COMMENTARY
Governors' spouses have own agenda

By Vicky Cayetano
Hawai'is first lady and a business executive

As the governor and I flew back recently from our final National Governor's Winter Conference, I took time to reflect on the farewells that were exchanged among the spouses, and in particular among those of us whose spouses would no longer be governors at the end of the year.

Vicky Cayetano is getting together with other first spouses to get things done. Advertiser library photo

"This is a bittersweet conference as we bid our goodbyes and best wishes to each other." From a group of 55 governors in our nation and territories, only four do not have a spouse (Delaware's is a widow, Mississippi's and Puerto Rico's are divorced and the Virgin Islands' is a bachelor) and six governors are women.

This particular collection of first spouses makes for an interesting group: From homemakers to lawyers, executives to business owners, physical therapists and physicians, most of the first ladies engage in child-rearing and first-lady responsibilities and about half of them have full-time careers as well.

Mary Easley of North Carolina is a full-time clinical professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law. She also manages the criminal law externship program and is a regular faculty member for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, Southeast Region.

In addition to all this, Easley teaches a graduate-level management course at North Carolina State University for police executives from across the nation. But of course, besides being a very active first lady, she has one child to parent!

Seriously, the work ethic of most first ladies in our country is truly admirable. Besides individual state projects, there are several national initiatives that we are engaged in collectively. One very rewarding initiative is Leadership to keep Children Alcohol-Free, a project led by Columba Bush (Florida), Sharon Kitzhaber (Oregon), Hope Taft (Ohio) and me. With more than 30 of our first ladies involved, we have been working together to tackle the issue of underage drinking.

With the encouragement of Janet Huckabee (Arkansas), a number of the first ladies also have participated in Habitat for Humanity projects.

At this conference, we all became excited about important new concepts that might be pursued in the area of homeland security and enhancing our children's after-school activities.

One program called Communities in Schools has a particularly interesting approach. It takes the various organizations that work with children during after-school hours and brings those programs right into the schools themselves. Depending on the primary needs of the children in each school, organizations that adopt schools may provide support to teachers ranging from tutoring or mentoring to sports and team activities.

We all know how precious every minute is to teachers and students. If teachers can be given more time to teach while students receive the dedicated interest of these wonderful children-focused organizations, it can be a successful partnership.

For the organizations, it gives them an opportunity to bring their outreach right where the need is. And it shouldn't cost schools any additional money, because these organizations already are providing these services, although not necessarily in a school setting.

There are many organizations that already are engaged in the work of serving our children and young people. What a great opportunity if we could encourage them to support our children with after-school activities right in the schools, moving from a fragmented effort to a strategic, coordinated approach.

The other issue relates to the preparedness of each state for a catastrophic emergency. The first spouses' group talked about implementing, as part of an overall governor's statewide plan, a Medical Resource Activation Plan.

The idea is to organize all retired medical people — from physicians to nurses, med techs to military — so that they can be called upon in a major emergency. Since we're an island state 2,500 miles from the Mainland, it is especially critical that we are able to mobilize our medical support in such a crisis.

All the while that we were engaged in this lively discussion, I couldn't help but notice that none of our male counterparts were there to participate with us.

In fact, except for the social events that first spouses (or first hunks, as one of them suggested they be called) attended, they were not visible at any of the meetings. Hmmm ... could it be that our first spouses find it difficult to juggle more than one role at a time?

First ladies, like most women around the world, are blessed with far more opportunities than earlier generations were offered.

And we are taking them on, not one at a time, but all at a time.