Among the 80 girls invited to lunch with first lady Michelle Obama and a host of other powerful women were Jennifer De where, a senior at William Smith High School in Aurora, and Rosa Ballesteros, a Sheridan High School senior.
Both were sitting near the back of the grand room overlooking the gardens at the Boettcher Mansion, which is the fanciest place Dewhere said she had ever been a guest. Ballesteros freely admitted that she “had nerves on the way over.”
The girls were seated at round tables and at each place setting was a printed menu — butternut-squash soup, herbed chicken breast — along with their place cards, which, no doubt, every girl in the place planned to keep as souvenirs.
“And the plates, too,” said one of the girls. “And the little balls of butter,” said another. “And the cookies,” chimed a third.
Dewhere and Ballesteros were each called into their principals’ offices last week. “Do you want to have lunch with the president’s wife?”
This was not an invitation about which Dewhere had to think twice. She went shopping a couple of days later and bought a magenta blouse and black slacks for the occasion.
Ballesteros’ principal told her it was an honor she had earned.
“I think I was in shock,” she said. “My eyes were, like, humongous that she chose me.”
Obama announced her girls mentoring initiative this month and, as she said Monday, she wasn’t the first person to think this up. But, judging from the reaction in the room, it would be pretty hard to find a spokesperson with more star power, though I thought young Rebecca Martinez was going to pass out, so excited was she when actress Fran Drescher stopped by to say hello.
“Oh, my god,” Dewhere said, describing her reaction to Obama and to the luncheon. “I was just speechless.”
The young women, juniors and seniors from high schools in Denver, Aurora and Arvada, sat among women at the top of their fields, women of science and letters, former governors, current Cabinet secretaries. Dewhere and Ballesteros shared a table with Maggie Fox Udall, chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection (and wife of Sen. Mark Udall), and also with Ellen Ochoa, an astronaut who has schools named after her.
Some time ago, Regi Huerter, a woman for whom I have great respect, conducted an exercise in which she asked a group of adults whether they considered themselves role models. A few hands went up. Not good enough for Huerter. You’re all role models, she said, whether you like it or not; young people are watching you all the time.
Understanding this is a prerequisite to mentorship. Mentoring, after all, calls upon an adult to actively share time, to listen, to guide, but, more important, to believe that such effort does not go to waste. It requires the understanding that all those watching and listening young people hold within them the curiosity, desire, ability and tenacity that success demands.
“There is no magic to being here,” the first lady told the young women. “There is no secret trick to success.”
The women in the room worked hard, she said. They focused. They stayed later at the office, and “more important, they didn’t give up because someone doubted them.”
The path to success, Obama said, “It’s already in you. Everything you need to be successful, you already own.”
I went to the Denver School of Science and Technology after the luncheon. I wanted to hear the questions students had for Ochoa and for Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. DSST is one of the strongest schools in the state, a charter where about 45 percent of students come from low-income families and about half are girls.
Both boys and girls, juniors and seniors, joined the two in a classroom, and the students wanted to know what it was like to be a woman in male-dominated fields; what it was like to be a minority in their chosen careers. They wanted to know how to decide whom to listen to, whose advice could be trusted and whether the women had trouble sleeping at night with so much responsibility.
But what they most took comfort from, several students told me later, was the acknowledgment from both women that neither had any idea in high school what they would become. Prepare yourself well; live your core values; don’t be afraid to leave your comfort zones — and you will be ready when opportunity presents itself, the women said.
At the luncheon, Colorado’s first lady, Jeannie Ritter, described mentoring as stepping into the space of young lives. It is that, but it can be the opposite as well. It can be the moment in a mansion or in a classroom when a young person steps into the space of an adult to catch a glimpse of, and so confirm, all that is possible.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
