Wyoming’s first lady is as unassuming as she is passionate. One of my recent columns was unfairly critical of the failure of Jennie Gordon’s Wyoming Hunger Initiative to object when Megan Degenfelder, the state superintendent of public instruction, decided Wyoming would join 13 other red states, including backwater places like Alabama and Mississippi, in rejecting summer lunch funding for low-income children.
Mrs. Gordon asked me to meet for a discussion of hunger in Wyoming. She began by telling me she was “offended” by my column. Understandable. Mea culpa. With that, my trip to the woodshed ended. I then learned her commitment to end hunger is deep, sincere and strategic. She was also a good listener, genuinely interested in my concerns. Together, we learned how much common ground we share.
Our first lady knows something about feeding children. She was one of 10 siblings around the dinner table. With deserved pride, she told me her parents fed all those mouths on the salary of a senior master sergeant. Her father, Robert Muir, knew hunger as a child of the Great Depression. He later served in the Navy, Army and Air Force. Neither was her mother, Gertrude, a stranger to food insecurity, having survived World War II in Austria.
During her husband’s first term, Jennie Gordon launched the Wyoming Hunger Initiative, with a mission of ending childhood hunger in Wyoming. When she began, few in Wyoming were acquainted with the term “food insecurity,” and fewer were yet aware that it is a problem in the state. But her passion for the work was contagious.
Today, there is an increasing awareness that, as the Hunger Initiative website teaches, “86,000 Wyoming residents struggle with food insecurity.” Almost a third of them are children. That is one in every five children who can’t be confident there will be a next meal.
Mrs. Gordon recently appeared on a podcast called “Add Passion and Stir” with Billy Shore. He and I met when we worked together on Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign. When it ended, Billy took the fire in his belly to the issue of hunger, founding a national anti-hunger initiative called Share our Strength, which continues to this day, addressing the issue.
It was inevitable that Jennie Gordon’s work would come to Billy’s attention. The result was the first lady’s opportunity to bring positive national attention to what this problem looks like in a conservative rural state. Listening to the podcast at this link is one way you can feel intensity of the passion she has for the cause: tinyurl.com/jennie-gordon-on-hunger.
Indeed, a click on nohungerwyo.org will reveal the ongoing excitement surrounding Mrs. Gordon’s work. One of the Hunger Initiative’s successes is “Food from the Field,” which encourages Wyoming hunters to donate the deer, antelope, elk and moose they harvest to what Mrs. Gordon calls “a sustainable solution.” As a result, thousands of pounds of meat have been made available to families in need.
“Grow a Little Extra” is a collaboration between the Wyoming Hunger Initiative, the University of Wyoming Cent$ible Nutrition Program and the Master Gardener program. Gardeners are encouraged to “grow a little extra” to lessen their neighbor’s food insecurity. Those donations produced 27,320 pounds of food last year. A “Food from the Farm + Ranch” project employs the generosity of the agricultural community to add more than 100,000 pounds of meat to the cause.
In addition, financial contributions to the Wyoming Hunger Initiative made it possible to fund $193,812 in infrastructure grants to local hunger programs such as the Laramie Soup Kitchen, COMEA, the Friday Food Bag Foundation and more than 50 others around the state.
The Wyoming Hunger Initiative is cause for hope in a state where political leaders are reluctant to tackle these social problems. Because of Jennie Gordon’s commitment, more people than ever are, at long last, aware that some of their neighbors go to bed hungry. Once you know that, you can never unknow it. And that will make a continuing difference in Wyoming.
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