Detroit News follow-up coverage after 2 p.m. Funeral at Grand Rapids, MI (July 14):
When Steve Ford told his mom he was an alcoholic, she didn't react like an august first lady or the founder of the Betty Ford Center that helped thousands of people deal with substance abuse.
Betty Ford reacted like a mom. She told her flabbergasted son that he was only imagining his trouble with alcohol, Steve Ford recalled during his mother's funeral Thursday. "I said, 'Mom, stop, you can't be in denial,'" Ford said to laughter from the crowd. " 'You're, like, Betty Ford. You're, like, the poster child for this thing.' "
But that's just the way she was, said other speakers. Betty Ford was just a mom, a wife, a common girl from Grand Rapids who never allowed Washington or any other vast public stage to change her, they said.
She left the public arena for the final time Thursday after the funeral at Grace Episcopal Church, where she married President Gerald Ford 63 years ago.
"Her reputation wasn't the type that needed cultivating," said Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney. "Just the mention of her name brings hopeful and good things to mind."
Among the 300 people attending the service were former President Bill Clinton, Gov. Rick Snyder, Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former first lady Barbara Bush.
Hundreds of people gathered near the church and along the route that took Ford to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, where she was buried next to her husband in a private ceremony.
During the service, historian Richard Norton Smith praised Ford for not only confronting her demons but helping others to do the same.
At a time when people hid their troubles with cancer or substance abuse, Ford bravely talked about both, said Smith. While most political wives shied away from talking politics, especially about views that differed from their husband's, Ford loudly championed women's rights and other liberal causes.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110715/METRO/107150368/Betty-Ford--A-first-lady-—-but-a-mom-first#ixzz1SAqBmMiL
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