Former first lady Betty Ford died Friday at the age of 93. No cause of death has been confirmed. The widow of former president Gerald Ford, Elizabeth Bloomer Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and moved to New York in the 1930s to work as a model. Her husband was appointed vice president in 1973, and then he became the unlikely 38th president upon Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. At the White House, Betty Ford was considered the most active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. But she also underwent surgery for breast cancer and later become addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs, which then forced her family to stage an intervention in 1978. After her recovery, Ford started the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California. Her husband died in 2006.
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