Betty Ford To Be Honored in National First Ladies Conference

Forty years later, first ladies once again are the central focus of a conference to spur research and education into presidential spouses.

Eleanor Seagraves, Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Luci Johnson Turpin, Lynda Johnson Robb, and Susan Ford Vance during a panel session during the Modern First Ladies: Private Lives and Public Duties conference at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. April 20, 1984. (Credit: David Hume Kennerly/Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum)

Forty years ago this month, a curious crowd converged at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the first-ever national conference on American first ladies. The two-day conference, Modern First Ladies: Private Lives and Public Duties, chaired by former First Lady Betty Ford and joined by another former first lady – Rosalynn Carter – was designed to “open new doors to understanding the role of first lady, and all its advantages and disadvantages,” Ford said at the time.   

Decades later, the spirit of that historic event is having a resurgence of sorts with the announcement on Monday by the First Ladies Association for Research and …