MIDLAND, Texas — March is Women’s History Month, celebrating the important contributions women have made to the history of the world.
NewsWest9’s Christina Burgess sat down with Lori Blong, the current mayor of Midland and the first female mayor in the city’s history.
What follows is a transcript of our interview with her.
Christina: For the month of March it is Women’s History Month and at Newswest 9 we are highlighting influential women who are leaders right here in our community, and I’m joined today with none other than Mayor Lori Blong. Mayor Blong thank you for joining me today
Lori: Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.
Christina: So starting off in honor of it being Women’s History Month it’s only right to start off with highlighting the fact that you’ve made history right here in Midland as Midland’s first female mayor. When you hear that tell me your thoughts initially? How does that make you feel.
Lori: It is kind of exciting to be the first female mayor. It’s not actually a thing I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about but it is exciting. I think it’s encouraging to kids in our community, to girls and to all of our community to know that this is the first time.
Christina: And so I’ll have you take me back to growing up as a child. A lot of times in jobs we’re in now, we’re like as kids ,“I’m gonna be mayor one day” or I’m gonna be president or a doctor.” When you were younger, was mayor something you dreamed of becoming?
Lori: It was never something I wanted to do. I was not interested in becoming mayor as a kid. I grew up here in Midland, I was born in Midland Memorial Hospital and had loving parents and a great intact family here in our community and I wanted to be a teacher when I was a little girl. So I really didn’t know anything about city governance or leadership in that capacity and so just was not on my radar as a small child, it just was never on my radar in high school or college. It really wasn’t on my radar until about a couple years before I got on city council and so it’s been a process and evolution.
Christina: Tell me a little bit about you since you are a Midland native. How was it for you in middle school here, high school, college. How was that for you?
Lori: I really loved my time here in Midland. I grew up going to Rusk Elementary, then I went to Lamar. I went to Midland Christian for a few years and then SJ and Midland High. I graduated from Midland High. And so I had this experience of a lot of different schools here in Midland as many of us did in the 80s and 90s, with the bussing system and moving around our community, but I had an opportunity to get to know lots of different parts of Midland and people from all different parts of our community. I think that’s part of where my love for Midland really was born. And I went to college at Hardin Simmons in Abilene and got a psychology degree and really had an opportunity to extend my education there, and then ultimately became a teacher for about five years right after college.
Christina: Teachers are so integral and important in shaping a young kid’s future and just how we grow up and become adults. I’ll ask you who are some teachers or women in your life who influenced you to become who you are today?
Lori: The teacher who was the greatest influence in my life was a woman named Mrs. Hooker at San Jacinto Jr. High in the 8th grade and she was my English teacher, and she made a huge impact in my life and really taught me how to write articulately and to convey my thoughts and emotions through the written word and really shaped my ability to write, in a way no other teacher before or since has done and so she was a huge influence. She also had a group of us who ate lunch in her room, she spent a lot of time with us and we could ask any question we wanted to and she was happy to answer us. She was just relationally important but also academically important to me as a teacher. So she was probably the most influential teacher.
The most influential women probably were women in my church or even my grandmother was probably the greatest influence in my life. She grew up in Hendricks Home for Children in Abilene and she had a really difficult life, her own circumstances were hard but she made choices to comply with the people that were leaders in her life and to follow and make choices in the friends she choose. And in the career that she choose to chose a good life for herself and then to raise a family that cared well for each other and so her influence in my life was really, really important as well.
Christina: Mayor Blong, you are a mom, wife, you are mayor and you are also a businessowner. For those that are watching and thinking how does Mayor Blong do this? What’s your secret? How do you do what you do?
Lori: Well I will say first of all it is not possible to do it all, and I think that there is a myth sometimes that women should be able to do it all, that all of these expectations of us we ought to be able to meet them and exceed them, and the reality is that’s not possible and so I have had to really identify what my priorities are and I think of them in terms of the balls that I’m juggling. We as women are also juggling balls and some of the balls that I juggle are glass and if I drop them they will break and shatter, and some of them are rubber and I can let those bounce for a while and they’re gonna be just fine. So the glass balls in my life are my marriage and my family, my children and even my job, I have to contribute to the finances of my family. These are things I have to pay attention to and my role as mayor right now is in that category. But then there’s some other things that are bouncing right now, they’re not things I’m continuing to juggle and some of those things, those priorities I have to be able to let some things go.
One other thing I have learned to do is I meal prep on the weekends, so I make most of our meals for the week on Saturday and have them all. So that’s a thing most people don’t know about me but I love to cook and if I’m going to be able to do it successfully and take care of nutrition for my family then I have to plan ahead. And so I have a really good system for that.
Christina: That’s really good! Meal prepping helps a lot. You also said early when we started talking that mayor wasn’t something that you always been dreaming of growing up, it’s kind of something recent. Can you talk about that transition that got you into this office?
Lori: So 2013 my husband and I started our company. I had my third baby and had postpartum depression after that. My father passed away and I was very close to him, and then my husband and I lost three grandparents in between us, and then my third baby had some health issues so this was one of those years that was really difficult and we all look back on years like that and wonder how we survived. But that year 2013 for me was the year that was really difficult, and it took me some time to come off that and so really through going through some counseling and working on my own plans and doing some work on myself. What am I gonna do with my career, and as a mom, and making sure I’m healthy and my family’s headed in a way that I want it to go. So it took a period of years to really feel like I came back into focus with the things that were priorities and I attended something at the IF:Gathering in 2017 and heard a woman named Jill Brisko speak, and she shared some things there that really impacted me and the first one is that your primary place of calling is right where you are today and it’s not a future version of yourself, when your career takes off or when your kids are grown or when you have the house that you finally wanted, that’s not where you’re primary place of calling is. It’s where you are right now and so when I began to take that seriously and look to see okay this is my home. This is my primary place of calling, how am I gonna make an impact here, what are the things that are the most important to me right now? And those are the places that I dug in and that’s become an important part of this story for me.
Christina: Such good three things and it’s really good for people to remember that, so if they need a little refresher of why I’m doing what I’m doing or why I’m going for what I’m going at. And segwaying into serving as mayor here for Midland and being in office, I know you guys have spoke about parks here, the roads, schools. But let’s talk a little bit about the quality of life for Midlanders here. While in office, what things are you wanting to change or improve on?
Lori: One of the things that we made strides actually in council, today in council we made the decision to go with Bass Pro Shops, that’s coming to Midland so that was an important change. We also approved a lease agreement for an indoor sports facility and so those two things embody something that’s important to me: family-friendly activities and things to do for our community. Midland needs more of that. We have an average age of 31-32 depending on which study you’re looking at and we have so many kids that our largest group of population is ages 0-4, and so family is so important to this community and we need to plan ahead for things that are gonna provide well for those kids and families. So really parks and other economic development opportunities that point towards those family friendly activities are huge priority for me.
Christina: I’m glad you spoke on the kids here because we’re gonna do a little switch to you as a kid. Young Lori, what would she think of now if she could see herself as mayor, mom, wife, businessowner. What do you think she would say?
Lori: I think she would be surprised. Young Lori would not have expected this. You know I was really deeply involved in my church and my school and in community even as a kid, but I don’t know if I saw myself as having an opportunity to be in a role like this as a kid. So it’s been a slow series of things that I’ve said yes to that’ve led me to this opportunity. It was not something that I just set out for as a small child and so I think I would be surprised. I will tell you I was kind of a bossy little girl and I think that that’s often the case for little girls, we see that and we call it bossiness but sometimes that’s leadership skills that are in training. You have to work the rough edges of that bossiness off because that doesn’t play very well in real life, but as the bossiness grows and as you develop and mature a lot of times that grows into leadership and the ability to see where we’re headed and what we need to do to get there and so I think that that is something people cultivated in me.
Christina: Do you have any advice for young little girls or young women who are watching this today? Any advice for them as they get ready to embark on life
Lori: I think that one of the main things we can learn, all of us not just little girls but all of us can learn to be teachable, be coachable. We tell that to our kids at our house about that a lot, you’re gonna come up against hard things and you have the opportunity to be rebellious or angry about that or learn from it. And I think every time you can take an opportunity to take a hard thing, take a criticism from a teacher or coach, take encouragement or correction from a boss, you have an opportunity to make a better choice and to grow in those leadership skills and so sometimes I’ve done that well and sometimes I haven’t done that well but I’ve been very thankful to have good leaders in my own life good mentors who’ve helped me work through those things.
Christina: I think thats such great piece of advice. I know throughout this whole interview you’ve dropped so many great gems that I know many people will be able to take with them. So thank you so much Mayor Blong for talking with me today.
Lori: Well thank you so much, I appreciate this opportunity.