To this day, Betty Ford maintains, "I was an ordinary woman, called onstage at an extraordinary time." In fact, there never was anything ordinary about Ford's calling after her husband, Gerald, now 85, became the country's 38th President, following Richard Nixon's resignation in August 1974. Just seven weeks after the Fords took up residency in the White House, Betty was diagnosed with a malignant breast tumor. "She felt she should tell women because she had just gone in for a routine checkup," remembers her sister-in-law Janet Ford. "She thought, 'If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.' " With a frankness that would become her hallmark, the new First Lady told Americans about her illness and treatment, which included a radical mastectomy. The effect, later dubbed the Betty Ford Phenomenon by cancer researchers, was immediate: So many women rushed to get mammograms that the cancer rate surged, indicating a higher incidence of early detection. Public-health officials rolled out campaigns to further boost awareness after seeing "what an impact she had on women and what a profound respect they had for her," says Joann Schellenbach, spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society.
That warm reception convinced Ford to chart a similar course four years later, after the mother of four spent a month at a treatment center, detoxing from alcohol and prescription drugs. Her addictions, dormant during her White House years, spiraled out of control in the stressful months following her husband's failed presidential bid. Her unflinching advocacy helped to destigmatize addiction. "Today," says her husband of 50 years, "more and more people understand that alcoholism is a disease that is treatable." Now 80, Betty remains active in California's Betty Ford Center, which she cofounded in 1982. "When I travel around the country," says daughter Susan Ford Bales, 41, "people come up to me and say, 'Your mother has made such a difference.' "
