Grand Rapids pays tribute to Betty Ford

Thousands gather to offer final respects to hometown first lady

Grand Rapids— Many people visiting the casket of former first lady Betty Ford on Wednesday had never met her, but said they felt like they had known her their entire lives.

They said they were saddened in 1974 when she talked about her breast cancer. They supported her four years later when she, again publicly, fought alcoholism.

And they winced when she unfurled her political views that were more liberal than this conservative part of Michigan was comfortable with.

But it was just Betty being Betty, they said, the nonpolitical politico’s wife, the reluctant public figure who knew only one way to talk — straight and unvarnished.

“She didn’t mince words,” said Hal Dutton, 41, of Grand Rapids, while waiting to enter the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. “She let you know how she felt.”

Ford, who died Friday at age 93, grew up in Grand Rapids, where she met the man who would become her husband and president, Gerald Ford.

As Betty Ford lay in repose in the atrium of the museum on Wednesday night, hundreds of people dropped by to pay their respects. Some clutched letters and other mementos they hoped to leave with her.

The gleaming brown mahogany casket was topped with roses of multiple colors and wreaths on both sides.

“Her life touched so many,” said Pat Kehoe, 36, of Muskegon. “She set an example that everyone could learn from.”

Outside the building, mourners filed past a driveway lined with 38 flags, honoring Gerald Ford as the 38th president. A museum sign near the driveway entrance sprouted a makeshift shrine with flowers, candles, photos, stuffed animals, letters and posters.

The notes praised Betty Ford for her support for women’s equality and her battles against cancer and alcohol.

“A strong woman you were/ while battling cancer you did endure/ to speak out only to help another/ like we were a sister or brother,” read an unsigned poem.

Ford’s body was flown to Michigan on Wednesday from Palm Desert, Calif., where services were held the day before. Former President George W. Bush, first lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former first ladies Nancy Reagan and Rosalynn Carter were among 800 people at the Tuesday service.

Residents lined the route, phone cameras poised, as the motorcade carrying the casket drove from Gerald R. Ford International Airport near Grand Rapids to the presidential museum.

Following the public viewing Wednesday and this morning, a another service will be held at Grace Episcopal Church, the East Grand Rapids church where the Fords got married. Later today, a church service will feature remarks by Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and historian Richard Norton Smith.

Ford will be interred beside her husband at the museum on what would have been Gerald Ford’s 98th birthday.

At the museum Wednesday night, mourners said they felt like they were honoring one of their own, and not just because Ford had grown up in Grand Rapids.

She was so down to earth, so lacking in pretence, that well-wishers felt as comfortable with her as they would a family member, they said.

“She was a VIP but never acted like it,” said Diane George, 58, of Cedar Springs. “I don’t think she ever lost that feeling of being a local girl.”

For Aileen Sorrell, the connection was even more personal.

Like Ford, Sorrell had a radical mastectomy after a biopsy found that a lump in her breast was malignant.

Sorrell, 55, of Kentwood said Ford’s openness in fighting cancer inspired her to overcome the sadness of what had happened to her.

“It wasn’t going to define me,” she said about cancer. “If Betty Ford can tell the world about what happened to her, I could handle it, too.”

Gov. Rick Snyder said Ford had also influenced his life.

During a brief ceremony when the casket was first brought to the museum, Snyder spoke personally as he addressed the small crowd that included Ford family members.

He said his wife, Sue, is a seven-year survivor of breast cancer and credited Ford for her early work raising awareness of the disease.

“We mourn the loss of a wonderful woman who did so many great things,” Snyder told the crowd.

Dawn Lirio, one of the first people in line at the museum, shared a connection with Ford that isn’t as well known as the first lady’s much-publicized struggles or causes.

Dawn is a dancer or, more accurately, the 12-year-old wants to become one.

And she wanted everyone to know that Ford, while growing up in Grand Rapids, dreamed about becoming a dancer.

Ford even studied under modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, but she never reached her goal.

“I would have loved to talk to her,” said Dawn, who has been taking dance classes for three years. “She would have been a good role model.”