Betty Ford

Betty Ford answered reporters' questions with a directness no First Lady before her had quite risked, telling a national television audience in 1975 that she would not be surprised if her daughter tried marijuana and that she supported the Equal Rights Amendment without qualification. The remarks, given in a candid 60 Minutes interview just months into Gerald Ford's accidental presidency, drew furious letters and a noticeable jump in her husband's approval ratings, a combination that became the pattern of her brief but outsized time in the White House. A former professional dancer who had studied under Martha Graham, she brought a performer's comfort with public exposure to a role that had rarely rewarded it.

Weeks after moving into the White House in 1974, she disclosed her breast cancer diagnosis and mastectomy publicly and in detail, at a time when the disease was rarely discussed openly at all, and the attention that followed led directly to a measurable nationwide rise in women seeking breast exams. She continued speaking plainly about women's health and reproductive rights throughout her husband's term, positions well to the left of much of his own party and delivered without the usual political hedging First Ladies had relied on for generations.

After leaving the White House, Ford spoke openly again about her reliance on alcohol and prescription painkillers, prompting a family intervention in 1978 that she credited with saving her life. In 1982 she co-founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, with former ambassador Leonard Firestone, building a treatment model, open to men and women alike, that other programs still measure themselves against. She died in 2011 at 93, having spent more years running an addiction-treatment institution than she ever spent in the White House.