Politics

Maura Healey, Brandi Carlile, and the next chapter in the story of Massachusetts

"In this state, we're are all trailblazers. We're all leaders. That's why we live in Massachusetts."

Gov. Maura Healey greets onlookers after she is sworn into office on Thursday as Massachusetts’ 73rd governor, making history as the first woman ever elected to the post here and one of the nation’s first openly lesbian governors.
Gov. Maura Healey greets onlookers after she is sworn into office on Thursday as Massachusetts’ 73rd governor, making history as the first woman ever elected to the post here and one of the nation’s first openly lesbian governors. Erin Clark/Globe Staff

By Christopher Gavin

4 minutes to read
Maura Healey

There’s a good chance when she takes the stage for Gov. Maura Healey’s inaugural bash at TD Garden on Thursday night, Brandi Carlile will strap on a guitar, grab a pick, and belt out, “The Story.”

Yes, the track is arguably the six-time Grammy Award winning songwriter’s best known. So there’s that.

But Thursday was also, largely, a day when stories mattered most.

There’s the story of how Healey’s ancestors landed on a river bank in Newbury, some three centuries ago. How, like so many others, they left behind what they knew for the unknown, living off promises of hope — with no guarantees — for life in America.

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There’s the story of how Healey’s great-great-grandfather grew up in Newburyport and how, at age 16, he had his father sign a permission slip so he could march off with the Union Army to fight in the Civil War.

And there’s also the story about how Healey’s grandparents met on the docks of Gloucester one summer some time ago, as her grandmother attended nursing school and her grandfather worked at General Electric.

Or the one when that grandmother was so concerned how Healey — when she was born in Maryland — was not starting her life on Massachusetts soil that she literally dug up soil from some local woods and flew down the coast to place a bag of dirt under the delivery room table.

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“That’s a true story,” Healey quipped in the state House chamber Thursday morning. “Crazy, but true!”

But the story told most Thursday was this one: How Massachusetts, drafting a new chapter in its 400-plus-year-long history, ushered in Healey as the first woman elected to lead the commonwealth.

Healey knows it well.

“I assume this office with humility — mindful of the weight of history and lightened by the gift of gratitude,” Healey, wearing “suffragette white” at the dais, said in her inaugural address. “It is the honor of my life to lead this state.”

In fact, there were a wave of historic firsts.

Healey is the first gay governor of the state and the first lesbian governor in the nation.

Working alongside Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, the duo is also the first all-female elected executive team in the country’s history.

“As forces across this country try to sow division and anger, it fills me with hope to see women like them lead us forward with positivity and empathy,” Carlile said in a statement earlier this week about her headlining performance at the inauguration party. “Their victories were decades in the making, and we know there is more work ahead — but now is the time to pause and celebrate this historic moment.”

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Carlile’s “Story,” for the record, is not necessarily what would be considered a political anthem.

But there are themes of perseverance and triumph…

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I’ve been
And how I got to where I am

But these stories don’t mean anything
When you’ve got no one to tell them to, it’s true
I was made for you

…and there’s a bit of elation in there, in being able to share that story with someone else.

Healey made clear on Thursday she now shares her story with Massachusetts — and she does so with the understanding of her place in the greater context of the long, rich, and prideful tale of this state and its pioneering people.

“This is the greatest state in the union,” she said. “But the thing is, people are leaving at some of the highest rates in the country — giving up on the Massachusetts story.”

She drafted the chapter her administration will write, vowing an aggressive agenda with priorities around building more housing, revamping workforce training, and making Massachusetts a world leader in combatting the climate crisis.

Healey rattled off plans to launch a new program, MassReconnect, to offer free community college to students over 25 who don’t have a college degree. She said she will pursue a child tax credit for “every child, every family” and see through a host of environmental initiatives, including doubling the state’s offshore wind and solar goals.

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“This state achieves its purpose when the bedrock of individual freedom meets the bond of the public spirit,” Healey said in her address. “This is our common wealth, in the truest sense — equally ours, equally yours, whether your Massachusetts story began in an older time or in our own time.

“This is why people come to Massachusetts: To write their own story, to become their own first, to take up the common good.”

And though Healey is a notable “first,” she said every resident, in their own way, is one, too.

They may be a first-generation immigrant, or the first family member to go to college. The first person from the neighborhood to start a business.

“In this state, we’re are all trailblazers. We’re all leaders,” she said. “That’s why we live in Massachusetts.”

Then, after a pause, she asked, “What story will we write together?”

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