Former US first lady Betty Ford has died at the age of 93, a family friend said today.
Marty Allen said Mrs Ford, whose battles with cancer and substance abuse inspired millions to seek treatment, died yesterday.
Mr Allen did not say how Mrs Ford died but expected the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library to release additional information.
Gerald Ford died in 2006.
The couple married in 1948, the same year the future president was elected to the US Congress. She was thrust into the spotlight in 1974 when he became president after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks later and won acclaim for her openness and courage.
Mother-of-four Mrs Ford had undergone surgery for an undisclosed ailment in April 2007. During and after her years in the White House, from 1974 to 1977, she won acclaim for her candour, wit and courage as she fought breast cancer, severe arthritis and the twin addictions of drugs and alcohol. She also pressed for abortion rights and women's rights.
But it was her Betty Ford Centre, which rescued celebrities and ordinary people from addiction, that made her famous in her own right. She was modest about that accomplishment.
"People who get well often say, 'You saved my life', and 'You've turned my life around'," she recalled. "They don't realise we merely provided the means for them to do it themselves and that's all."
"That's a God-given gift as far as I'm concerned. I don't take any credit for providing anything that wasn't provided to me."
After her 93-year-old husband died, his widow said: "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country." They had been married in 1948, the same year Gerald Ford was elected to Congress.
She and her husband had retired to Rancho Mirage, California, after Mr Ford lost a bruising presidential race to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Mrs Ford went to work on her memoirs, The Times of My Life, which came out in 1979. But the social whirlwind that engulfed them in Washington was over and she confessed that she missed it.
"We had gone into the campaign to win and it was a great disappointment losing, particularly by such a small margin," she said. "It meant changing my whole lifestyle after 30 years in Washington, and it was quite a traumatic experience."
By 1978, she was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs. She would later describe herself during that period as "this nice, dopey pill-pusher sitting around and nodding".
"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 favour of a drink.
Her family finally confronted her in April 1978 and insisted she seek treatment. She credited their "intervention" with saving her life.
"I was stunned at what they were trying to tell me about how I disappointed them and let them down," Mrs Ford told The Associated Press in 1994.
"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 entered Long Beach Naval Hospital and underwent a grim detoxification, which became the model for therapy at the Betty Ford Centre. She saw her recovery as a second chance at life.
"When you come back from something that was as disagreeable and unsettling as my alcoholism, when you come back to health from that, everything is so much more valuable," she said in her book, A Glad Awakening.
Her own experience, and that of a businessman friend whom she helped save from alcoholism, were the inspiration for the centre, located on the grounds of the Eisenhower Medical Centre. She helped raise three million dollars, lobbied in the state capital for its approval, and reluctantly agreed to let it be named for her.
"The centre's name has been burden, as well as honour," she wrote. "Because even if nobody else holds me responsible, I hold myself responsible."
She liked to tell patients, "I'm just one more woman who has had this problem."
Her efforts won her a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour, from President George Bush senior in 1991. In 1999 Gerald and Betty Ford were awarded Congressional Gold Medals.
She continued to be outspoken on public issues, pressing for fellow Republicans to be moderate on social questions. She spoke out in favour of gays in the military in a 1993 Washington Post interview, saying they had been serving for many years.
During the Clinton presidency, Mrs Ford praised first lady Hillary Clinton, saying she had been with her at a meeting on health care and found her "courteous, charming, able, attractive. ... She asks good questions. She picked out one of the most demanding roles she possibly could".
Agencies