First Lady Dr. Jill Biden completes inaugural trip to Dayton

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — The First Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, made her first-ever stop in Dayton Wednesday.

Biden landed in the Miami Valley around 1:00 p.m. at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where she was greeted by members of the military and the City of Dayton Mayor Jeffrey Mimms

>> PHOTOS: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden arrives at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

After landing, Biden visited Beverly Gardens Elementary, a school that is part of the Purple Heart School Program. This program is designed to help with the educational and emotional challenges children face in military families. A teacher who talked with Biden said 75 percent of the students at the school are attached to the military base and the works to support them. Biden also visited second-grade students, and some got help on their math homework from the First Lady.

After the school visit, Biden traveled to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, where she met with members of the military and their families and listened to their concerns.

“I wanted to come talk to all of you today to hear about your experiences,” Biden told a group of parents, in uniform and civilian attire, at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. “The Bidens are a military family. My dad served in World War II. And my son was Army. He served in Iraq,” said Biden.

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This trip was a part of the joining forces initiative that supports those who serve in the military, veterans, caregivers, and survivors.

“My job as First Lady is to travel around the country and hear from our military, hear what’s going right. hear what’s going wrong, and take it back to Joe so when he’s doing things like figuring out the budget, he knows that the military needs childcare I have heard that all across this nation,” Biden said.

The last stop on her tour of Dayton was at the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, where she met with nurses, physicians, therapists, and other military medical staff inside a C-130 fuselage.

“They can talk, they can breathe, they can bleed,” one medic told Biden, explaining a lifelike mannequin on a gurney at the School of Aerospace Medicine.

The First Lady’s next stop on her itinerary was to a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Nashville school shooting.

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