Chapter 26
My work ethic comes from my father. Hard work is in my nature, whether in the classroom, out on the campaign trail, or in the execution of my duties as First Lady.
Traveling internationally via an Air Force plane referred to as Bright Star when the First Lady is on board (a plane is only called Air Force One when the president is the one flying on it), we would need to stop periodically so the plane could be refueled.
We could stop at the same places each time and never leave the plane, or we could use the stop as an opportunity to connect with more people.
Two times we did this that I’ll never forget were stops in Alaska and Italy.
During the campaign, Joe had talked about shining a bright light on inequity.
He’d vowed not to forget the small towns that had suffered neglect—and he hadn’t.
One of the ways that Joe kept that promise was to make a huge push to connect everyone in America via high-speed broadband internet.
I don’t think it’s possible to realize the impact of broadband until you visit these communities and see what it means to go from being completely cut off from the rest of the world to having access to telehealth, to education, to remote work.
That trip to Bethel, Alaska, was a visceral moment of connection between our administration and a community that had sometimes felt forgotten by the federal government.
When we arrived, it seemed as though every single person in town showed up to greet us.
The advance teams were invigorated, because it was very rare that you go into a region that had never been visited by a president or First Lady.
I wore a traditional qaspeq jacket in red, white, and blue that had been given to me by the local designer Letha Chimegalrea Simon.
“With high-speed internet,” I told the crowd assembled at the high school, “you’ll have better access to critical health care, new educational tools, and remote job opportunities. It will change lives. It will save lives. And it will help make our world a little brighter, a little more beautiful.”
I was so moved by the local name that had been given to the broadband project: Airraq, which I was told is Yup’ik for “a string that tells a story.” How perfect is that?
Infrastructure programs such as this one that Joe made happen had truly profound effects.
For this rural community, the stories of the world would now be so much more available to them, and it would be that much easier for them to share their amazing culture with the rest of us.
My final foreign trip as First Lady in December 2024 was to Abu Dhabi and Qatar, accompanied by Ashley.
We realized that a good fuel stop en route to Abu Dhabi would be at the US Naval Air Station at Sigonella, Italy, which was near my ancestral homeland of Gesso—my father’s family came to America from Sicily around 1900.
We began by meeting with military families to honor their service. I spoke to about 150 service members and their families as part of my Joining Forces initiative to support the family members, caregivers, and survivors of our military.
“We have just begun the holiday season at the White House,” I told them.
“And I hope to bring some of that warmth across the ocean to all of you—though you seem to have created a pretty incredible display here, too. This year—Sigonella’s sixty-fifth anniversary—you’ve shown the world why you’re the ‘Hub of the Med.’ ”
I praised some of their many accomplishments, which included a record score in a problem-solving evaluation, the most community relations events of any base, their perfect soccer season, and their ability to weave daily through the Sicilian traffic.
We then drove to Gesso. As I was the first Italian American First Lady, Gesso took pride in my family roots.
When we arrived, we saw that people had hung welcome banners from their balconies.
They showed me the church where my great-great-grandmother had been baptized.
There was music. There was drinking. The mayor brought me a bouquet of flowers.
At one point when everyone we met was calling us their cousins and hugging us, Ashley whispered, “Mom, they don’t look much like us, do they?” I agreed that the resemblance was slight, but we kept hugging them like family.
At a church we visited there was an etching of Gesso’s sister city, Hammonton, New Jersey, where my mother and father grew up and where I was born.
I was moved thinking about how happy they would have been to see me visiting our homeland.
I spoke to the crowd about how my great-grandparents were shaped by Italian values: loyalty, hard work, and the belief that there’s always room for one more seat at the table.