Betty Ford wanted talk of politics at funeral

LINDA DEUTSCH, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former first lady Betty Ford, always known for her take charge attitude, chose the people who will eulogize her and the subjects they would discuss, focusing on the power of friendship to mend political differences even in these hyper-partisan times.

Ford, who died on Friday at 93, chose former first lady Rosalynn Carter and journalist Cokie Roberts from the political realm and a former director of her Betty Ford Center to address her passion for helping others overcome substance and alcohol abuse.

First lady Michelle Obama will also be attending along with former first ladies, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Laura Bush will not go due to longstanding travel plans that she couldn't break, but former President George W. Bush will be in attendance, his spokesman Freddy Ford said.

Roberts, a commentator on National Public Radio and member of a noted political family, said Ford asked her five years ago to talk about a time in Washington when Democrats and Republicans were friends and partisan politics did not paralyze government.

Ford's instructions for her eulogy pointed to the strong friendship that developed when her husband, Republican Gerald R. Ford, was House minority leader and Roberts' father, Democratic Congressman Hale Boggs, was majority leader.

"Mrs. Ford was very clear about what she wanted me to say," Roberts said. "She wanted me to talk about Washington the way it used to be. She knew there were people back then who were wildly partisan, but not as many as today.

"They were friends and that was what made government possible," said Roberts, adding that the topic seems particularly appropriate this week when the two parties are divided over dealing with the debt ceiling.

Another speaker at Tuesday's funeral in Palm Desert who is symbolic of the bipartisan past will be Mrs. Carter. She and President Jimmy Carter became close friends with the Fords after Carter defeated Gerald Ford for the presidency in 1976.

Carter, the former president, spoke of their friendship at President Ford's funeral in 2007.

The two families were so close that before his death, Ford asked the Carters to join his wife aboard Air Force One, which flew his body to its final resting place in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Roberts said she expects Mrs. Carter to talk about life in the White House and the important role of first ladies in "greasing the wheels" for their husbands' accomplishments by forging bipartisan friendships.

Among the notable guests will be former California first lady Maria Shriver as well as former President Bill Clinton. The four Ford children will attend both this ceremony and another in Grand Rapids, Mich. on Thursday.

Alongside Carter and Ford as speakers will be former Betty Ford Center official Geoffrey Mason.

Mason, a former member of the center's board of directors, is expected to extoll Mrs. Ford's vision and determination in building a substance abuse and alcohol treatment center after her own recovery.

Ford's funeral will be similar to the final tributes for her husband. The ceremony, to be held at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, is billed as a private affair. Many luminaries are due but a full guest list was immediately available.

Following the funeral, members of the public will be invited to file past her casket and sign a guest book until midnight.

On Wednesday, her body will be flown to Grand Rapids where her husband is interred at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum. At another church service Thursday, Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and historian Richard Norton Smith will eulogize her. Barbara Bush will also be in attendance.

Later Thursday, her body will be interred at the museum on the day that would have been Gerald Ford's 98th birthday.

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Associated Press writer Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.
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CONNIE CASS, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty Ford said things that first ladies just don't say, even today. And 1970s America loved her for it.

According to Mrs. Ford, her young adult children probably had smoked marijuana — and if she were their age, she'd try it, too. She told "60 Minutes" she wouldn't be surprised to learn that her youngest, 18-year-old Susan, was in a sexual relationship (an embarrassed Susan issued a denial).

She mused that living together before marriage might be wise, thought women should be drafted into the military if men were, and spoke up unapologetically for abortion rights, taking a position contrary to the president's. "Having babies is a blessing, not a duty," Mrs. Ford said.

The former first lady, whose triumph over drug and alcohol addiction became a beacon of hope for addicts and the inspiration for her Betty Ford Center in California, died at age 93, family friend Marty Allen said.

Family spokeswoman Barbara Lewandrowski said Betty Ford died Friday at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. Other details of her death were not immediately available.

"She was a wonderful wife and mother; a great friend; and a courageous First Lady," former President George H.W. Bush said in a statement on Friday. "No one confronted life's struggles with more fortitude or honesty, and as a result, we all learned from the challenges she faced."

While her husband served as president, Betty Ford's comments weren't the kind of genteel, innocuous talk expected from a first lady, and a Republican one no less. Her unscripted comments sparked tempests in the press and dismayed President Gerald Ford's advisers, who were trying to soothe the national psyche after Watergate. But to the scandal-scarred, Vietnam-wearied, hippie-rattled nation, Mrs. Ford's openness was refreshing.

Candor worked for Betty Ford, again and again. She would build an enduring legacy by opening up the toughest times of her life as public example.

In an era when cancer was discussed in hushed tones and mastectomy was still a taboo subject, the first lady shared the specifics of her breast cancer surgery. The publicity helped bring the disease into the open and inspired countless women to seek breast examinations.

Her most painful revelation came 15 months after leaving the White House, when Mrs. Ford

announced that she was entering treatment for a longtime addiction to painkillers and alcohol. It turned out the famously forthcoming first lady had been keeping a secret, even from herself.

She used the unvarnished story of her own descent and recovery to crusade for better addiction treatment, especially for women. She co-founded the nonprofit Betty Ford Center near the Fords' home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in 1982. Mrs. Ford raised millions of dollars for the center, kept close watch over its operations, and regularly welcomed groups of new patients with a speech that started, "Hello, my name's Betty Ford, and I'm an alcoholic and drug addict."

Although most famous for a string of celebrity patients over the years — from Elizabeth Taylor and Johnny Cash to Lindsay Lohan — the center keeps its rates relatively affordable and has served more than 90,000 people.

"People who get well often say, 'You saved my life,' and 'You've turned my life around,'" Mrs. Ford once said. "They don't realize we merely provided the means for them to do it themselves, and that's all."

In a statement Friday, President Barack Obama said the Betty Ford Center would honor Mrs. Ford's legacy "by giving countless Americans a new lease on life."

"As our nation's First Lady, she was a powerful advocate for women's health and women's rights," the president said. "After leaving the White House, Mrs. Ford helped reduce the social stigma surrounding addiction and inspired thousands to seek much-needed treatment."

Mrs. Ford was a free spirit from the start. Elizabeth Bloomer, born April 8, 1918, fell in love with dance as a girl in Grand Rapids, Mich., and decided it would be her life. At 20, despite her mother's misgivings, she moved to New York to learn from her idol Martha Graham. She lived in Greenwich Village, worked as a model, and performed at Carnegie Hall in Graham's modern dance ensemble. "I thought I had arrived," she later recalled.

But her mother coaxed her back to Grand Rapids, where Betty worked as a dance teacher and store fashion coordinator and married William Warren, a friend from school days. He was a salesman who traveled frequently; she was unhappy. They lasted five years.

While waiting for her divorce to become final, she met and began dating, as she put it in her memoir, "probably the most eligible bachelor in Grand Rapids" — former college football star, Navy veteran and lawyer Jerry Ford. They would be married for 58 years, until his death in December 2006.

When he proposed, she didn't know about his political ambitions; when he launched his bid for Congress during their engagement, she figured he couldn't win.

Two weeks after their October 1948 wedding, her husband was elected to his first term in the House. He would serve 25 years, rising to minority leader.

Mrs. Ford was thrust into a role she found exhausting and unfulfilling: political housewife. While her husband campaigned for weeks at a time or worked late on Capitol Hill, she raised their four children: Michael, Jack, Steven and Susan. She arranged luncheons for congressional wives, helped with her husband's campaigns, became a Cub Scout den mother, taught Sunday school.

A pinched nerve in her neck in 1964, followed by the onset of severe osteoarthritis, led her to an assortment of prescription drugs that never fully relieved the pain. For years she had been what she later called "a controlled drinker, no binges." Now she began mixing pills and alcohol. Feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated, she suffered an emotional breakdown that led to weekly visits with a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist didn't take note of her drinking but instead tried to build her self-esteem: "He said I had to start thinking I was valuable, not just as a wife and mother, but as myself."

The White House would give her that gift.

In 1973, as Mrs. Ford was happily anticipating her husband's retirement from politics, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced out of office over bribery charges. President Richard Nixon turned to Gerald Ford to fill the office.

Less than a year later, his presidency consumed by the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned. On Aug. 9, 1974, Gerald Ford was sworn in as the only chief executive in American history who hadn't been elected either president or vice president.

Mrs. Ford wrote of her sudden ascent to first lady: "It was like going to a party you're terrified of, and finding out to your amazement that you're having a good time."

She was 56 when she moved into the White House, and looked more matronly than mod. Ever gracious, her chestnut hair carefully coifed into a soft bouffant, she tended to speak softly and slowly, even when taking a feminist stand.

Her breast cancer diagnosis, coming less than two months after President Ford was whisked into office, may have helped disarm the clergymen, conservative activists and Southern politicians who were most inflamed by her loose comments. She was photographed recovering at Bethesda Naval Hospital, looking frail in her robe, and won praise for grace and courage.

"She seems to have just what it takes to make people feel at home in the world again," media critic Marshall McLuhan observed at the time. "Something about her makes us feel rooted and secure — a feeling we haven't had in a while. And her cancer has been a catharsis for everybody."

The public outpouring of support helped her embrace the power of her position. "I was somebody, the first lady," she wrote later. "When I spoke, people listened."

She used her new found influence to lobby aggressively for the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed nonetheless, and to speak against child abuse, raise money for handicapped children, and champion the performing arts.

It's debatable whether Mrs. Ford's frank nature helped or hurt her husband's 1976 campaign to win a full term as president. Polls showed she was widely admired. By taking positions more liberal than the president's, she helped broaden his appeal beyond traditional Republican voters. But she also outraged some conservatives, leaving the president more vulnerable to a strong GOP primary challenge by Ronald Reagan. That battle

weakened Ford going into the general election against Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Carter won by a slim margin. The president had lost his voice in the campaign's final days, and it was Mrs. Ford who read his concession speech to the nation.

The Fords retired to a Rancho Mirage golf community, but he spent much of his time away, giving speeches and playing in golf tournaments. Home alone, deprived of her exciting and purposeful life in the White House, Mrs. Ford drank.

By 1978 her secret was obvious to those closest to her.

"As I got sicker," she recalled, "I gradually stopped going to lunch. I wouldn't see friends. I was putting everyone out of my life." Her children recalled her living in a stupor, shuffling around in her bathrobe, refusing meals in favor of a drink.

Her family finally confronted her and insisted she seek treatment.

"I was stunned at what they were trying to tell me about how I disappointed them and let them down," she said in a 1994 Associated Press interview. "I was terribly hurt — after I had spent all those years trying to be the best mother, wife I could be. ... Luckily, I was able to hear them saying that I needed help and they cared too much about me to let it go on."

She credited their "intervention" with saving her life.

Mrs. Ford entered Long Beach Naval Hospital and, alongside alcoholic young sailors and officers, underwent a grim detoxification that became the model for therapy at the Betty Ford Center. In her book "A Glad Awakening," she described her recovery as a second chance at life.

And in that second chance, she found a new purpose.

"There is joy in recovery," she wrote, "and in helping others discover that joy."

Family spokeswoman Lewandrowski the family expects to organize a service in Palm Desert over the next couple days. Ford's body will be sent to Michigan for burial alongside former President Gerald Ford, who is buried at his namesake museum in Grand Rapids.

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Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Los Angeles and Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.

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Quotations from Betty Ford's 1978 memoir, "The Times of My Life."

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(On hearing her husband take the oath of office in August 1974)

"The words cut through me, pinned me to the floor. I felt as though I were taking the oath with him, promising to dedicate my own life to the service of my country.

"I was the wife of the President of the United States."

"What an astonishing place for Elizabeth Ann Bloomer to have come to."

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(On meeting Ford)

Fall 1947: "Once I'd said marriage was the last thing on my mind, and he'd made it clear it was no part of his program either, we could relax, have a good time, go to all the football games. He wanted a companion, and I filled the bill. As for me, I liked handsome blond men, I found him physically attractive; I enjoyed his company and his friends."

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November 1948: "When he first told me he was going to run for Congress, I didn't know what running for Congress meant. I was very unprepared to be a political wife, but I didn't worry because I really didn't think he was going to win. At that time, only old men went to Congress."

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(On children and motherhood)

"I was always there at three-thirty when the older ones came home from school and in the days when we still had infants, I was a pretty average mother. If I had a quiet hour, I dived into a historical novel. ... I was a den mother. I was a Sunday-school teacher. I was an interior decorator and a peacemaker and a zoo keeper. We raised every kind of an animal in the world."

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(On Ford's Vice Presidency)

Dec. 6, 1973: "Before he got this new job, I'd been planning to work at a hospital three days a week, because I needed to feel I was doing something for someone else. ... Suddenly I had more projects than I could handle."

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(On Ford becoming president)

"I had such belief in my husband. I never doubted he could do it. ... But I wasn't sure what kind of First Lady I would be. There was a great deal of whooping and hollering right at the beginning because I'd said Jerry and I were not going to have separate bedrooms at the White House, and that we were going to take our own bed with us. ... Even now, after all those years of married life, I like the idea of sleeping with my husband next to me."

"I figured, OK, I'll move to the White House, do the best I can and if they don't like it, they can kick me out, but they can't make me somebody I'm not."

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"I think it wasn't so much that the White House altered me in any essential way as that I found the resources with which to respond to a series of challenges. You never know what you can do until you have to do it. In the beginning, it was like going to a party you're terrified of, and finding out to your amazement that you're having a good time."

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(On getting breast cancer )

"...I never felt hopelessly mutilated. After all, Jerry and I had been married a good many years and our love had proved itself. I had no reason to doubt my husband. If he'd lost a leg, I wouldn't have deserted him, and I knew he wouldn't desert me because I was unfortunate enough to have had a mastectomy. Neither of us can walk away from the other."

"Lying in the hospital, thinking of all those women going for cancer checkups because of me, I'd come to recognize more clearly the power of the woman in the White House. Not my power, but the power of the position, a power which could be used to help."

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(On equal rights)

"A housewife deserves to be honored as much as a woman who earns her living in the marketplace. I consider bringing up children a responsible job. In

fact, being a good housewife seems to me a much tougher job than going to the office and getting paid for it. What man could afford to pay for all the things a wife does, when she's a cook, a mistress, a chauffeur, a nurse, a baby-sitter? But because of this, I feel women ought to have equal rights, equal Social Security, equal opportunities for education, an equal chance to establish credit."

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(On campaigning in 1976)

"I hadn't wanted Jerry to be president, but I had long since accepted his decision to run. You plan your life one way, it goes another. When the time came, I felt he would be the best man for the job, and I was willing to take on four more years in the White House."

"I had never expected to go out and campaign for my husband for president of the United States... At first I was petrified to get up and speak, particularly without a prepared text. In the beginning, I used to feel sick. After a while, I became so involved I stopped thinking about my stomach and carried on like the rest of the troops."

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(On her 1978 hospital stay for substance abuse)

"For 14 years, I'd been on medication for the pinched nerve, the arthritis, the muscle spasms in my neck, and I'd lost my tolerance for pills. If I had a single drink, the alcohol, on top of the pills, would make me groggy."

"I entered Long Beach to rid myself of dependence on drugs. Even now, I think staying off medication will be harder for me than staying off liquor because I have pain which comes often. For the present, I seem to be dealing with it. It's mind over matter a lot."

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Key dates in the life of Betty Ford:

April 8, 1918: Elizabeth "Betty" Bloomer born in Chicago.

1920: Family moves to Grand Rapids, Mich.

1936: Graduates from Central High School in Grand Rapids; spends next years studying dance, working for a time in New York with famed choreographer Martha Graham.

1942: Marries salesman William Warren in Grand Rapids; the union ends in divorce.

Oct. 15, 1948: Marries Gerald Ford.

Nov. 2, 1948: Gerald Ford elected to U.S. House of Representatives. In Congress for nearly 25 years, including stint as House minority leader.

March 14, 1950: Birth of first child, Michael Gerald. The Fords' other children are John Gardner, born in 1952; Steven Meigs, 1956; and Susan Elizabeth, 1957.

Dec. 6, 1973: Gerald Ford confirmed as vice president after resignation of Spiro Agnew.

Aug. 9, 1974: Gerald Ford becomes president after resignation of Richard Nixon.

Sept. 28, 1974: Betty Ford undergoes mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer . Her openness about the disease helped encourage other women to get tested.

September 1975: Two attempts on President Gerald Ford's life, both unsuccessful, in California.

Nov. 2, 1976: Ford defeated by Jimmy Carter in quest for a full term as president.

Jan. 20, 1977: Carter is inaugurated; Fords leave the White House.

April 1978: The former president and their children persuade Betty Ford to seek treatment for abuse of medication, alcohol. ("I didn't say a word, just listened and cried," she wrote later.)

November 1978: Betty Ford publishes memoir, "The Times of My Life."

1982: Betty Ford Center opens at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

1987: Her book, "A Glad Awakening," about her recovery from substance abuse, is published; ABC-TV broadcasts "The Betty Ford Story," starring Gena Rowlands.

1991: Betty Ford is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

1999: Gerald and Betty Ford both presented with Congressional Gold Medals.

August 2000: Gerald Ford suffers small stroke while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

2005: Betty Ford steps down as chairman of the Betty Ford Center board.

Dec. 26, 2006: Gerald Ford dies at age 93.

April 2007: Betty Ford undergoes surgery for an undisclosed ailment.

Aug. 31, 2007: Attends ceremony in California for issuance of postage stamp honoring her husband.

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Online:

Betty Ford Center: http://www.bettyfordcenter.org/

Gerald Ford library and museum: http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/

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Nancy Reagan calls Betty Ford 'an inspiration'

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said Friday she was deeply saddened by news of Betty Ford's death, calling her an inspiration to many.

In a statement Friday, Reagan praised Ford's efforts to educate women about breast cancer and her work at the Betty Ford Center, a rehabilitation center.

Reagan praised Ford's courage in facing and sharing her personal struggles with Americans. Though talking about addiction was taboo, Ford faced her struggles with drugs and alcohol openly.

Reagan says Ford was former President Gerald Ford's "strength through some very difficult days in our country's history."

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Home of Betty Ford's rehab center absorbs loss

ANTHONY MCCARTNEY, The Associated Press

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) — Rancho Mirage was a billionaires' playground dotted by gated golf resorts and spas before Betty Ford's rehab center made it famous to the rest of the world by treating a stream of spiraling Hollywood stars who spanned generations, from Elizabeth Taylor to Lindsay Lohan.

When Ford died Friday afternoon, she had outlived some of her most famous celebrity successes and saved the lives of many more, a legacy that inspired A-listers and average residents alike to pay tribute to a former first lady who left her mark — and her name — all over the city.

Ford died of natural causes at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, the desert golf community where she settled with former President Gerald Ford after he left office more than three decades ago, according to family attorney and spokesman Greg Willard. She was 93.

She will be memorialized in both California's Coachella Valley, which includes Rancho Mirage, and Michigan this week as her casket travels by motorcade and military transport to be laid to rest alongside her husband in Grand Rapids.

In Rancho Mirage, residents were saddened by her death even as they praised her devotion to removing the stigma from addiction. The Betty Ford Center treated more than 90,000 people since its beginnings in 1982 and although it was most famous for a string of celebrity patients, it kept its rates relatively affordable and provided a model for effective addiction treatment.

One

of Ford's defining characteristics was her candor, and that included confronting her own addiction head-on. She revealed a longtime addiction to painkillers and alcohol 15 months after leaving the White House, and regularly welcomed new groups of patients to rehab with a speech that started, "Hello, my name's Betty Ford, and I'm an alcoholic and drug addict."

Carol Pruter, 67, said she was proud that Betty Ford chose to set up her rehab center in Rancho Mirage and admired the former First Lady's approach to life — and to addiction. Much of the world was focused on the celebrities who came to the center, but Ford made a point of reaching out to average people too, Pruter said.

During treatment, patients live in seclusion at the center, which is surrounded by tall, lush hedges and accessed by a private lane guarded by a security checkpoint. The center distinguished itself from later iterations of rehabs that catered to the wealthy, ones that resembled spas more than an environment to honestly confront one's demons.

"She let people know that people who aren't well-known can get addictions too. It's not something for a certain part of society, it's not something to hide," Pruter said as she stopped by a local coffee shop in Saturday's 104-degree desert heat. "It's an illness that needs treatment."

Pruter's family attends St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in nearby Palm Desert, where the Fords also worshipped. The couple was always surrounded by Secret Service, but they would nod and smile politely at other worshippers, she said.

"You couldn't get too close but you would acknowledge them and they were always very gracious and they would acknowledge you," she said.

The church will host a tribute service Tuesday to Mrs. Ford for friends and family, and arrangements are still being made to televise or provide media access to the ceremony.

Ford chose her close friend and fellow former First Lady Rosalynn Carter to eulogize her in California, along with journalist Cokie Roberts and a University of Michigan dean, Jeffrey MacKie-Mason.

St. Margaret's also will host a public visitation Tuesday evening.

Rancho Mirage resident Esteban Cortes recalled on Saturday seeing the Fords around town several times, including at a local restaurant in 2004, two years before the former president passed away. The couple declined any special service and waited in line with other guests for a table, he said.

"They tried to lead an average life and got on line like everyone else," said Cortes, 57, as he shopped for groceries.

Other residents of the desert town reminisced about the celebrity cache that the Betty Ford Center brought to Rancho Mirage and the other desert cities in the Coachella Valley — but without the frenzy that so often accompanies the comings and goings of today's troubled stars.

"It's probably shallow to say, but I think it's really cool she was able to get celebrities here," said Pat Kellogg, who has lived in the area for 22 years.

Rancho Mirage is one of several cities dotted by golf resorts, spas and tennis courts. The annual Betty Ford Pro-Am Golf Tournament draws on the lush fairways to raise money for people who cannot afford addiction treatment.

The rest of the world, however, knew the rehab center's hometown primarily for its ties to Hollywood's elite, so much so that it became the punch line in discussions of celebrity overindulgence.

In 1996, Kelsey Grammer described to Jay Leno how his treatment at Betty Ford helped restore his joy of living. The comedian also quipped about the center's stature and its famous patients.

"When I was on my way to the Betty Ford Center, I turned to one of my friends and said, 'You know, I've finally made it. I'm going to the Betty Ford Center,'" he said.

Grammer, however, also credited the center with saving his life, as did many other stars of stage and screen who credited Ford with developing the top-notch care that brought them back from the brink.

Johnny Cash also became a patient after he broke five ribs and relapsed into abuse of painkillers. "I ended up in the Betty Ford Center for 43 days," Cash told The Associated Press in 1986. "I've had no drugs since then. It has been the best three years of my life, the most productive and the happiest."

Other musicians, including Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and jazz singer Etta James, who battled heroin addiction, also received treatment at Betty Ford.

Those celebrities, old and young, honored Ford on Friday as news of her death spread, from Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin to "One Day at a Time" actress Mackenzie Phillips to Ali McGraw, who was treated at the center in 1986.

"She changed so many of our lives with her courage and intelligence, her honesty and humility, and her deep grace," McGraw said. "Her vision impacted my own life as few people have."

But Ford herself would have rejected the praise as she did in life, preferring instead to turn the attention back to the person who was struggling with the demons of addiction.

"People who get well often say, 'You saved my life,' and 'You've turned my life around,'" Ford once said. "They don't realize we merely provided the means for them to do it themselves, and that's all."

Wednesday morning, Ford's casket will travel to Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Mich., where she grew up, and where she met her husband of 58 years.

As in California, there will be another tribute service for family and friends at Grace Episcopal Church before a public visitation is held. Lynne Cheney, the wife of former vice president Dick Cheney, and history scholar Richard Norton Smith will give eulogies at the Michigan service.

Thursday morning, her casket will travel by motorcade to the Gerald R. Ford Museum, for a private burial alongside her husband.

"There will be a significant participation by the family in both services," family spokesman Greg Willard said. "That's the way Mrs. Ford wanted it, and we will certainly carry out her wishes."

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McCartney reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press Writers Gillian Flaccus and Chris Weber in Los Angeles contributed to

this report.