Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  When actress Ali MacGraw entered treatment at BFC in July 1986, she was surprised to find that Betty Ford was very much in evidence on campus.

  “She had her finger on every aspect of it, and she knew, from firsthand experience, the best way to go through this,” MacGraw said. “Just being there, seeing her speak, feeling her absolute one-on-one attention to each of us as we spoke to her was inspiring, moving, life changing.”

  The shame of addiction was being lifted to the point that going into treatment at the Betty Ford Center started to be seen almost as a status symbol. In Hollywood, a joke started going around that “You’re nothing unless you’ve been to Betty Ford.”

  But those who went through treatment knew it was no joke. Betty Ford was changing, and saving, lives. Country singer Johnny Cash credited Betty for giving him “a new hold on life,” and singer Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac said that hearing Betty tell her own story made her need to fix herself even stronger. “Talk about being famous,” Nicks said. “God, if Betty Ford can come through this, I can come through it, too.”

  Years later, Stevie Nicks returned to BFC to speak at an alumni event, and when she saw Betty there, much older and quite fragile at the time, the singer and songwriter took the opportunity to express her gratitude. She actually got down on one knee, and said, “If it were not for you, Betty Ford, I would be dead. Absolutely. So, all the songs that I have written since I was here, I dedicate to you. All the songs, and all the poems, and the shows, and all the amazing things I got to do between 1985 and now, is because of you.”

  Mary Tyler Moore remembered how sad she’d felt for then–First Lady Betty Ford when she’d struggled to say her few short lines while filming the episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but eight years later, Mary turned to the Betty Ford Center to treat her own addiction to alcohol.

  “Now, here we were in a role reversal,” Moore wrote in her memoir. “She was extending the helpful hand to me, and while at first I felt like an errant schoolgirl, as I identified with her story and digested her almost brutal honesty, I was able to grow emotionally. Those five weeks at the center transformed my life.”

  Betty would hear similar sentiments over and over again, with thousands of people telling her how she had saved their lives. But every time, she refused to take credit.

  “No, no, no,” she’d say. “We provided the tools, but you’re the one that did the work.”

  The media attention that rock stars and Hollywood actors brought to the Betty Ford Center certainly contributed to its reputation as the international gold standard for chemical dependency treatment, but, in reality, celebrities have always made up less than 1 percent of its patients. Around 99 percent are average men and women, ranging in age from eighteen to eighty-eight. Whether it was a housewife from Topeka, Kansas, with an addiction to prescription drugs, a head of state from a foreign country abusing alcohol, an airline pilot combining pills and booze, or a world-famous rock star battling a variety of demons, Betty Ford treated everyone the same.

  Geoff Mason had a heady job as executive vice president of NBC Sports, in which he traveled all over the world on an extremely liberal expense account. He’d managed to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining a “vodka high,” but eventually, he drifted into complete and total dependence on alcohol.

  “I had become a serious black-out drinker,” he said.

  Ironically, Mason had been in Moscow in 1977 doing a pre-survey for NBC’s planned coverage of the 1980 Olympics and had met Betty Ford when she was there covering the Bolshoi Ballet. He’d seen the obvious signs of her tragic addiction, had followed her recovery, and in 1983, when he finally hit rock bottom, he realized there was only one place for him to go.

  After checking himself into the Betty Ford Center, Mason emerged seven weeks later, a sober, changed man. As it turned out, that day happened to be the one-year anniversary celebration of the Betty Ford Center. At the gala dinner that night, he introduced himself to Betty, and told her how great he felt, and what a terrific, life-changing experience his time at BFC had been.

  “She took me into a corner and we talked for half an hour,” Mason recalled. She wanted to know his story, and all about him. During the conversation, Betty got an idea.

  “You know,” she said, “I’d like to organize a network of support, so that when people like you go home, you have people you can call on, people we can connect you with, who have had the same experience, to help ease you into the world of AA. I’d like to think an alumni project could be the legacy of our work here.”

  She paused and looked Geoff Mason right in the eye, and asked, “Would you like to help me get that started?”

  “Now what was I going to say?” Mason recalled with a laugh. “That I’ve got this big television job and don’t have time to take on a project like that?”

  Instead, he said, “I’d be honored.” Over the next two decades, Mason worked tirelessly to create alumni chapters throughout America and in other countries, and in the process, he and Betty Ford developed an extraordinary friendship.

  Throughout the years, Betty would appear every so often on the cable TV talk show Larry King Live. King would have her on for a full hour, and at the end of the program, the host would invite people to call in with questions. By the end of the show, the phone lines at the Betty Ford Center would be jammed with people calling about treatment for themselves or loved ones. The center would be 100 percent full for the next one and a half years.

  Betty recognized that holidays could be especially tough for patients in treatment, so she made sure that at Thanksgiving, there was turkey and all the trimmings, and then during Hanukkah and Christmas, the halls were decorated with garlands, lights, menorahs, and Christmas trees. Every Memorial Day, there was a big barbecue for all the patients who happened to be there at that time. Picnic tables were decorated with red, white, and blue tablecloths, with the staff dishing out potato salad and corn on the cob, while Betty Ford herself poured lemonade and iced tea. But the biggest surprise for the patients was always when they walked over to the big grill and saw that the tall blond-haired man flipping hamburgers and hot dogs was Gerald R. Ford, the thirty-eighth president of the United States.

  “President Ford was so proud of her,” observed Jerry Moe. “He always took a step back and let Mrs. Ford take the lead.”

  Betty’s passion and dedication to the center never wavered. For years, she was on the BFC campus almost every day, but she kept her priorities in perspective. “I don’t give one hundred percent of my time to the recovery of others,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I give one hundred percent to my own recovery, and my own recovery involves being well and being drug free in order to help other people as a role model.”

  Beyond being a role model for people struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, Betty Ford continued to commit herself to issues that needed attention. In the early 1980s thousands of people were dying of AIDS, and because the majority of victims were gay men, tremendous fear and stigma surrounded the disease. In 1985, less than two years after her stay at the Betty Ford Center, Elizabeth Taylor took on the role as chair of the first major AIDS benefit, and started telephoning friends in Hollywood, asking for donations and participation. She was shocked when most of them declined or simply didn’t return her calls. But when she called Betty Ford, there was no hesitation.

  “She stepped forward and promised to be there when others refused,” Taylor said.

  “Mrs. Ford had quite a few gay friends,” Ann Cullen pointed out, “and I think she was horrified about how the gay community was being treated with regard to this disease. In her mind, it was just another disease that needed to have the stigma removed, and so, there she was.”

  When actor Rock Hudson announced in 1985 that he was being treated for AIDS, Hollywood’s elite turned out for Taylor’s event, packing the ballroom at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. That night, Liz Taylor presented Betty Ford with the first AIDS Project Commitment to Life Award
.

  “I watched her at the Betty Ford clinic in Palm Springs,” Taylor told the audience. “She comes every week . . . She is proof. She is courage. She is commitment. She is one angel that has never feared to tread.”

  Every single one of the 2,500 people in the room rose in a standing ovation as Betty walked onstage to accept the award. She still got stage fright—especially in front of a crowd like this—but she stepped up to the microphone and graciously accepted the honor.

  “Tonight is about conquering fear, and it’s about saving lives,” she said. She talked about how the public’s attitude toward alcoholism and cancer had changed, adding, “attitudes toward AIDS can change as well.”

  In 1983, Larry Buendorf, the Secret Service agent who had grabbed the gun from Squeaky Fromme during the assassination attempt on President Ford, was asked if he would take over the Ford detail.

  “I was very pleased that I was selected, because I had a great deal of respect for both of them,” Larry said.

  When he first arrived in Rancho Mirage, he went in to meet with President Ford, and then Mrs. Ford came in. She walked right up to Larry, gave him a hug, and said, “We’re so happy to have you with us again.”

  They chatted for a while, and then Betty began to leave. Before she got to the door, she turned around and said, “Larry, you know, we don’t have any female Secret Service agents on our detail.”

  “That’s all she had to say,” Larry recalled. “I got the message.” He made some calls, and from that point forward, the Ford protective detail always had at least one female agent.

  In 1992, the Betty Ford Center celebrated its tenth anniversary. Since opening its doors, the BFC had helped more than fifteen thousand men and women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. Liza Minnelli and Whoopi Goldberg donated performances for the gala fund-raiser, and tickets sold out almost immediately.

  “I would do anything for the Betty Ford Center,” Liza told the audience, “because like so many people, it did indeed save my life.”

  It was a spectacular evening, a tribute to both Betty and Leonard Firestone, for their vision that had helped so many people. What Betty didn’t know was that, at the same time, one of her own children was struggling with the demons of addiction.

  The Ford children had all gone on with their lives and were scattered around the country. Betty was thrilled to be a grandmother—a sober, loving “Gramma” to five granddaughters—two from Susan and Chuck, and three from Mike and Gayle. Jack was living in San Diego and had married a lovely woman named Juliann, while Steve wound up as an actor in Hollywood. He’d had a recurring role on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless, followed by some movie roles, and was currently hosting Secret Service, a popular television show that reenacted real Secret Service cases. Best of all, Steve had fallen in love and was engaged to be married the following summer.

  The invitations were sent out—it was to be a June wedding in Santa Monica—but fourteen weeks before the wedding, Steve called his parents from Toronto, where he was shooting the television series.

  “Mom, Dad,” he said, “I need to come home. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Steve sat down with his parents in their living room in Rancho Mirage—the same room where the family had staged the intervention with Betty fifteen years earlier—and told them he was struggling with alcoholism.

  Betty and Jerry were both shocked. They’d never seen any signs that Steve had a problem. Sure, he drank beer or a glass of wine when the family was all together, but they’d never seen him out of control.

  “Oh, Steve, no you’re not,” Betty said. “You can’t be an alcoholic.” She, of all people, should know. For the past ten years, she’d worked with addicts on a daily basis. She’d know if her own son had a problem.

  Steve was embarrassed and ashamed. He struggled to tell his mother and father—the two people he admired and respected more than anyone in the world—how he had a habit of binge drinking and womanizing while he was on the road.

  Betty listened, but she still wasn’t convinced that her son’s drinking made him what she’d call an alcoholic. In that moment, she was just a mother trying to understand something that didn’t make sense.

  Finally, Steve said, “Mom, wait a second. Listen to what I’m telling you: I’m turning myself in. For goodness sakes, you’re Betty Ford.”

  They talked for a long while. Steve shared more and more details of things he’d done that made him deeply ashamed, all because one drink would lead to another and another.

  “You raised me to be a better man than this,” Steve said.

  There were tears and hugs, and eventually Betty realized that her son did have a problem. Not only was he asking for help, he needed it.

  Ironically, being treated at the Betty Ford Center was not an option for Steve because of its standard policy that spouses or family members of staff and employees could not be admitted—there was just too much emotional stuff that needed to be addressed. Betty was able to set up appointments for Steve to be evaluated by some of the counselors and doctors at the center, though, and they, in turn, made recommendations for treatment at another facility, along with the option that Steve begin attending AA meetings.

  It was extremely painful for everyone, but Steve knew he had to get well before he could commit to marriage. The wedding had to be called off and letters of explanation sent to all the invited guests.

  “Mom was wonderful during that time,” Steve recalled. “One of the most important things she gave me was a little book called A Day at a Time.” Often, when Steve visited his parents in Rancho Mirage, he had seen his mother at the kitchen table with a box of these same books, signing each one. “She had probably signed thousands, which she gave to patients at the center, but I never imagined I was going to need one,” he said.

  A Day at a Time had a page for each day of the year, and for every day, there was a message of reflection, a prayer, and a short phrase to remember. When Betty handed Steve the book, she said, “I read mine every day.”

  Inside the palm-sized book, she had written:

  Dear Steve . . . Enjoy your life. I love you and think you are truly sincere in your search. It works if you work it.

  Love, Mom

  Steve began attending 12-step meetings—ninety in ninety days—and, with the love and support of his mother and father, began the long, satisfying road of recovery.

  From the moment of its inception, the Betty Ford Center was Betty’s primary focus, but ever since leaving the White House, she had continued to speak out for women’s rights and breast cancer awareness. The deadline to pass the Equal Rights Amendment had been set for June 1982, and in the year leading up to it, Betty had agreed to be the national honorary chair of the ERA Countdown Campaign alongside actor Alan Alda. She traveled around the country rallying support in the fifteen states that had yet to ratify the amendment. Just three more states were needed in order for it to pass, but in the end, it couldn’t be done, and the ERA did not become law.

  In the seven years since she had come forward with her own breast cancer diagnosis, more women were being diagnosed with the disease than ever before, and finding it in earlier stages was leading to higher survival rates. For Susan G. Komen, who was just thirty-three when she got the devastating diagnosis of breast cancer, the outlook was not good. With her sister Nancy Brinker’s encouragement, Suzy fought it with everything she had.

  “Every time they’d give her a new therapy,” Brinker recalled, “Suzy would say, ‘If Betty Ford could do this, I can do it.’ Betty was a beacon of hope for us.”

  When Suzy died just twenty months after her diagnosis, her sister vowed to find a cure and started the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. It was just getting off the ground in 1982, when Nancy contacted Betty Ford and asked if she’d be willing to participate in their inaugural fund-raising event in Dallas, at a women’s polo tournament. They wanted to present Betty with the first annual Susan G. Komen Award.

/>   Betty didn’t hesitate. “I’m delighted to help,” she said. “But I don’t have to ride a horse, do I?”

  “Quite honestly,” Nancy Brinker recalled, “if I’d said yes, I think she would have given it a try.”

  The event was a big success, and from that point on, Betty Ford was a steadfast supporter of Nancy Brinker’s mission. When Nancy herself became a breast cancer patient, Betty Ford was the first person who called her in the hospital.

  “She told me to take one day at a time and take care of myself and have faith,” Nancy recalled. “Not to be afraid to be aggressive with this disease, because it was an aggressive disease.”

  That phone call meant so much to Nancy as she went through her treatment. “To have someone I knew, who was rock steady in her spirituality, really helped me. Just the way she related to people, she never judged you. She did not judge you.”

  Nancy Brinker became a cancer survivor, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure would become the largest donor to breast cancer research and breast cancer funding in the world. Every year the organization honors individuals who have committed their life to engaging in public awareness of breast cancer with an award in Betty Ford’s name.

  In 1984, Betty hosted a conference at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids to examine the role of first lady. During the conference, Betty and Rosalynn Carter realized that the interests they championed—Betty, with substance abuse; and Mrs. Carter, with mental health issues—were connected. In talking, they found they had a lot of common ground. Over the next ten years, they worked on numerous projects together and formed a close friendship.

  In 1994, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Ford showed a joint front as they traveled to Washington and testified before Congress, encouraging the inclusion of mental health and substance abuse treatment benefits in the national health care reform plan. “She rounded up the Republicans, and I rounded up the Democrats,” Rosalynn Carter recalled, as they pleaded the case that spending money for treatment actually saved taxpayer dollars in the long run. “Our political differences never entered into it at all.”