The Remarkable Mrs. Ford

There was a lot of talk this past week about how President Gerald Ford had "healed" the nation after the corruption of Watergate, and the forced resignation of Richard Nixon. But his wife, Betty Ford, had her own considerable impact on the country - as significant as any first lady's.

She was certainly the most candid in memory, which is what came through in correspondent Lesley Stahl's interview with her in 1997. How many former first ladies have you ever heard of greeting someone by saying, "Hello, I'm an alcoholic and an addict." Betty Ford did.

"Probably that's true. I have an independent streak. You know, it's kind of hard to tell a independent woman what to do," the former first lady replied.

She even revealed that she had had a facelift.

"Have you ever said to your wife, 'Why do you have to be so revealing, so honest?'" Stahl asked former President Gerald Ford.

"I've told her a million times," he replied. "It has no impact."

Asked if it was frustrating, Mr. Ford told Stahl, "Well, to be serious, I've never, to my best recollection, told her to say things differently or to have a different point of view publicly. In the first place, I knew she wouldn't abide by my ... recommendations."

Betty Ford has strong feminist opinions. "I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens," she explains. "The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken."

Mrs. Ford said cabinet members did speak to her and her husband. "And I think they talked to him more about having Betty, you know, step in the background."

But Betty wouldn't step back. In fact, her outspokenness was such a trademark that there are several exhibits about her candor at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Michigan.

For one, the Fords abandoned the notion of separate bedrooms. At the time, people were shocked by this.

"We had always shared a bedroom, and I thought there was no reason we had to change our lifestyle if I wasn't gonna give him up entirely," Mrs. Ford told Stahl.

But if that shocked the country, it was nothing compared to Betty's interview with Morley Safer in 1975. All hell broke loose. She said that if she were a teenager, she probably would try marijuana, that she'd seen a psychiatrist, and that she was pro-choice. And then there was the question about her 18-year-old daughter.

"Well, what if Susan Ford came to you and said, 'Mother... I'm having an affair'?" Safer asked.

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised. I would think she's a perfectly normal human being, like all young girls," the first lady replied.

Historians consider the interview so important, it runs perpetually at the Ford Museum. At first, two-thirds of the mail and phone calls were negative. Editorials criticized her for being too candid and too liberal, potentially an enormous problem for Jerry Ford.

Asked if her husband was upset with her, Ford told Stahl, "When he saw it, he said, 'Well, honey, there goes about 20 million votes, but we'll make it.'"

But other people were outraged. "There were people who actually demonstrated in front of the White House and said I was a embarrassment as a first lady," she remembered.

But very soon public opinion turned around. Historians say that after Watergate, her honesty restored the public's faith in the presidency. Her popularity rating climbed higher than her husband's and Betty became the most admired woman in the world.

"I'll never forget the day that I was told I would have to have a mastectomy. My reaction to the words was total denial," she said during a press conference.

It was a gutsy statement, at a time when very few people ever said "cancer," and no one said "breast," ever.

"Well, it was gutsy the first time I appeared at a state dinner and I walked down those stairs. And I just knew all eyes were upon me, and they were probably saying, 'Which one did they say it was?'" Mrs. Ford said.

After she went public, thousands of women went to their doctors for breast exams. She truly saved lives, by continuing to promote breast cancer awareness at fundraisers around the country.

After Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election, the Fords retired to Palm Springs, Calif. Americans did not know about her drinking or her addiction to the prescription pills she took for a pinched nerve in her neck, as many as 20 pain pills a day while she was drinking.

"A sensitive question: when you were first lady, were you drinking?" Stahl asked Ford during the 1997 interview.

"Not--well, yes, I drank. I drank wine at dinner," she replied.

Asked if she was an alcoholic at the time, Mrs. Ford told Stahl, "I could have--very easily have been an alcoholic. And I never had--Lesley, I have to say, I was fortunate because it was like I never had to, like, finish a bottle or drink alcohol in the morning. I know I was an alcoholic because I was preoccupied whether alcohol was going to be served or not."

The former president told Stahl he was a "bad enabler." "I made all kinds of excuses, made all kinds of alibis. That's a typical spouse's reaction."

Family members, who had been watering down her drinks and covering for her, could no longer ignore the fact that Betty was, to be indelicate about it, an addict and a drunk. At her daughter Susan's urgings, they held a formal intervention in 1978.

Betty Ford said she was shocked by it. "They went from one to another saying how I had let them down, how I had disappointed them. And, of course, this just was cutting to me. I was so hurt. I felt I had spent my whole life devoted to them, and they were telling me i was failing them."

"The philosophy being tough love--'We love you. We have nothing but the greatest affection and admiration, but we have to be frank with you and to tell incidents that really tore our hearts out," Mr. Ford explained.

"Susan said, 'Mother, I talked to you about things that were important to me, but you would forget what I had told you,'" Stahl remarked. "And Jack said that he didn't like to bring his friends home."

Mrs. Ford says this in-your-face confrontation hurt.

"It'll be a day we'll never forget, but let me say this very affirmatively: it was the only thing that saved Betty's life," Mr. Ford said.

A few days after the intervention, Betty turned 60, and two days later, she entered Long Beach Naval Hospital's alcohol and drug rehabilitation unit. And once again, she went public, admitting her addictions. She got sober and helped found the Betty Ford Treatment Center that has served tens of thousands of patients.

And she was not just the name on the sign - back then, when she was chairwoman of the board, she used to personally address all of the patients.

"Do you stand up there and you say, 'I'm Betty Ford, and I'm an alcoholic'?" Stahl asked.

"Yes," Mrs. Ford replied. "I'm there to talk to them and share my story."

During a tour of the facility, Mrs. Ford pointed out the separate male and female dorms. Patients are forced to live with roommates.

Mrs. Ford wanted the center to emulate the treatment she got in 1978 at Long Beach when she was assigned three roommates.

"I wanted to have a private room, believe me," she explained. "And I threatened I wouldn't stay."

After all, she had just been the first lady. But she backed down and ended up with roommates. And now at her own center everybody lives the way she did.

"It helps you hear somebody else's story," Mrs. Ford explains.

All the patients who graduate from the center are expected to attend 12-step programs like AA and Mrs. Ford herself told Stahl she meet regularly with a group of women, sometimes several times a week.

When Stahl visited the Fords, presidential portraitist Ray Kinstler was finishing a painting of Betty for the main entrance of the center, a tribute to this woman of candor who took her personal tragedies and turned them into public health initiatives.

60 Minutes was there when Mrs. Ford saw it for the first time, and we learned that her gift for honesty is as sharp as it ever was.

"It's lovely. I just expected something more mature and...," she reacted.

"You have to be the first person who's ever said to a portrait artist, 'Put some lines in my face,'" Stahl remarked.

"You know, it's generally the opposite," Kinstler said.

Asked if she has a sense why she would say something like that, Ford replied, "Well, it's from looking in the mirror every day."