Wives Club celebrates birthday, welcomes local celebrity

Fort Belvoir's Officers' Wives Club celebrated its 57th birthday Tuesday with the tradition of a luncheon and with a guest speaker used to being at a microphone and in front of the camera.

One of the messages of Alison Starling, co-anchor of Good Morning Washington and ABC7 News at Noon, was to follow your dreams and passion and persevere at them.

"I knew at an early age I wanted to be in television and that's why I studied broadcast journalism at the University of Florida," Starling said.

Starling said she felt 'deeply connected' to the military community because of numerous family members' military service. "My grandmother moved 22 times in 32 years because she was a military spouse," she said. "Military spouses are sort of 'the rock,' keeping things together at home when Soldiers are deployed.

"You have the stress, you have the pride. It's in your heart and is something you love," Starling told the spouses group about the military lifestyle.
Regarding her chosen profession, she said, "It's not glamorous getting up at 3 a.m. It's stressful because of deadlines and the competition.
"When it comes to covering big events, such as the South Asia tsunami and the Virginia Tech tragedy, the media can convey the importance of the situation," Starling said.

She also said the worst weather events for her to cover were Hurricane Bonnie in North Carolina in 1998, as a reporter in Chattanooga, Tenn; and Hurricane Isabel in 2003, which affected the East Coast, including the Washington, D.C. area.

"The best story I ever covered, to me, was a story on a principal at a D.C. school who was the first immigrant to become a principal in D.C. schools," Starling said.

During a question-and-answer session with the spouses, she said, "If I could change something about the news, it'd be that we have more time to tell stories. In the Working Woman series I work on, I only have a minute, 30 to showcase a fantastic woman. I'd like to sink my teeth more into the
stories rather than just having enough time to tell the facts."