 | HITCHING A RIDE: A young Heather Wilson
rides her brother's wagon |
The only time I saw tears in Scotty Wilson's eyes was the day I left home and headed to the United States Air Force Academy. I was 17.
I know that he was proud of me, and not just because I was his only granddaughter. I was the same age he’d been when he’d lied about his age to get into the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. My Dad, Doug Wilson, enlisted in the United States Air Force after high school and ended up a crew chief at Walker Airfield in Roswell, New Mexico.
Scotty was a proud native of Aberdeen, Scotland, but there wasn’t any work to be had there after the war. So he packed up and headed for America where he could make a new life for himself.
A BAG OF POTATOES
He soon wrote home to ask Annie Macintosh to join him in America as his bride, and she did. They were married the Sunday she stepped off the boat in Boston, and now I wear Annie’s wedding ring as my own. Annie was a seamstress and someday I’ll give my daughter, Caitlin, the silver thimble Annie was given by her mother when she left Scotland for America.
Annie told me that when she and my grandfather finally settled in Keene, New Hampshire with their two sons, it was the day before Thanksgiving and, it was the Depression. She had a dollar in her pocket that bought the bag of potatoes she fixed for the family’s holiday dinner.
Scotty was a barnstormer and started airports all over New England. So it was no surprise that Doug Wilson inherited his father’s passion for flying. My Dad started trading work on airplanes for flying lessons. He was just 13, and he celebrated his 16th birthday by earning his pilot’s license.
TAX RELIEF FOR DAD... AND THE RED KITE
When his time in the Air Force was up, Dad went home and married my mother. I was their second child of three, born two days before the end of 1960. Dad bragged about my sense of timing, for being an extra tax deduction for the whole year.
Our house had two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a den that was full of airplane. Dad and his best buddy were building their own experimental open-cockpit biplane.
My two brothers and I had a good life in our little house in the woods. Dad built us a treehouse and our uncle applied his welding skills to building a swing set with a trapeze bar.
Dad laughed a lot. I remember the red box kite he built and showed us how to fly. I remember riding with him on his motorcycle.
SAYING GOODBYE
One November morning I came downstairs and saw my mother sitting in the kitchen. Something was terribly wrong. She told my brothers and me that our Dad was dead, killed in a traffic accident on his way home from work. I was six years old.
It bothered me that I couldn’t remember saying goodbye to him. I wrote a note that I kept tucked away for a very long time: “The last time I saw my Dad I said goodbye Dad, and he kissed me.”
Mom faced the responsibility of caring for her three kids, eight, six, and four years old. Nearly two years later, she married again and when my little brother started school, she went back to work as a Registered Nurse. Our stepfather was a policeman, and an alcoholic. Eventually, he lost his job and they divorced.
AIMING HIGH
I wasn’t part of the in-crowd, but I loved school and got good grades. When the Air Force Academy announced it would accept women, I was a junior in high school and decided to apply. I will always remember the phone message from my Congressman’s office, telling me I’d earned the appointment. My little brother took the call and lost the message behind the radiator in the kitchen. I found it about a week later. It was St. Patrick’s day in 1978 when I returned the call to my Congressman’s office and they confirmed the good news. I would be going to the Air Force Academy.
It was the beginning of a life I could never have dreamed of for myself. In our little town there were no women who were lawyers or doctors or business leaders. I never knew anyone who had a passport. I would be the first person in my family to go to college.
But I would succeed at the Air Force Academy, becoming a distinguished graduate and a Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford, I earned both a master’s and a doctoral degree, writing a book about international law that won a prize from the International Red Cross. As an Air Force officer I worked with our British allies and then at NATO Headquarters in Belgium. I even ended up on the American negotiating team hammering out arms deals with the Soviets. I was saved from signing up for law school when I got a call from the White House asking me to join the staff of the National Security Council as director for defense policy and arms control.
And then the most wonderful thing happened. A man from Albuquerque, who had taught a law class at the Air Force Academy, and with whom I’d kept in casual contact for nine years, invited me to join him to see a play in New York. We fell in love, got married, and I left Washington for life in the high desert of New Mexico.
I started a small business, and became a parent three times...once by adoption, a son named Scott, and twice by birth, son Joshua and daughter Caitlin. I took an active role in the community, even becoming a candidate for superintendent of Albuquerque Schools. I didn’t get that job, but in 1995 Governor Johnson asked me to lead the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department in tackling some of the toughest social problems we face. I was proud of improvements made in foster care and adoptions, in childcare services, and in strengthening the juvenile justice system during my time in state government.
I was happy in my work at CYFD. But a number of Republican leaders urged me to run for Congress when Steve Schiff became ill with cancer, and I did.
 NEW MEXICO'S CONGRESSWOMAN
I had no idea that running for Congress would be the bruising battle it proved to be, but I was honored to win the trust of the voters in a special election in June 1998. It was only the second time a woman was elected to Congress from New Mexico. I went to work learning how to be a legislator, and started getting important things done for the families of New Mexico.
I was re-elected to a second full term in 2000, and became the first woman from New Mexico to serve more than one term in Congress. Every two years since then the voters have entrusted me to continue to serve them.
A CRAFTSMAN FOR NEW MEXICO
It's been more than nine years since I was first elected to the Congress. In that time I've gained in seniority and learned how to get things done. We've built upon the strong reputation my predecessors had for exceptional constituent service. I'm proud of that and of the small team of civil servants who help me do that job.
In Washington, I invest my time in committee work, where the heavy lifting of legislating is done in the House of Representatives. I serve on two committees. The Energy and Commerce Committee is one of the most powerful in the House with broad jurisdiction over public health, energy, environmental protection, consumer protection, and telecommunications. I also serve on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence where I use my national security background to help quietly steward laws and programs vital to protect the nation.
 | Rep. Heather Wilson:
Craftsman for New Mexico |
Everyone comes to Congress having lived their own stories. There are farmers, teachers, bankers and more than a few lawyers. There are immigrants who escaped persecution in foreign lands and Representatives who trace their families back to the American Revolution. There are fast talking New Yorkers and rich southern drawls and voices as flat as the Nebraska plains. The Congress is a tapestry as rich as the nation.
I bring my own thread to that tapestry. A New Mexican, a mom, an Air Force Academy graduate, a small business owner who ran a state social services agency and knows what it takes to get a dollar worth of value out of every tax dollar we spend in government.
Sometimes, I walk around our beautiful Capitol at night and I wonder at the tremendous vibrance and resilience of this great nation. I know my Grandparents, Scotty and Annie Wilson, would be proud of their only granddaughter serving in the Congress. But, in a way, I don't think they would be surprised. They believed in this country and gave up everything to be a part of it. They taught me to love America, to serve the community, and to be a craftsman at my work.
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