Betty Ford - Later Life

Later Life

In 1987, Ford underwent quadruple coronary bypass surgery and recovered without complications.

In November 18, 1991, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H.W. Bush and a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. A Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her and her husband in 1999.

On May 8, 2003, Ford received the Woodrow Wilson Award in Los Angeles for her public service from the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution.

During these years, she and her husband resided in Rancho Mirage and in Beaver Creek, Colorado.

Gerald Ford died, age 93, at their Rancho Mirage home of heart failure on December 26, 2006. Despite her advanced age and frail physical condition, Ford traveled across the country and took part in the funeral events in California, Washington, D.C., and Michigan.

Following her husband's death, Ford continued to live in Rancho Mirage. She was the third longest-lived first lady behind Bess Truman and Lady Bird Johnson. Poor health and increasing frailty due to operations in August 2006 and April 2007 for blood clots in her legs caused her to largely curtail her public life. Her ill health prevented her from attending Johnson's funeral in July 2007; Ford's daughter Susan represented her mother at the funeral service.

Gerald and Betty Ford were the first U.S. President and First Lady to both live into their nineties. Bess Truman and Lady Bird Johnson lived into their nineties but their husbands Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson did not. Herbert Hoover and John Adams both lived into their nineties but their wives Lou Henry Hoover and Abigail Adams did not. On April 8, 2011, Ford turned 93, the same age that her late husband, President Ford reached on his last birthday, July 14, 2006. On July 6, 2011, former First Lady Nancy Reagan turned 90, and thus she and her husband, former President Ronald Reagan, joined the Fords as the second first couple to both live into their nineties.