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Blue Star Families, First Lady stand united

Common goals brought them together: a desire to improve the lives of military families, and a desire to help put Barack Obama in the White House — because they strongly believe the second goal will give great strength to the first.

Now, the fledgling Blue Star Families, having caught the ear of new First Lady Michelle Obama last summer hopes to take their campaign to help military families to a higher level.

On Jan. 19, one day before Obama took office as the 44th President of the United States of America, about 100 people gathered at the Fort Belvoir, Va., Officer’s Club for a victory celebration to honor the work of military families and veterans who contributed to his election.

“We really helped share his pro-military message with the military community,” said Angie Morgan, a spokeswoman for the group.

Spurred by the contacts they have made with each other and with the Obama administration, and by the needs of military families, they’ve shifted their focus to a nonpartisan, broad-based effort to help military families.

And so “Blue Star Families for Obama” has become “Blue Star Families.”

“This is really the beginning,” Marine wife Kathy Roth-Douquet, founder and co-chair of Blue Star Families, told the group. “We got here. Now we can actually do something. So let’s do it. We can help America hear our … message about what we do for the country and what we want to continue to do for the country, with the country joining us.”

This effort is being undertaken “not because we are victims, not because we’re an underserved community, but because we’re a vital part of America,” she said.

Americans can learn from military families, she said, citing the strong spirit of volunteerism in the military community. “We’re not about complaints,” she said, but “about solutions.”

Roth-Douquet said the group hopes to build on its “wonderful” relationship with Michelle Obama, and is developing similar ties to the office of new Vice President Joe Biden.

Since Michelle Obama formally announced the group in August, the number of people in its military family network has grown to “tens of thousands,” said Marine wife Heidi DiEugenio, executive director of Blue Star Families.

“We represent the entire military community,” Morgan said. “We’re here to bring the issues to the highest levels of government, and to help the First Lady champion our causes.”

The group has conducted a survey on its Web site to gather information about what’s important to military families, and will be focusing on issues like health care, quality of education for military children, the effects of the operational tempo on families and how foreclosures are affecting military families, she said.

She said one focus of the group will be National Guard and Reserve members and their families, who often do not live near a military installation and its support networks.

Pamela Stokes Eggleston will be part of the effort. As a member of the group, and wife of wounded Army Sgt. Charles Eggleston, she will be a regional representative for Blue Star Families at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She said she and other group members “are talking now about what that will mean.”

Terry Danielson, a Marine mother whose daughter, Sgt. Erin Theresa Danielson, returned from Iraq last April, came from Oregon for the Blue Star Families party, the inauguration and other events. In addition to working with the Blue Star Families for Obama, she has spearheaded several initiatives such as donating computers for the campaign, and donating copies of Obama’s books to local libraries that did not have enough.

She and her husband were the only two people who voted for Obama out of nine relatives who attended the party. The others voted for McCain. “We have people from Illinois, Florida, Virginia and Oregon,” she said. “We represent what Obama is doing, bringing all kinds of people together. I’m proud about that. I wanted these people to come to this party,” she said.

Air Force wife Kimberley Taylor-Beer, part of the group’s leadership in Colorado, said she was struck by Michelle Obama’s connection to military families.

“Here’s this tremendously talented woman in so many ways, and because of her husband’s career choice, her life is different,” Taylor-Beer said., adding that she thinks that’s why the First Lady can identify with what military families go through.

During a conference call to the military families shortly after the election, Taylor-Beer said, the First Lady “told us that when she is really tired and has had a bad day, she thinks of military families and it keeps her going.”

The group was founded late last spring when Roth-Douquet and Army wife Laura Dempsey were introduced by a mutual friend and began talking about how America views the military, and what they could do to change that, Dempsey said.

“At the same time, through different channels, we were asked to be policy advisors for the Obama campaign … we decided to do something bigger,” she said, to bring together a grassroots effort in support of Obama.

With no money, no sponsors, and using house parties as their model to get the word out, “we just sat back and watched” as the effort gained steam, Dempsey said. “It almost ran itself. It was something to see.”

“Most of us are not in a position to do anything more than what we do already for the people we love who are in the military in addition to being professionals and mothers and volunteers,” Roth-Douquet said.