Betty Ford

I've read a few obituaries for Betty Ford over the last couple of weeks. I have to say, I didn't know much about her other than that she founded the famous rehab center. I was a little too young when she was First Lady to remember much about her.

But what's really stood out for me in the reading was how outspoken she was. Disagreements with her husband and his party; honesty about her children; openness about social issues of the day. It's pretty refeshing to hear someone in politics (even if she wasn't an elected politician) speak honestly -- and it certainly sounds like she spoke her mind. (And people appreciated it; apparently she herself had a 75% approval rating when her husband lost to Carter in 1976.)

But what really stuck out for me was her influence on the conversation about cancer. I know that Nixon declared a "War on Cancer" a few years before Ford took over, when he signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, and there was lots of public talk about how important it was to wipe it out in five years, etc. etc. But there still wasn't a lot of talk about people with cancer. Cancer was still something to hide, a word that only got whispered.

And Betty Ford played a part -- a pretty big part -- in changing that attitude. Less than two months after she became First Lady, Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. And, true to form, she was open about it -- after Watergate, she didn't want there to be any secrets at all in the White House. The appreciation in Time Magazine after her death quoted her a few years later as saying "When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines. But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person — maybe more." More women began doing self-examinations after she made her open announcement, which led to an increase in reported cases of breast cancer. The rise in the statistic is now called "The Betty Ford blip."

Certainly, not everything changed overnight, in terms of people's openness about cancer (especially breast cancer). It took a long time for people to speak more openly about cancer, and there are plenty of people who still cover their ears at the word. But this was obviously a big step, way back when.

And I still say that when people hide, cancer wins. It's too isolating a disease to make yourself more isolated, unnecessarily. When people know, people can help.

So thank you, Betty Ford, for your part in chnaging things.