First lady with a cause

Jeannie Ritter, a champion of mental health issues, is committed to promoting understanding of the subject

Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 4, 2007 at midnight

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Shortly after Jeannie Ritter became Colorado's first lady in January, her predecessor shared a bit of hard-earned perspective.

"It won't last forever," former first lady Frances Owens told her. "Every day you're closer to being the ex-first lady of Colorado."

Ritter, 51, took it to heart. "At that point I knew I had this short window of opportunity," she said in a recent interview in the sunroom of the Governor's Mansion.

It perhaps explains her fast start out of the blocks on the issue of mental health awareness.

Driven in part by her experiences with a bipolar sister, Ritter said she wants to use her position to make talking about the topic as normal as talking about food and drink.

"We have an extensive language about coffee, but at the same time we don't know what bipolar is, and people don't know the difference between anxiety and severe anxiety."

Ritter is committed to changing that, she said as she curled in a chair in her khaki shorts and flip-flops and talked about the wild, inspiring ride she has been on since assuming her first role in public life seven months ago.

She just returned from her fifth "listening tour" this year, a trip to Summit County, Aspen and Bailey to hear from mental health professionals.

Ritter grants she is still on a steep learning curve about how she can make a difference in her chosen arena.

Mental health professionals are thrilled that she is putting a spotlight on their cause.

And while friends and family say they are inspired by her recent odyssey, they are not surprised.

"This doesn't come from nowhere," said longtime neighbor and friend Marjorie Allison. "Jeannie's been like this for a long, long time."

Staying with goals

Allison vividly remembers when her friend spelled her motives out to her.

They were sitting on Jeannie Ritter's front porch in their Platt Park neighborhood after the young Ritter family had returned from a three-year mission to Zambia about 15 years ago.

Jeannie and Bill Ritter had considered staying on in Africa, but after some thought, decided to come home.

"She told me, 'For us it's really all about building community,' Allison said. "And that's how she has lived her life."

The mother of four became known for driving her kids to school, then selling hot chocolate with whipped cream to parents dropping their own kids off, to raise money for the public school.

All her life, as a former flight attendant, elementary school teacher, Peace Corps volunteer and African missionary - Ritter has focused on connecting people, and on helping people make connections about ideas, Allison said. She has applied that passion to parenting, too.

Allison remembers coming home from a business trip once and having the Ritters' four children drag her into their house, up the stairs to the bathroom.

A cow skeleton sat bleaching in the tub. The kids had found it on a trip to the cabin the family owns with some friends in South Park, and their mother had encouraged them to preserve it and learn the names of all the bones.

"I said, 'Jeannie, you are an awesome mom. How many moms would allow their kids to bring a large vertebrae skeleton into their house?"

The Ritter children have grown since then. Their youngest, Natalie, is now 14. Their oldest, August, 21, will be a senior at Colorado State University in the fall.

August lights up when he talks about how his mother has embraced her new role.

"She's always been a very public person, very outgoing, has so many friends you can't even count them all," he said. "But this is definitely a new type of public life that she's gotten herself into, and she has jumped right into it.

Last spring, he and his grandmother watched her speak to more than 100 people about mental health at the CSU theater.

August said he was "taken aback" by her ease in front of a crowd.

"She spoke about mental health - and it's a really serious topic to speak about - but she did it with a sense of humor and she also was interactive with the crowd and people loved it . . . She's not the typical politician's spouse because she's so personable and so open about any question that's asked her.

"She doesn't try to dodge it or anything like that. She'll be extremely honest, and she'll be extremely honest if she doesn't know the answer, too."

"I'd never been so proud of my mom as I was after I saw her speak."

Speaking at high school

At Platte Canyon High School in Bailey Friday afternoon, Ritter led a circle of about 30 locals in a discussion about how the community has rallied around mental health since the school shooting there last fall.

In attendance were Sheriff Fred Wegener and John and Ellen Keyes, whose daughter, Emily Keyes, was killed by Duane Morrison after Morrison took her and her classmates hostage Sept. 27.

As she asked each person in the circle a question, Ritter looked them directly in the eye, as if no one else were in the room. She listened carefully as they told her about how tight-knit the community had become.

"Don't lose this momentum," she told them.

Ken Stein, executive director of Colorado West Regional Mental Health, said Ritter "is not only listening, but she's learning."

Stein has watched Ritter speak in Grand Junction, Steamboat Springs, Craig, Frisco, Silverthorne and Aspen.

"She was joking that I was stalking her," he said.

Stein and other mental health professionals make a point of attending her functions because they want to encourage her to continue to shine a spotlight on their cause.

Experts tell Ritter that the symposiums she attends are more productive because of her.

"There's a certain amount of civility when I'm around these people," Ritter said. "They're on their best behavior. I'm not used to that kind of respect, compared to being with fourth-graders."

Ritter was at just such a symposium, in the northwestern Colorado town of Walden, when an armed man went to the office of her husband, Gov. Bill Ritter, and declared he was the "emperor."

A state trooper shot and killed Aaron Snyder, 32, outside the office that July 16 afternoon. Snyder's mother had told police he was delusional and being treated by a psychiatrist.

Ritter said her husband told her not to rush home, that the work she was doing was important.

So she traveled to Steamboat Springs that afternoon as planned, to see how a psychiatrist there was able to counsel rural patients via video conferencing technology.

When the meeting was over, she asked for a few minutes with the psychiatrist.

"I'm entitled to a brief session with a psychiatrist, given the events of the day," she told everyone in attendance.

Ritter has repeated that story at other symposiums, to drive home her point that mental health is something everyone should talk about.

Gov. Ritter said the mental health community has "felt a real dry spell" for decades when it comes to getting publicity for their cause.

"This is a difficult," he said. "It is complex, and it's not something where you turn this issue on a dime."

"I believe as much as she does in how this needs to be elevated as an issue."

The first lady says she realizes that at some point, she will have to choose a couple of specific causes within the larger issue of mental health.

In the meantime, she is listening, synthesizing the issues, taking everything in.

"It almost doesn't matter where she focuses," Stein said. "We'll benefit from the attention."

Staff writer April M. Washington contributed to this report. bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059

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