By Donald H. Harrison
(Photo: Wikipedia)
SAN DIEGO — The visit of First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to San Diego on Friday, Feb. 3 and Saturday, Feb. 4 highlighted three members of the American Jewish community: Sara Jacobs, Gabrielle Giffords, and Steven A. Cohen.
Jacobs, a Democrat who represents San Diego in Congress, greeted Biden upon her arrival in San Diego, utilizing their time together to discuss the need for child care for military families, according to Deborah Sullivan Brennan who covered the First Lady’s trip for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Jacobs is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Biden earned her doctorate in education.
A few days before that meeting, Jacobs had teamed up with fellow Jewish Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon) to urge that high-quality child care and early childhood education be top priorities in the President’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget. They urged that $390 billion be set aside for these purposes. “The child-care crisis … is preventing families from finding or affording the care and education that they and their young children need,” the congresswomen stated. Their letter was also co-signed by 64 Democratic members of Congress.
Giffords, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona who survived a 2011 assassination attempt, is the namesake of the USS Gabrielle Giffords, the tenth Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-10) to come off the line. The ship was named in honor of Giffords’ resilience after being seriously wounded and also for her having been a supportive Navy wife of former Space Shuttle Endeavor commander Mark Kelly, who today is a Democratic U.S. Senator from Arizona.
Biden broke the ceremonial bottle of champagne over the Giffords’ bow in 2015, so while in San Diego she made a brief visit to the ship, where she served pizza to approximately 10 crew members. Later, she helped to serve dinner to more of the ship’s crew and their family members at a dinner hosted by the Armed Services YMCA at the Admiral Kidd Club.
“Your health and your happiness matter to us,” Biden told the military family members. “We have to make sure service is a matter of dignity and honor pride and accomplishment for your entire family.”
Earlier on Friday, Biden focused on the efforts of her husband, President Joe Biden, to fund cancer research in a drive he has likened to a moonshot. She visited the Logan Heights Family Health Center in the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Logan Heights located a short distance from the 32nd Street Naval Base where the USS Gabrielle Giffords is berthed.
She told her hosts there that “cancer touches us all; the Bidens are no exception.” The Center has received a $100,000 federal grant to provide cancer screenings, early detection programs, and to offer medical care strategies. As Sullivan pointed out in her news coverage, the President’s son, Beau, died of cancer in 2015, and Biden herself had surgery recently to remove a common type of skin cancer.
Concerns for members of the military and their health were on display Saturday when Biden visited the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic in Oceanside, near Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Cohen, a billionaire Wall Street hedge fund manager and majority owner of the New York Mets baseball team, set aside $275 million in 2016 for the Cohen Veterans Network to underwrite medical clinics for veterans and active military families throughout the country.
At the clinic, the First Lady heard from Marines and veterans who had suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as from the stress of returning to civilian life. She commented during a roundtable discission that she once asked her late stepson Beau, who was himself a retired military officer, what he thought was a need of military personnel. She said he identified mental health as a most important need.
Commenting about the U.S. military thoughtfully waiting to shoot down the Chinese balloon until it was over the Atlantic Ocean, rather than over a populated stretch of the United States, Biden said she hopes that her fellow Americans think about the great contributions military personnel make to this country. “Joe and I think about them every day,” she said. “We pray for them in our prayers at dinner.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com