Rosenthal recalls how Nancy G. Brinker, the founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure recalls Mrs. Ford, who was her friend, mentor, and role model. “Betty was very important in my life, to the life of Komen for the Cure, and to the world. She was an amazing woman and always responded to our calls. She spoke so beautifully, and had a charisma and effect on people that was  so reassuring and confident, especially for women with breast cancer.”

“Before Mrs. Ford's candid revelation of her own breast cancer in 1974,” Brinker wrote in a special remembrance of Betty Ford for CNN after Mrs. Ford’s death in 2011, “public discussion of such a thing had been unheard of.”