George W. Bush and Laura Bush wrapped up a week-long trip to Africa Friday, where they visited Zambia and Botswana promoting an initiative to fight cervical cancer and breast cancer in the countries.
As part of the charity initiative the Bushes helped open medical centers providing cancer screenings, visited sick children at an orphanage, and met with Peace Corps members, according to the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
The couple returned to Texas on Friday, Bush's 66th birthday. Dozens of photos from the trip were recently released on the Center's website.
The Bushes spent Independence Day in Lusaka, Zambia at the University Teaching Hospital, announcing a new health research center. "On our country's birthday, it is important to remember the blessings of freedom and the blessings of being an American, and to give back," Bush said during remarks at the hospital, according to the website.
The $3 million women's health initiative, called Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, is a partnership between the George W. Bush Institute, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, UNAIDS and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Since leaving office the former president has turned his attention to health issues in Africa -- which he calls a "labor of love" -- raising some $85 million for cervical cancer programs, Catholic Online reported.
Zambia has the second highest number of cervical cancer cases in the world, and many of the women are also living with HIV.
"The saddest thing of all is to know a lady's life has been saved from AIDS but died from cervical cancer," Bush said in a statement announcing the health program.
During his presidency, Bush launched an initiative to fight HIV/AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa.
From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million Legal ABORTIONS occurred! Sources: Guttmacher Institute Jones RK and Kooistra, K., Abortion incidence and access to services in the United States, 2008, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2011, 43(1):41-50.
As you may have heard, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation just announced that it was reversing its decision to ban Planned Parenthood from applying for grants to cover breast cancer screenings — after a massive outcry that spread from women’s groups to social media to Capitol Hill.
The question now is what its announcement actually means.
I just got off the phone with a Komen board member, and he confirmed that the announcement does not mean that Planned Parenthood is guaranteed future grants — a demand he said would be “unfair” to impose on Komen.
He also said the job of the group’s controversial director, Nancy Brinker, is safe, as far as the board is concerned.
As some were quick to point out, the statement put out by Komen doesn’t really clarify whether Planned Parenthood will actually continue to get money from the group. The original rationale for barring Planned Parenthood was that it was under investigation (a witch-hunt probe undertaken by GOP Rep Cliff Stearns).
Komen said today that the group would “amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”
Does that mean Planned Parenthood will get Komen grants in the future?
I asked Komen board member John Raffaelli to respond to those who are now saying that the announcement doesn’t necessarily constitute a reversal until Planned Parenthood actually sees more funding.
He insisted it would be unfair to expect the group to commit to future grants.
“It would be highly unfair to ask us to commit to any organization that doesn’t go through a grant process that shows that the money we raise is used to carry out our mission,” Raffaelli told me. “We’re a humaniatrian organization.
We have a mission. Tell me you can help carry out our mission and we will sit down at the table.”
Pushed on whether this means the new announcement wasn’t really a reversal, Raffaelli pushed back, arguing that Komen, in response to all the criticism, had removed politics from the grant-making process. “Is it really unclear that we’re changing the policy to address criticism?” he said.
Others have pointed out that Komen’s handling of this issue should lead to skepticism of its announcement. Brinker had repeatedly said Komen’s funding decision was rooted in a larger policy change and wasn’t directed at Planned Parenthood in particular, suggesting the decision wasn’t related to the fact that Planned Parenthood was under assault by the GOP.
This was contradicted by at least one account. More broadly, the group’s rationale for the decision shifted over the last week.
Pressed on whether Brinker had been forthcoming, Raffaelli insisted: “Nancy was not trying to mislead anyone.”
Asked if there would be an internal look at how Brinker handled the episode, Raffaelli only said there would be some kind of general look at how to prevent the politicization of grant-making in the future.
Raffaelli blamed himself for the failure to handle the politics of this mess adequately, and stressed that Brinker’s career had been devoted to breast cancer prevention, and not politics.
Asked if Brinker’s job was safe, Raffaelli said: “Yes.” He added that the board “unequivocally” stood behind her.
Though Komen had hoped today’s announcement would defuse the politics of this fight, it seems plausible that pressure from both sides will only continue.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation has just released a new statement from CEO Nancy Brinker. The first line is a mea culpa: “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”
But what does this mea culpa mean?
Brinker goes on to make clear that they will amend their guidelines so only “criminal and conclusive” investigations affect their funding decisions.
They will ensure that “politics has no place in our grant process,” and they will “continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”
So they are, perhaps, backing down. Or perhaps not. Yesterday, the Komen Foundation said the investigation was not the cause of their reduced support for Planned Parenthood, and that the real issue was that Planned Parenthood did not directly provide mammograms. This statement doesn’t address that concern at all.
So it would appear to leave open the possibility that the foundation intends to reject Planned Parenthood’s future grant applications — albeit on less overtly political grounds.
I posed these questions to Leslie Aun, vice president for communications at the Komen Foundation. “I think our statement speaks for itself,” she replied. You can be the judge of that. The statement follows in full:
Statement from Susan G. Komen Board of Directors and Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker:
We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.
The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen.
We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.
Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation.
We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.
That is what is right and fair.
Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer.
Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process.
We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.
It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women.
We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.
Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work.
We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.
We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation has just released a new statement from CEO Nancy Brinker. The first line is a mea culpa: “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”
But what does this mea culpa mean?
Brinker goes on to make clear that they will amend their guidelines so only “criminal and conclusive” investigations affect their funding decisions.
They will ensure that “politics has no place in our grant process,” and they will “continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”
So they are, perhaps, backing down. Or perhaps not. Yesterday, the Komen Foundation said the investigation was not the cause of their reduced support for Planned Parenthood, and that the real issue was that Planned Parenthood did not directly provide mammograms. This statement doesn’t address that concern at all.
So it would appear to leave open the possibility that the foundation intends to reject Planned Parenthood’s future grant applications — albeit on less overtly political grounds.
I posed these questions to Leslie Aun, vice president for communications at the Komen Foundation. “I think our statement speaks for itself,” she replied. You can be the judge of that. The statement follows in full:
Statement from Susan G. Komen Board of Directors and Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker:
We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.
The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen.
We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.
Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation.
We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.
That is what is right and fair.
Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer.
Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process.
We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.
It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women.
We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.
Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work.
We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.
We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation revealed Tuesday it was cutting funds to Planned Parenthood, sparking an outcry from abortion rights advocates blaming “political pressure” and praise from an anti-abortion group.
The major breast cancer research group cut funds to the prominent family planning organization after Planned Parenthood has come under increasing scrutiny from Congress over how it provides abortion services.
The Komen Foundation gave few details on the reasons behind the decision, attributing the announcement to "changes in priorities and policies" and the need to "most fully advance [its] mission."
"It is critical to underscore that the women we serve in communities remain our priority. We are working directly with Komen Affiliates to ensure there is no interruption or gaps in services for women who need breast health screening and services,” the group said in a statement.
The Komen Foundation did not respond to repeated requests for more information about the decision.
Nancy Brinker, the founder and CEO of the Komen Foundation, was a political appointee of the George W. Bush Administration, in which she served as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary and as Chief of Protocol. Susan G. Komen was Brinker's sister.
Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, was clearly disappointed with the foundation's decision.
"We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.
Planned Parenthood said funding from the Komen Foundation has largely paid for breast exams at local centers. In the last five years, grants from the group have directly supported 170,000 screenings, comprising about 4% of the total exams performed at Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide, according to the group.
The family planning organization announced a recent "emergency fund" from a different group, the Amy and Lee Fikes' Foundation, that will go towards making up for lost funds from Komen. The gift totaled $250,000.
Planned Parenthood said Komen began notifying local affiliates recently that their breast cancer initiatives would not be eligible for new grants. In a statement, the group said the foundation's leadership did not respond to requests to meet with Planned Parenthood officials about the decision.
In September, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce began an investigation of Planned Parenthood over the organization's "compliance with federal restrictions on funding abortions."
In a letter sent to Planed Parenthood, the committee asked the group to provide information on how it segregates family planning from abortion services, as well as its policies on reporting cases of sexual abuse, rape and sex trafficking.
The committee, chaired by Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns, also asked for all internal audit reports from 1998 to 2010.
Funding for Planned Parenthood came under the spotlight in April, when a GOP push to strip $317 million in federal funding for the group failed in an eleventh hour budget deal to avoid a government shutdown.
Reacting to the news Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington pointed to the House investigation as the cause behind Komen's decision, saying in a statement she was "extremely disappointed that politics is once again coming between women and their health care needs."
Democratic Rep. Mike Honda of California also sharply criticized the moved and called on the Komen foundation to reconsider its decision.
"This is just the latest casualty in a misguided and harmful campaign started by House Republicans to demonize the life-saving health services delivered by Planned Parenthood health centers," Honda said in a statement.
But the decision was applauded by some in the anti-abortion community, which has long called for the dismantling of Planned Parenthood.
Tony Perkins, a major social conservative leader who heads the Family Research Council, quickly praised the Komen Foundation's decision Tuesday as “good news” for women seeking help with breast cancer, as well as for the “lives of many unborn babies.”
"Susan G. Komen can chose to stop subsidizing the abortion giant, surely Congress can redirect its resources to those helping women, not making a profit off the lives of unborn children," Perkins said in a statement.
Michelle Obama and three former first ladies were among dignitaries heading to California to pay tribute to Betty Ford at a funeral focusing on her twin passions: politics and her world famous Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and alcohol treatment.
Ford, who died at the age of 93 on Friday, had mapped out plans for Tuesday's ceremony including who would deliver her eulogies.
She chose former first lady Rosalynn Carter and journalist Cokie Roberts as speakers along with a former director of the Betty Ford Center.
Obama, Nancy Reagan, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton said they would be there. And the former first lady of California, Maria Shriver, also planned to attend.
A spokesman for former President George W. Bush said he will be attending the California service and will convey condolences on behalf of his wife, Laura, who can't attend.
A second funeral will be held Thursday in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Gerald Ford is buried at his presidential museum. Former first lady Barbara Bush is expected to attend that event.
Speakers are expected to discuss politics, the White House and Ford's impact on substance and alcohol abuse treatment.
Roberts said Ford asked her to give a eulogy five years ago and specified it should be about the power of friendship to mend political differences even in these hyper-partisan times.
Roberts, a commentator on National Public Radio and member of a noted political family, said Ford asked her to talk about a time in Washington when Democrats and Republicans could be friends and partisan politics did not paralyze government.
It was that way, Roberts said, when her father, Democratic Congressman Hale Boggs, was House majority leader and Republican Gerald R. Ford was House minority leader. She said they could argue about issues but get together as friends afterward. The two families became close as did the Ford and Carter families, despite Jimmy Carter defeating Ford in the 1976 presidential election.
Carter spoke at Ford's funeral in 2007. The two families were so close that before his death, Ford asked the Carters to join his wife aboard Air Force One, which flew his body to its final resting place in Grand Rapids.
"Mrs. Ford was very clear about what she wanted me to say," Roberts said. "She wanted me to talk about Washington the way it used to be. She knew there were people back then who were wildly partisan, but not as many as today.
"They were friends and that was what made government possible," said Roberts, adding that the topic seems particularly appropriate this week when the two parties are divided over dealing with the national debt ceiling.
Roberts said she expects Rosalynn Carter to talk about life in the White House and the important role of first ladies in "greasing the wheels" for their husbands' accomplishments by forging bipartisan friendships.
Former Betty Ford Center official Geoffrey Mason will also speak. Mason, a former member of the center's board of directors, is expected to extoll Ford's vision and determination in building a substance abuse and alcohol treatment center after her own recovery.
Ford's funeral will be similar to the final tributes for her husband.
The ceremony, to be held at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, is billed as a private affair but it will be televised.
Following the funeral, members of the public will be invited to file past her casket and sign a guest book until midnight.
On Wednesday, her body will be flown to Grand Rapids where another church service Thursday will feature remarks by Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and historian Richard Norton Smith.
Later Thursday, her body will be interred at the presidential museum along with her husband on the day that would have been Gerald Ford's 98th birthday.
Betty Ford, the outspoken and much-admired wife of President Gerald R. Ford who overcame alcoholism and an addiction to pills and helped found one of the best-known rehabilitation centers in the nation, died Friday in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 93.
Her death was confirmed by Chris Chase, Mrs. Ford’s biographer.
The news of her death at Eisenhower Medical Center brought statements of condolence from President Obama, former Presidents George Bush, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, and Nancy Reagan, the former first lady.
“She was Jerry Ford’s strength through some very difficult days in our country’s history,” Mrs. Reagan said, “and I admired her courage in facing and sharing her personal struggles with all of us.”
Few first ladies have been as popular as Betty Ford, and it was her frankness and lack of pretense that made her so. She spoke often in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, endorsed legalized abortion, discussed premarital sex and revealed that she intended to share a bed with her husband in the White House.
When her husband’s voice failed him the morning after he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976, it was she who read the official concession statement with smiling grace. And when Mr. Ford died in December 2006, it was Mrs. Ford who announced his death. The six days of national mourning returned her to a spotlight she had tried to avoid in her later years, living in Rancho Mirage, Calif., a golf community southeast of Palm Springs, and tending to her clinic there, the Betty Ford Center.
The country’s affection for Betty Ford transcended party lines. It began in earnest slightly more than two months after Gerald Ford became president in August 1974, following President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation over Watergate. Mr. Ford had been vice president for less than 10 months, named by Nixon to succeed Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned in disgrace over accusations of bribery and tax evasion. On Sept. 28, 1974, Mrs. Ford had a radical mastectomy after doctors discovered cancer in her right breast.
Courage Against Cancer
Within days, 10,000 letters, more than 500 telephone calls, more than 200 telegrams and scores of floral arrangements poured into the White House and into her suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In the months that followed, tens of thousands of American women, inspired by Mrs. Ford’s forthrightness and courage in facing her illness, crowded into doctors’ offices and clinics for breast-cancer examinations.
After leaving the hospital, Mrs. Ford underwent chemotherapy treatment for two years. In November 1976, her physician announced that she had made a complete recovery.
Mrs. Ford was once asked if she felt sorry for herself during the trauma of losing her breast.
“No! Oh, no — heavens, no,” she replied. “I’ve heard women say they’d rather lose their right arm, and I can’t imagine it. It’s so stupid. I can even wear my evening clothes.”
She advised women facing such an operation to “go as quickly as possible and get it done.”
“Once it’s done,” she said, “put it behind you and go on with your life.”
Breast cancer was only one of the medical battles Mrs. Ford won.
Confronting Addiction
Her dependency on pills began in 1964 with a medical prescription to relieve constant pain from a neck injury and a pinched nerve. Her drinking, which became troublesome as she was faced with her husband’s frequent absences on political business, grew increasingly serious as Mr. Ford’s Congressional career advanced. Her loneliness was compounded by low self-esteem and a debilitating self-consciousness about things like her lack of a college degree.
“Now I know that some of the pain I was trying to wipe out was emotional,” she recalled in “Betty: A Glad Awakening” (1987), the second volume of her autobiography written with Ms. Chase. Going back to the days when her husband was a Michigan congressman and minority leader in the House of Representatives, she remembered that “on one hand, I loved being ‘the wife of’; on the other hand, I was convinced that the more important Jerry became, the less important I became.”
In 1978, the year after leaving the White House, her husband, children, doctors and several friends confronted her about her drinking and her abuse of pills. She refused to acknowledge that a problem existed, calling her family “a bunch of monsters,” but she eventually entered the Long Beach Naval Hospital in California for treatment.
The Betty Ford Center, dedicated on Oct. 3, 1982, was a direct result of Mrs. Ford’s victory over her alcoholism and addiction. Set on 14 acres on the campus of the Eisenhower Medical Center 11 miles southeast of Palm Springs, the center was a nonprofit venture spearheaded by Mrs. Ford and Leonard K. Firestone, an industrialist and former ambassador to Belgium who raised a major part of the money.
The center’s philosophy, drawn from the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, is based on peer interaction and learning to identify and express feelings. Many celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Mary Tyler Moore, Mickey Mantle and Darryl Strawberry, spent time there.
“It’s hard to make anyone understand what it’s like to have your name on something, to be given credit for things you haven’t done,” Mrs. Ford wrote. “I’ve been at meetings where someone turned and thanked me, and I hugged the person and said, ‘Don’t thank me, thank yourself, you’re the one who did it, with God’s help.’ From the beginning, we have wanted every patient at the center to feel, ‘I’m important here, I have some dignity.’ ”
Betty Ford was good at doing the things that every first lady does: accompanying her husband on tours and public ceremonies and holding dinners and parties. Her parties usually lasted past midnight as she danced from one partner to another.
But unlike many other wives of presidents, Mrs. Ford rarely hesitated to make public her views on touchy subjects. She held a White House news conference announcing her support of the Equal Rights Amendment; the mail response ran three to one against her. In 1975, appearing on “60 Minutes,” she said she “wouldn’t be surprised” if her daughter, Susan, had a premarital affair; the mail was four to one against her. Her husband jokingly told her later that the comment had cost him 20 million votes in the 1976 election, she said.
A decade later, reminiscing with Margaret Truman for Ms. Truman’s book “First Ladies,” she voiced regret over that television appearance. Later that year, despite her advocacy for abortion rights, she reined herself in. She said nothing about the Republican platform that called for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.
She also told Ms. Truman that she had warned her husband not to pardon Nixon, a more definitive statement than one she made in “The Times of My Life” (1978), the first volume of Mrs. Ford’s autobiography. In that book she said she had known that a pardon would be unpopular but that she had supported it anyway.
“I think it had to be done,” she wrote. Nevertheless, she said, she believed it cost her husband the election.
Mrs. Ford said she had been influential in President Ford’s appointments of Carla Hills as secretary of housing and urban development and Anne Armstrong as ambassador to Britain. She was unsuccessful, however, in urging him to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court.
She was, in her own words, “more of a hawk” than her children on the war in Vietnam. Although she said she believed men and women should give two years of service to the country, she confessed she was “very relieved” when her sons drew high draft-lottery numbers.
A Relaxed White House
Mrs. Ford brought a relaxed touch to the White House within days of moving in. She asked why the staff never returned a greeting and was told that President Nixon and the first lady, Pat Nixon, had preferred them to be as silent and invisible as possible. An immediate change went into effect, to the degree that during family meals the president and the butler compared golf scores. And when Mrs. Ford returned from her mastectomy, the staff lined up with signs reading, “We love you, Betty.”
Later, when she was no longer first lady, she was criticized in some circles for having a facelift almost immediately after overcoming her addictions. She wanted, she said, a fresh new face for her new life. She later thought that some of the resentment stemmed from the fact that she could no longer be perceived as a victim — of cancer, drugs and drink. “It was easier to be sorry for me, to feel superior to me, and therefore to root for me,” she said. “We all like to cheer an underdog. But I’d stopped being an underdog; I’d gotten myself in hand.”
Elizabeth Anne Bloomer was born on April 8, 1918, in Chicago to William S. Bloomer and the former Hortense Neahr. She always wanted to be called Elizabeth but ended up with Betty, Bet or Bets. She was the youngest child and the only girl in a family of three children. Her father was a traveling salesman in conveyor belts for factories. The family moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., when she was 2.
The Bloomers were financially comfortable, lived in a fashionable area and spent summers at Whitefish Lake. She began dancing lessons when she was 8, and for two summers after graduation from high school she attended Bennington School of the Dance at Bennington College in Vermont. At 14, she was confirmed as an Episcopalian (her mother’s religion; her father was a Christian Scientist) and began working on Saturdays, for $3, as a model for Herpolsheimer’s department store.
At 20, she was in New York, living on the fringes of Greenwich Village and attending dance classes with Martha Graham. She also joined her troupe.
Dance was always a major interest, and Mrs. Ford said many times that she was disappointed that she had never been quite good enough to be a first-rate dancer. When she went to China with her husband in 1975, however, she enchanted the Chinese by kicking off her shoes and dancing in her stocking feet at a Beijing school.
Her mother persuaded her to return to Grand Rapids in 1941, but not before she had modeled on Seventh Avenue and for the John Robert Powers modeling agency. Back home, she became a fashion coordinator for the store in which she had been a teenage model. In her spare time, she taught dance to underprivileged and disabled children.
The following year, she married William C. Warren, a furniture dealer. The marriage ended in divorce in 1947, and she did not ask for alimony. When Mr. Ford became vice president and his wife’s first marriage was disclosed, Mrs. Ford was asked why she had kept it a secret. She hadn’t, she said: “No one ever bothered to ask.”
Some months after her divorce, she began dating Gerald R. Ford, a lawyer with political ambitions and a man she described as “probably the most eligible bachelor in Grand Rapids.” He proposed in February 1948. “He’s a very shy man and he really didn’t tell me he loved me,” she wrote. “He just told me he’d like to marry me — I took him up on it immediately.”
They were married on Oct. 15, 1948, while he was running his first race for a seat in the House. The ceremony took place on a Friday so that Mr. Ford’s plans to go to a Northwestern-Michigan football game the following day would not be disrupted. (He had played center for Michigan.) The groom was 35; the bride, 30. They spent their two-day honeymoon at Republican Party rallies.
Mr. Ford won the election. “We came to Washington for 2 years and stayed for 28,” Mrs. Ford said. Their first son, Michael, was born in 1950 while the Fords lived in an apartment in Georgetown. By 1952, when John, known as Jack, was born, they had moved to an apartment in suburban Northern Virginia. Steven was born in 1956, a year after the Fords’ split-level house in Alexandria, Va., was completed. Susan, their only daughter, came along the next year.
“From the outside, our life looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration,” Mrs. Ford said at one point. Nevertheless, by 1962, she was seeing a psychiatrist twice a week because, as she put it, “I’d lost my feeling of self-worth.”
“I think a lot of women go through this,” she said. “Their husbands have fascinating jobs, their children start to turn into independent people and the women begin to feel useless, empty.”
Later, when she accompanied her husband on campaign trips more frequently, she acknowledged that that, too, was not all fun. At one point, she recalled, she was in an airport and “through clenched teeth said: ‘I don’t want anyone to come over and talk to me. I just want to sit here all alone and finish this cigarette.’ ”
Shortly after leaving the White House, the Fords built a 15-room house bordering the 13th fairway of the Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage. The couple also acquired a second home, an elaborate ski lodge in Vail, Colo. Mrs. Ford remained active in the Betty Ford Center and in feminist causes.
In addition to her four children, she is also survived by seven grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
“I am an ordinary woman who was called onstage at an extraordinary time,” she wrote in the prologue to her first autobiography. “I was no different once I became first lady than I had been before. But through an accident of history, I had become interesting to people.”
If you're confused because your Facebook News Feed is filled with women saying that they "like it on" the floor or the kitchen counter, you're not alone. It's all part of a new Internet meme that has gone viral on Facebook to raise awareness for breast cancer.
First things first, though: These women are actually referring to where they like to place their purses, not to their favorite places to make love. Of course, part of the reason this meme has gone viral is due to its heavy sexual connotations.
The reason for all of these "I like it on" status updates is simple: October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of women are using this meme as a rallying cry to raise awareness for cancer research.
The status updates naturally get their friends to ask them about their commentary, which is exactly the point of this meme.
Like any social platform, Facebook is susceptible to rapidly spreading memes. In January bra color status updates started dominating newsfeeds worldwide, again to raise awareness for breast cancer.
While we don't know where the campaign originated from, it's cute, fun and generating some buzz (especially useful, as the commenters point out, for getting women to go in for their medical examinations).
Still, we can't forget that this is a disease that will kill 10 million women in the next 25 years, so we also implore you to donate to breast cancer research if you can.
Valerie Jarrett discusses Obama's Job Summit. She also defends the Obama White House's decision not to allow Social Secretary Desiree Rogers to testify on Capitol Hill.
Desiree Rogers described herself as "giddy with excitement" when she was picked as social secretary for the new Obama White House.
"This is the perfect combination of some of the skill sets that I have," she told the Tribune at the time. "I don't think it can get much better than this."
But a year and one gaffe-plagued state dinner later, it could be a lot better for Rogers. The former head of the Illinois Lottery and Peoples Gas now finds herself in the Washington political cross hairs after a security lapse that allowed gate-crashers into last week's White House gala for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The Secret Service has assumed the lion's share of blame, but a key Republican is threatening to subpoena Rogers over questions of whether her office ignored protocol for such events and may have contributed to the breach. Partisanship aside, the incident has also focused an unwanted spotlight on Rogers, whose position is designed to raise the profile of the first family -- not their social secretary.
The 50-year-old Rogers, a friend of President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, has shown a flair for personal publicity in what tends to be a low-profile position. She has been featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair and boasted of the marketing potential of "the Obama brand."
That has raised eyebrows in Washington, the nation's center of power, cattiness and long knives, where some dismiss her as an imperious fashion plate.
Walter Scheib, the top chef at the executive mansion for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said that from his first day on the job it was made clear that top staffers were supposed to remain in the background.
"What has occurred is unfortunate on so many levels: the president, the first lady and our guests of state were in danger," Scheib said. "It's a fact. Folks who work at the White House, their one and only job is to guarantee the safety and be of service to the first family and the president."
Rogers, a one-time Republican once considered as running mate for former Gov. George Ryan, is no stranger to controversy or adversity.
Six years ago she survived a bout with breast cancer.
When Rogers was president of Peoples from 2004 to 2008, the utility was sued by the city and state for "massive fraud" linked to the Enron scandal that allegedly led to widespread customer overcharges. The scheme predated Rogers' term at the company's helm, but stonewalling of the investigation allegedly continued after she took over. Peoples agreed to a record $196 million in refunds.
On Thursday, the White House made it clear that it was standing by Rogers. She's "not curling up in a ball," said a White House official, terming it "unfortunate" that problems at the Singh dinner had overshadowed Rogers' success in arranging 170 parties and social events without a hitch. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Rogers has made herself available to the media largely to accommodate heavy interest in her role as the first African-American to be White House social secretary.
A similar message came from her ex-husband, Chicago financier and Obama fundraiser John Rogers Jr., who has spoken to her in recent days. "It's out of the question that she won't survive this," he said. "She's at the top of her game. She's busy with planning all the Christmas parties at the White House."
Divorced for a decade, Desiree and John Rogers have one daughter, a student at Yale University.
A native of New Orleans, Desiree Rogers came to Chicago by way of Wellesley College, a Harvard MBA and a job in operations at AT&T. After marrying John Rogers, founder of multibillion-dollar Ariel Capital Management, she managed newsstand operations for the Levy Corp. and ran a firm that operated museum retail stores.
Republicans are hardly known for their success with black voters, but Jim Edgar proved an exception when elected governor in 1990. He recruited minorities and women for top positions. And Rogers became Illinois' lottery director.
She had other GOP links as well. John Rogers' mother, Jewel LaFontant-Mankarious, was deputy solicitor general in the Nixon administration and an ambassador-at-large under President George H.W. Bush. In 1992, Desiree Rogers was an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention.
At the lottery, Rogers earned a reputation as driven and self-confident. She launched new games and gained celebrity appearing often on television as the face of the lottery. In 1997, she joined Peoples Gas.
Rogers left Peoples last year, briefly working on a social networking initiative for Allstate Insurance before joining the Obama administration.
White House observers said it's rare for social secretaries to actually take a seat at a state dinner, as Rogers did. She posed for the cameras when entering the White House on the night of Nov. 24. "We are very excited," she said. "Everything looks great."
Sticklers for protocol said even her speaking in the first person -- rather than speaking for the Obamas -- was a faux pas.
Rogers, though, has won admirers. Hair stylist Ron Clemente remembers last spring when she came into a Georgetown salon where she has had her nails done, and gave employees tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll.
His take? "She is fabulous in every direction, very stylish without being overdone, very sophisticated without being overbearing. Approachable."
White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers came under attack after a Virginia couple crashed President Obama's first state dinner, but her friends and colleagues are fighting back.
People close to Rogers strongly dispute the emerging caricature of her as a spotlight-seeking diva who invited herself to the dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and skirted her responsibilities while she was there.
A source with knowledge of the evening's events tells the Huffington Post that, other than about five minutes "to pick at her salad," Rogers spent the entire evening coordinating and working the event. She was spotted and photographed in the rope line preceding the dinner, but the source said that was only after completing frantic, last-second planning for the high-profile affair.
Prepping all day on Tuesday, she changed into her outfit just 30 minutes before the state dinner started, the source added. And she was "shadowing" the president and first lady at a separate private reception for roughly 20 people shortly after arriving.
"What are the odds she was going to be lackadaisical at the biggest moment of her life?" the source asked. "Zero. That's why these stories don't make any sense. Her reputation is at stake."
The source spoke in defense of Rogers because the social secretary had been told not to speak to the press. "I think the way it is being characterize and the way it is coming off that she is too big a personality for the White House, it just doesn't make sense," the source said.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was peppered with questions about Rogers's performance and capacity for the job. One questioner asked whether there was concern within the administration that Rogers was too high-profile for the post. "What about the issues of her being in fashion spreads early on in the administration? Did you put the brakes on that?" Gibbs dismissed those questions.
Still, questions over how the Virginia couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, skirted security and reached the president unimpeded persist. And while Rogers may have been an active presence at the dinner, members of the press and lawmakers on the Hill are demanding more information about the role her office played in helping enforce security that evening.
Rogers has declined to testify before Congress about her role in planning the event and staffing officials at security locations. Gibbs cited the separation of powers and a history of White House staff not testifying before Congress for that decision.
Appearing on ABC News on Thursday, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of Rogers, concluded that the White House had now "answered the questions fully."
The White House has, since the snafu, implemented a new policy that would require that a White House staffer be dispatched to each entrance during such high-profiled affairs.
Sebelius: "Keep doing what you’ve been doing". After days of concern, criticism and controversy over the new breast cancer guidelines, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says women should keep doing what they’ve been doing. NBC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, weighs in.
A member of the independent panel whose new mammogram recommendations have led to confusion defended the task force's report, saying Thursday that it was based on the most up-to-date, accurate information available.
Dr. Timothy Wilt, a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, stuck by its recommendation that most women don't need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50. The American Cancer Society's long-standing position has been that women should get annual cancer-screening mammograms starting at age 40.
The panel's recommendations "were based on the most rigorous peer review of up-to-date, accurate information about the evidence about the harms and benefits of treatment," Wilt said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to ease the furor that has erupted since the panel issued its recommendations Monday. She said the task force does "not set federal policy and they don't determine what services are covered by the federal government." She advised women to "keep doing what you've been doing for years — talk to your doctor about your individual history, ask questions, and make the decision that is right for you."
Wilt did not take issue with Sebelius' statement. "Our recommendations support an individualized decision-making process," he said, and each woman still needs to talk with her doctor to make the most informed decision.
The recommendations from the task force have left women confused about whose advice to follow. And opponents of changing health care policy have criticized the new recommendations as an example of what could be expected from government-managed care.
Wilt denied accusations that the recommendations were made to help the government spend less on mammograms.
"Costs are not considered at all," he said.
The panel of doctors and scientists concluded that such early and frequent screenings often lead to false alarms and unneeded biopsies, without substantially improving odds of survival for women under 50.
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