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Susan Ford in 1974

Susan Ford Bales in 2007

Susan Elizabeth Ford Vance Bales (born July 6, 1957, in Washington, D.C.) is an American author, photojournalist, and the chairman of the board of the Betty Ford Center for alcohol and drug abuse.

Ford Bales is the youngest child and only daughter of the late U.S. President Gerald R. Ford and his wife Betty. She was one of three people targeted for violence by the Symbionese Liberation Army and had Secret Service protection well before her father became president. As a teenager attending the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, she held her senior prom in the East Room. She served as official White House hostess when her mother was hospitalized for breast cancer.

She married Charles Vance, one of her father's former Secret Service agents, on February 10, 1979. For a time they operated a private security company in Washington. They had two daughters, Tyne Mary (born 1980) and Heather Elizabeth (born 1983), and were divorced in 1988. She married attorney Vaden Bales in 1989.

In 1984, Ford Bales and her mother, Betty Ford, helped launch National Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a joint appearance in an ad campaign.

Ford Bales trained as a photographer and worked as a photojournalist for the Associated Press, Newsweek, Money Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Omaha Sun, and also freelanced.[1]

In 1992 she became a member of the board of the Betty Ford Center and in 2005 became the chairman of the organization. She succeeded her mother (who remains a board member).[2]

In 2002, she co-wrote (with Laura Hayden) Double Exposure: A First Daughter Mystery, with a contemporary White House setting. In 2005 she wrote a sequel Sharp Focus (also with Laura Hayden).

She lives outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband and their five children from previous marriages.

At the funeral for her father she greeted mourners during the viewing at the Capital Rotunda [3] and read a passage from the Letter of James during the national service[4]

• Degregorio, William A., The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (5th edition), Barricade Books, Fort Lee, New Jersey, 2001.
• Wead, Doug, All the President's Children, Atria Books, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-7434-4631-3

• "You Give Back, You Don't Give Up", Parade magazine
• Just ask Chelsea, Jenna and Barbara: Escaping the glare of the spotlight isn't easy for kids whose dads work in the Oval Office - San Francisco Chronicle

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