Casper - April 16, 2006 - First lady Nancy Freudenthal shares a little something personal with each audience, a technique she’s found effective in capturing attention and communicating a message.

At a dinner celebrating the 25th year of women’s basketball at the University of Wyoming, she spoke of the values and leadership lessons high school sports taught her. At a gathering of mail carriers, the message includes fond recollections of her father and grandfather as letter carriers.

And before audiences statewide concerned about childhood drinking, the anecdote is about her family’s experiences dealing with their youngest daughter and teen drinking, and the realization that parents need to set the rules, communicate and instigate community change.

“The only thing I will always know more about than anyone else in the world is my own life,” Nancy Freudenthal said. “People do sort of want to hear about our lives, which for me was unusual to get accustomed to.”

She simply tries to keep it together as a wife, mother, wage earner and volunteer. “I find it surprising that it is interesting, because it is just the same life everybody lives.”

Yes and no. As Wyoming's first lady, Freudenthal’s life can hardly be considered normal. At the same time, she has tailored a new role of first lady that accommodates her family, her career and the messages she wants to convey.

Hoping to avoid the traditional role of hostess, Freudenthal gave herself nine months to figure out her new position and how her life had changed after husband Dave Freudenthal was elected governor.

“You tend to come into the position thinking there is kind of a job description,” she said -- and of course, there isn’t. Freudenthal found herself being asked if she’d like to approve menus, which colors of flowers should be planted and the sort of tea cups to use at the next function. As it turns out, she is not a teacups sort of woman.

“I was really taken aback, actually,” she said. “I’m not good at any of that.”

She gained some comfort after hiring a residence manager to handle the decorating and day-to-day affairs, freeing herself to continue almost full-time work at the Cheyenne law offices of David & Cannon, and to focus on a few particularly meaningful causes where she felt she could accomplish the greatest good. Most visibly, that goal has manifested itself in the Wyoming First Lady’s Initiative to Reduce Underage Drinking.

Picking an issue

Freudenthal encountered the issue of childhood drinking much as any parent would, discounting the extent of the problem until it affected her own family, she said. The issue was brought to her professional radar at meetings of a national association of governors’ spouses. Freudenthal discovered a strong background of scientific research supporting the arguments, which appealed to her as a lawyer.

“It has been a good match for me, because it is so well-supported in science,” she said. “It’s an area where I could see myself fitting in.”

Studies recently released on alcohol’s effects on children’s developing brains, the bombardment of messages kids hear on alcohol, and the advertising directed at teens focused her interest.

Evaluating her own family’s experiences with childhood drinking, which she now shares with audiences across the state, Freudenthal realized that everything she did as a parent was based in her recollections of childhood -- standards which, she discovered, no longer apply.

“There is so much about the issue of childhood drinking that’s beneath parents’ radar,” Freudenthal said. “If you’re interested in children’s issues, it’s impossible to ignore alcohol as the No. 1 health risk to children.”

So she followed what has become her own advice to parents: First, educate yourself. Then, take action.

“If you want to see a change in attitudes about drinking, it has to start with you, with me,” Freudenthal said. Parents provide an education whether they realize it or not, as children absorb alcohol messages on billboards and in ads glamorizing drinking, and watch adults use alcohol to facilitate social situations.

She has become the change she wants to see, as her saying adapted from Gandhi goes, and liquor at the governor’s mansion is locked away in the basement along with the governor’s guns.

Forming the Wyoming First Lady’s Initiative with the Department of Family Services and the Department of Health’s Substance Abuse Division, Freudenthal created a forum to raise awareness around Wyoming. The role fits well, as Freudenthal uses her legal expertise to present her argument to communities.

“I always go in wondering, what will this be like?” she said with a smile.

Each community has been unique, at different stages of readiness to address underage drinking. She's gratified at the response from local leaders who have been plagued by frustrations but lack the impetus to bring a community together in response.

At one town hall meeting, a judge called her his “dream come true,” Freudenthal recalled. “He was so frustrated and struggling to make sense of what he sees in his courtroom, and wondering how he can change a community’s attitudes.”

Freudenthal does worry at times that she’s misunderstood as a prohibitionist, which she is not, she said. Her focus is childhood drinking, which encompasses ages 9 to 15.

Her son Bret is working on a doctoral degree, making him the ideal anecdote when she addressed members of fraternities and sororities at the University of Wyoming. Home for a family dinner, he told his mom that friends thought she’d “gone off the deep end” with the underage drinking campaign.

“He tells them, ‘This issue my mom works on deals with kids 9 to 15. Do you think kids that young should be drinking?'” Freudenthal said. “From my perspective, there should be no debate that kids between 9 and 15 should not be drinking.”

Most often, her position is challenged by people who consider teen drinking a rite of passage into adulthood.

“That may have been how we looked at our own childhood, growing up, but we know so much more now,” Freudenthal counters. “Why handicap our children by rationalizing or somehow justifying behavior that is the No. 1 threat to our children’s health?”

Shining a spotlight

Now, with nearly 15 town hall meetings behind her and local activists taking the lead, Freudenthal’s role is changing. She has evolved into a convener, someone who draws the crowds and leaves audiences with a powerful incentive to take action.

“She has a message and the power to give that message that impacts people in the heart,” said Sally Patton of Saratoga, team leader for the Wyoming First Lady's Initiative.

Freudenthal knows she’s in a unique position to spread a message, and she doesn’t regard that responsibility lightly. She finds speaking on something about which she knows little almost as bad as reading a speech someone else has researched and written. She wants to do justice to her position and the people she reaches out to.

“You have the opportunity to shine the spotlight on issues,” she said. “It’s a real privilege. Just by showing up, you can give credit to a group that has worked really hard.”

That’s her major requirement n messages have to come from the heart. Freudenthal encourages that in others, too.

Flying high above Wyoming at 500 mph, she chatted with Cheyenne student Erica Leffler about the presentation she would give that afternoon. As a member of CAN, or Change Attitudes Now, Leffler is a role model for younger children. After swapping trading cards with photos, profiles and quotes about staying alcohol-free, Leffler should give people a little something of herself that would help them understand the faces are real and that she cares, the first lady said.

“Just tell them about who you are, and why you care about this issue,” Freudenthal urged the teen.

It’s an approach that has served Nancy Freudenthal well.