Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302070038
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
WILL IRELAND'S `FIRST LADY' BE VIRGINIAN? WITH LUCK
KRISTI SPRING, a Virginian born and bred, might just end up being married to theprime minister of Ireland - if her husband's career continues upward.On Jan. 12, the day his father was named deputy prime minister of Ireland and minister for foreign affairs, 11-year-old Aaron Spring had just one request:
If his parents were sent to the United States on official business, Aaron wanted to come along.
"We laughed and told him we didn't know if that would be in the budget," says 41-year-old Kristi Spring in her part-Irish and part-Virginia accent - the product of 15 years in Ireland and a Hampton Roads childhood.
Aaron Spring had good reason to want to come to the United States. His maternal grandparents, Walter and Marion Hutcheson, live in Grafton.
His mother, Kristi Spring, is the former Kristi Lee Hutcheson, who graduated from Hampton High School in 1969 and was voted "friendliest" in her senior class. She received a bachelor's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1973 and taught for several years in the Richmond public schools before taking a job as a flight attendant with Trans International Airlines.
Stationed with the airline in New York in 1976, she met Dick Spring, who was then a young barrister and rugby star from the rural west of Ireland.
The couple fell in love after a whirlwind courtship, married in Hampton in 1977 and moved to Ireland.
The Springs lived in Dublin for several years while Dick Spring practiced law and Kristi Spring taught remedial reading.
By June 1981, the couple had moved to Tralee in County Kerry, Dick Spring's rural hometown. Then 31, the lawyer ran for parliament as a member of the Labor Party and handily won a seat.
Kristi Spring, a new mother and novice at the complicated Irish political system, which uses proportional representation to count votes, quickly immersed herself in politics. This was a particularly unstable period in Irish politics, and the government was dissolved three times in 19 months.
During the February 1982 election, Kristi Spring campaigned doggedly throughout County Kerry for her husband, who had been injured in a car accident. He was temporarily bedridden and unable to engage in the grass-roots politicking essential to winning elections in Ireland. Kristi Spring was widely credited with winning that election almost single-handedly for her husband.
In the ensuing years, Spring held onto this seat, was elected leader of the Labor Party and served as deputy prime minister from 1982 to 1987 in a coalition government with Garret FitzGerald as prime minister.
On Nov. 25, 1992, the Irish electorate again went to the polls and many were astonished by the results.
The two major political parties suffered serious losses while Spring's Labor party more than doubled its representation in parliament, winning 20 percent of the vote.
"It was obvious as soon as the votes were counted that Dick Spring would be the kingmaker," says Sean O'Rourke, an Irish television newscaster nd former political writer for one of Dublin's daily newspapers. "The latest opinion polls are showing him to be twice as popular than any other political leaders. His satisfaction rating is about 60 percent while the others are down in the 30s.
"You could say he's living a charmed life all of a sudden."
Ironically there was one vote that Dick Spring, 42, did not receive - his wife's.
"I can vote in local elections but not in Dail [parliament] elections," says Spring, who remains an American citizen. "I would like to have dual citizenship, which my children have, having been born in Ireland to an American mother."
Spring says she is trying to obtain dual citizenship, but the procedure is complicated.
"But no matter what, I would never give up my American citizenship," she says firmly. "It's too much a part of who I am."
Having an American wife does not seem to hurt Spring's image.
"She's very nice, very good looking, definitely an asset," O'Rourke says. "In Ireland, nearly everyone has someone in their family who's gone off to America, so having an American wife seems like the most natural thing in the world."
Kristi Spring says that after 15 years Ireland feels like home. The Springs have three children, Aaron, Laura Lee, 9, and Adam, 6. They live in Tralee, population 16,000, and Dick Spring commutes weekly the 180 miles to Dublin, where the family keeps an apartment.
The Spring family vacations in Hampton Roads most summers.
"The children are very proud of being half American and they love traveling to the States," she says. "I sometimes miss things in the States, my family mostly. But there are wonderful things here, like the fact the children have so much freedom and independence. They can go places by themselves, it's so safe.
"We certainly feel that difference when we go back to the States. We have to make the kids realize that they have to be more careful. I really feel for people who have to live with that all the time."
And there is the mild Irish climate.
"I forget how hot it gets in Virginia," she says, laughing. "If it gets up to 75 or 80 here in the summer, we're having a heat wave."
There has been little time for reminiscing about America since the election the day before Thanksgiving.
"It's been very very exciting," Kristi Spring says of the seven weeks of frantic negotiations during which Spring was courted by leaders of the two major parties, each offering attractive political arrangements in return for his support. "This is going to be a good government, very strong."
In deference to Spring's popularity, the new government is not billing itself as a coalition, but rather a "partnership." Spring himself was awarded the coveted job of minister for foreign affairs - the equivalent of the U.S. secretary of state - and several other Labor Party representatives also landed plum cabinet position.
Given the enormous popularity of her husband, Spring says she can envision the day when she is wife of the prime minister of Ireland.
"I don't see it happening in the next 4 1/2 years," she says thoughtfully. "This is going to be a very stable government.
"But the Labor Party has moved very much toward the social democratic philosophy, as have other labor parties around Europe, and I think it's quite possible that Dick may be prime minister someday," she says.
Kristi Spring admits that life has taken some strange turns for her.
"Who could possibility have foreseen this?" she asks, sounding very Irish for a moment. "But it's fun and I've been very, very lucky."