State’s first lady launches volunteering initiative
Maria Lee has resumed doing things she did before campaigning
NASHVILLE – For the first four months of her husband’s new administration, Tennessee’s first lady Maria Lee has largely remained out of the spotlight.
Despite moving into the governor’s residence this January following the inauguration of Gov. Bill Lee, she has gotten back to doing the things she filled her days with before hitting the campaign trail.
Lee has resumed taking meals to new mothers and the sick at her church, albeit with a security detail.
She has helped build homes this spring for two different organizations.
She has delivered food to the elderly through Meals on Wheels. She volunteered at a food pantry. Now, those activities are part of the first lady’s own initiative: Tennessee Serves, an effort to encourage adults and children around the state to spend time volunteering in their communities.
“I like doing stuff with my hands -digging in the dirt, hammering a nail,” said Lee, a first lady whose trademark ponytail hairstyle made it into her ensemble at the governor’s January inauguration.
Tennessee Serves launches without much of a budget outside of Lee traveling the state to work with nonprofits and a website to highlight organizations to make it simple for people to find local groups that need help in their area.
“To some degree, I think we’ve become a very me-centered world and culture,” Lee said. “And so if you can get people to think outside of themselves, to think of others — I don’t think people don’t want to do that. I just think they have to be prodded.”
Background in service inspired her to make it her main initiative
From the time Lee was a child, helping others was a routine part of her childhood.
Growing up in Maryland, Lee watched her mother faithfully visit the elderly women in their neighborhood, going daily to check on them and cook them meals.
Her parents brought foster infants into their home as part of a pre-adoption program.
By the time she turned 18, she had begun volunteering as a youth ministry leader with church.
“I think it just kind of innately became a part of who I am,” said Lee, who hopes that the same will be the case for other young people who become involved with serving their communities as part of her example.
Throughout her 20s and 30s, Lee went on overseas mission trips.
After marrying Bill Lee, she would join in on weekend trips to Mexico where they worked with an organization to build basic houses in a day and a half. Talking about it brings her to tears. “Seeing someone receive a key to a home for the first time in their life that they never ever thought would happen, there’s a joy that comes with that that you can’t even explain unless you’ve been on that build,” Lee said.
In the few years preceding her husband’s run for governor, Lee volunteered in Nashville teaching English to Iraqi refugee women and, through a separate organization, tutoring children with Salama Urban Ministries.
She decided to do both to put to use her background in teaching, a profession she left shortly before marrying Bill Lee in 2008.
“When you’re able to help someone learn English and you see that light in their eyes and they can say something as simple as a four-word sentence, there is a great reward in that,” Lee said. “Because it’s going to change their life.”
First lady’s initiative runs parallel to husband’s priorities
Maria Lee’s initiative shows parallels to priorities outlined by the governor in his first months in office.
While her choice for her own initiative was not strategic and was something Lee said she came up with on her own based on what she found fulfilling, it serves as a complement to the governor’s focus.
On the campaign trail and in his remarks as governor, Bill Lee has repeatedly emphasized his position that government alone will not solve the state’s problems.
He created a brand new division of state government, the Office of Faithbased and Community Initiatives to help encourage more nonprofit organizations to provide services.
“This really is who I am, and it just
“To some degree, I think we’ve become a very me-centered world and culture. And so if you can get people to think outside of themselves, to think of others — I don’t think people don’t want to do that. I just think they have to be prodded.”
happened to coincide with what he believes about government and community and that there is only so much the government can do,” Lee said. “They’re not going to solve all the challenges. So if people want things to change in their communities and for the people around them, they need to get involved and help.”
Lee said she expects her schedule as first lady to be dictated by what service projects are going on around the state, focusing the most effort on the state’s 15 rural distressed counties.
Her husband’s very first executive order called for accelerated development in those distressed counties, or those that are among the 10 percent most economically challenged areas in the nation according to the Appalachian Regional Commission’s annual index.
There is precedent, however, for a governor and first lady to have parallel priorities.
While former Gov. Bill Haslam made education his hallmark achievement, First Lady Crissy Haslam focused her efforts on improving childhood literacy.
Similar to Crissy Haslam’s summer reading challenge for students, Lee is launching her initiative with a Tennessee Kids Serves challenge, rewarding school children who log 8 to 12 volunteer hours this summer, depending on grade level, with a celebration at the governor’s residence with the first family.
Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.