of friends they could hit up” to fund the treatment center, and Betty wasn’t shy about asking for money. One time Betty and Jerry went with a group of friends on someone’s private jet to Las Vegas to see a show, and on the way back—after the others had downed a few drinks—Betty got commitments for pledges written on cocktail napkins.

  “It got to the point people didn’t want to sit next to me at dinner parties,” Betty recalled with a laugh. “They knew I’d be slipping them an envelope before the night was over.”

  She’d also seen how much money her husband got paid to give speeches, and, despite the well-known fact that she abhorred speaking in public, she started accepting paid speaking gigs. Every single dime went to fund the treatment center.

  The fund-raising was moving along well, and the task force had come to the conclusion that it could maintain quality recovery at about one-third the cost of what was being charged in acute-care hospitals. One major hurdle loomed: there was no licensing in the state of California for the type of facility they were proposing. That meant they had to get a bill introduced in the legislature. Having a husband who was the former president of the United States suddenly came in very handy.

  President Ford contacted Governor Jerry Brown and members of the state legislature, and managed to get the bill through in thirty days. But that was only the beginning. For the next year, Betty and Leonard practically commuted back and forth to Sacramento—meeting with state officials, and other people who were running different kinds of treatment centers—to establish a set of rules and regulations for a chemical dependency recovery hospital. It was tiring and tedious. Firestone felt like he was banging his head against a bureaucracy. “We know we can provide quality care in a noninstitutional setting at a low cost. What’s the problem?” he argued.

  Finally, they got the regulations approved. Meanwhile, they’d been tenaciously seeking donations, and, by the third anniversary of Betty’s sobriety—less than two years since the idea was sparked by Walter Annenberg—they’d raised $3 million.

  The board of the Eisenhower Medical Center had offered several acres on the southeast portion of its campus. Throughout the fund-raising and bureaucratic process, they’d been calling the facility the Chemical Dependency Treatment Center at Eisenhower Medical Center. But Dr. Joe Cruse, who was heavily involved with the planning and development, knew this was so important that it needed, and deserved, a better name. He’d been giving it a lot of thought, and one day, when he and Leonard were driving back to the desert from Los Angeles, Cruse asked, “Do you think we could use her name on it?”

  Leonard thought it was a great idea. Brilliant. “Let’s ask her.”

  “Absolutely not,” Betty said. “I’m too new in recovery. I don’t think it’s smart for me, I don’t think it’s smart for the center.” In the back of her mind, she was also thinking, I’ll never be able to
drink again.

  In addition, Betty was concerned about how it might affect the rest of the family. The last thing she wanted was to burden them with one more thing they’d never signed on for. But the answer was unanimous. “We’re proud of you, Mom,” they said. “Go for it.”

  It took some work, but eventually President Ford and Leonard Firestone convinced her that if she put her name on the center, it would greatly benefit their cause and serve as a beacon to give women the access they needed to get help.

  In October 1981, Betty Ford, Leonard Firestone, and Dr. Joe Cruse simultaneously dug their shovels into the sand on the southeast corner of the Eisenhower Medical Center grounds, and construction of the Betty Ford Center began.

  From the moment Betty agreed to put her name on the center, she took full ownership. “It was a hectic sobriety I was going through while the center was being built,” she said. “I was a recovering alcoholic who wanted to have a say in every decision, to have her finger in every pie. My perfectionist spirit coming to the fore again.”

  “She bossed that construction crew around,” Ann Cullen remembered. “She was there every day, rain or shine, hard hat on, in muck boots, saying, ‘No, that’s not supposed to be like that.’ ”

  Betty did the decorating, she chose the fabrics, the furniture, the rugs, the artwork, the lamps. Every paint color had to have her approval. Colors were vital. They had to be colors that would make people feel welcome. The week before opening, she realized there weren’t soap dishes in the patients’ rooms, so she went to Kmart, Secret Service agents in tow, to buy soap dishes.

  But most important was the staff. Both Betty and Leonard knew that if they were to have a first-class facility, they needed to recruit top-notch professionals. Dr. Cruse had agreed to be the medical director, and he and Betty went around the country searching for people who understood what they were trying to do. Throughout their travels, they found that in many cities, the vast majority of beds for substance-abuse treatment were in psychiatric hospitals; and most medical professionals received little to no training in the field of addiction. It was astonishing to her, and only reinforced her knowledge that what she was doing was for a greater cause—something much bigger than herself.

  A year after breaking ground, the vision that had been hatched between two best friends, both recovering alcoholics, was now standing in existence. The administration building called Firestone was at the center of the campus, with curving paths that led to three twenty-bed residential halls. Betty insisted that there not be any private rooms—she had realized how important it was to have roommates, and for no patient to be treated more special than any other because of wealth or stature. Most rooms had two beds, but in each residence hall, there was one room with four beds, just like the one Betty had stayed in for her treatment. The rooms were not luxurious but had a feeling of warmth.

  If you didn’t know it was a treatment facility, you might think you were walking through the grounds of a country club. There was nothing institutional about the Betty Ford Center. Everywhere you looked, you saw grass, flowers, and palm trees, with the beautiful desert mountains rising up behind the contemporary stucco structures. It was an oasis of calm, peace, and serenity.

  Betty insisted on one more thing: unlike other treatment centers, where the vast majority of patients were men, at the Betty Ford Center, 50 percent of the beds were to be for women. Although women were just as likely as men to be alcoholics, they were far less likely to seek treatment. And when they sought treatment, most often, they were treated through mental health programs. She was determined to change that.

  On October 3, 1982, Vice President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, arrived in Rancho Mirage to join hundreds of VIPs at the dedication ceremony. It was a glamorous affair, filled with emotional tributes to Betty Ford and her courage. Vice President Bush recalled the day that Betty admitted she was an alcoholic after entering Long Beach Naval Hospital. “And then,” he said, “Betty being Betty, set out to help others.”

  When President Ford took to the podium, he struggled to contain the depths of the emotion he was feeling.

  “It’s not easy to properly and in good taste express the feelings of the entire family,” he said. He spoke of that unforgettable day when everyone had gathered for the intervention and the courage Betty showed throughout her recovery. And now to be standing there in the completed Betty Ford Center, “what a tribute to you, Betty, and our dear, dear friend Len.”

  President Ford turned to Betty, who was seated behind him on the dais, smiling with admiration. As he looked into her eyes, his voice cracked with emotion. “We’re proud of you, Mom.”

  There was no mistaking the deep love and shared intimacy between the man and the woman on the stage, and it moved many in the audience to tears as well.

  Finally, it was Betty’s turn. She walked up to the podium, her graceful dancer’s gait back once again, now that she was free of drugs and alcohol, her smile sparkling just as bright as her eyes.

  She thanked her family for their “tough love”—the love to “let me see my problem.” “This was a desert, you know,” Betty said as she looked out into the audience of so many friends who had witnessed and supported her journey. “A pile of sand out here. But we’ve made it come alive. And it’s even going to be more alive with those people who come here for help. Because there is a way for them. And there is a new life for them. We don’t ever have to give up.”

  The day after the dedication, four patients entered treatment: two men and two women. Before long, all sixty beds were filled.

  Because of Betty’s experience at the naval hospital—“blame the navy,” she quipped—she was determined that the Betty Ford Center would not become a place only for the rich and famous. It had to be for everyone.

  From the beginning, Betty was there almost every day. She had an office, but you were more likely to find her chatting with some patients at the coffee bar or walking around with a garbage bag, picking up any litter that happened to be around.

  Once a month, she gave a lecture to the group of patients. She’d walk into the auditorium, stand at the podium, and look out at the audience of people from all walks of life—truck drivers, housewives, actors, and musicians—who were here because they were at the end of their rope.

  “Hello. I’m Betty, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hello, Betty,” the audience would respond in unison.

  And for the next hour, she’d share her story, straight from the heart, offering proof that if she could overcome her addiction, so could they.

  If Betty Ford could do it, so can you.

  26

  * * *

  Betty Ford, the Legacy

  With the opening of the Betty Ford Center, Betty Ford, the woman, became the face of alcohol and drug addiction treatment. She had always been so relatable, and now the center that bore her name was attracting people from all walks of life—housewives, pilots, grandmothers, business executives—ordinary people who wanted to get well. Dr. Cruse had been right. Betty’s name made all the difference in the world. But it was Betty Ford herself who connected with individuals.

  “Mrs. Ford had a way of talking about the joy of recovering and helping people see that if you take these steps, you can have this too,” recalled longtime staff member Jerry Moe. “She’d show them that this is not as complicated as people make it out to be.”

  In December 1983, fourteen months after the Betty Ford Center opened its doors, Elizabeth Taylor was confronted by her family with an intervention. The glamorous screen legend was fifty-one years old, and, like Betty, she had become addicted to pills and was combining them with alcohol. There was only one place to go.

  “It’s an experience unlike any other I’ve known,” Taylor wrote in her diary during her first week of treatment at BFC. “There are people here just like me, who are suffering just like me, who hurt inside and out, just like me. Nobody wants anything from anybody else, except to share and help. It’s proba
bly the first time since I was nine that nobody’s wanted to exploit me.”

  BFC adhered to a strict privacy policy—to this day, no one representing the center will confirm or deny the names of any patients, past or present—but after some paparazzi using ultralong telephoto lenses caught pictures of Elizabeth Taylor on the grounds, the actress felt cornered into making a statement.

  Betty remembered that night in Studio 54 four years earlier, sitting with Taylor and Liza Minnelli, watching soberly as everyone around her was drinking and snorting cocaine. She wasn’t in a position then to offer advice, but now, after all she’d learned, she was able to counsel her famous friend.

  “Betty Ford and I discussed what it would be like to go public,” Taylor recalled. Betty knew how terrifying it was, but she convinced Elizabeth that she would be better for it—when the world was watching, it was an incentive to stay sober—and that there was no shame in getting help. That day, Elizabeth Taylor became the first celebrity to reveal having treatment at the Betty Ford Center. And when she emerged from therapy seven weeks later, eleven pounds lighter, glowing with her newfound sobriety, word spread quickly throughout the Hollywood community.

  Less than a year later, the cycle of drugs and alcohol caught up with Liza Minnelli, too. One night, after a particularly bad binge, Liza’s half sister, Lorna Luft, corralled Liza onto a private jet, and they flew straight from New York to Palm Springs. At the urging of Taylor and Luft, Liza checked into the Betty Ford Center first thing the next morning.

  Like many who struggle with addiction, Liza would relapse, and when she did, Betty was quick to offer encouragement. She wrote caring, personal letters, and sent reading material to help the entertainer stay on track. After a stay at Hazelden in Minnesota, Liza wrote Betty to thank her for her letter, which, she said, “not only helped me, but several other very worthwhile women who were in a lot of pain at the time. Thank you for caring about me.”