It’s About Time: Lighting the Legacies of First Ladies

Guest Column by Stacy Cordery and Nancy Kegan Smith

First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE) members (from left) Nancy Kegan Smith, Stacy Cordery, Anita McBride, Myra Gutin and Diana Carlin at the First Ladies Luncheon co-sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, FLARE and American University School of Public Affairs in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in April. (Credit: Gerald R. Ford Foundation)

In 2018, seven first ladies scholars came together to discuss the formation of the first national organization to promote the study of the lives and legacies of U.S. first ladies. They invited researchers, academics, journalists, and the interested public to join them. Not long thereafter, they convened in an initial meeting in June 2019, at the historic DuVall’s Tavern in Old Town, Alexandria just outside Washington, D.C. Diana Carlin, Myra Gutin, Anita McBride, Elizabeth Natalle, Katherine A.S. Sibley, Nancy Kegan Smith, and Molly Wertheimer became the founding members of what they decided to call the First Ladies As…