Photo courtesy of Facebook Beatriz Gutierrez Muller smiles with her husband, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office as president of Mexico Dec. 1.

Photo courtesy of Facebook
Beatriz Gutierrez Muller smiles with her husband, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office as president of Mexico Dec. 1.

ELKINS — A woman who attended Elkins High School as a foreign exchange student in the 1980s now resides in the National Palace of Mexico as the wife of the country’s new president.

Beatriz Gutierrez Muller has rejected the title of “First Lady of Mexico” as being a “role with no concrete functions or responsibilities.” Her husband, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, took office as president on Dec. 1.

She worked as a journalist and for the Mexico City government before marrying Lopez Obrador in 2006. Twenty years before that, however, she arrived in Elkins as a 17-year-old ready to experience American life.

“She came here with the Open Door Exchange,” said Sandy Grahame of Elkins, who with her late husband Joe hosted the girl then known as “Betty” for the 1986-87 school year.

“Our friend Judy Smith, her dad worked with Betty’s grandmother at Open Door Exchange. They wanted her to come to Elkins,” Grahame said this week.

“Our daughter, Jenna, now known as Dr. Gongola, was in the 11th grade, and Betty was technically a senior. She came and spent a year with us.”

Grahame said her family grew fond of the newest member of their household.

“She called me ‘Mom,'” Grahame said. “She was very sweet and a very talented girl. She had Christmas with us and she made some ornaments that we still have.

“She cooked for us. Her cooking wasn’t like the kind of Mexican food you get at a restaurant. She called that ‘Tex-Mex.’ Her cooking was really good, and she cooked a lot of things for us. It wasn’t real spicy. But she brought a little bottle of hot sauce with her and she put it on everything I cooked,” Grahame said with a laugh.

Gutierrez Muller traveled with the Grahame family on several trips to Maryland during her stay.

“Our friend Jean Jory said that Betty joked with her back then, ‘I’ve been everywhere. I’ve been to Cumberland, I’ve been to Baltimore, to Washington, D.C., and I’ve been to Beverly Hills!’ — meaning to Beverly, West Virginia,” Grahame said.

“Her grandmother and mother came here to visit while she stayed here. They did a lot of shopping and took stuff back with them.”

Grahame remembers Gutierrez Muller spending time in her bedroom alone during the spring of that year. It turned out she was secretly embroidering a table cloth as a gift for Grahame. She signed it “Betty, May 1987.”

“She had a great sense of humor and was very smart,” Grahame said. “Her English really improved a lot while she was here.

“She stayed the whole school year and went through graduation. It was a token gesture, she didn’t actually graduate from Elkins High. But she got to go through the line and was in the yearbook,” she said. “Betty made her own dress to wear to graduation.”

Grahame said her family often thought of Gutierrez Muller over the ensuing years.

“We had hoped that she would come back,” Grahame said. “Unfortunately, we lost contact with her for a long time.”

Another Elkins resident managed to reconnect with Gutierrez Muller in the last decade, however.

Brad Martin, who taught Spanish at Elkins High for many years, got to know Gutierrez Muller when she was a student at EHS.

“We had her to dinner several times to our house,” Martin said. “She and I kept up correspondence for a few years when she was at university.”

In 2008, Martin heard that Gutierrez Muller had gotten married and recently had a baby son, Jesus Ernesto.

“I got in touch with her and met up with her in Mexico City that summer while I had a group of EHS students on tour in Mexico,” Martin said. “We spent an evening catching up in a Mexico City restaurant.

“Now, 10 years later, I saw where her husband won the presidency by a landslide. I Facebook messaged her and got a response. Quite a story,” Martin said.

Grahame has also been able to get back in touch with Gutierrez Muller in recent years.

“We reconnected in the last few years,” Grahame said. “She told me she’d gotten married and had a baby and that her husband was in politics.

“This year we were very impressed to learn that her husband was going to become the president.”

Grahame said Gutierrez Muller confided in her about her feelings leading up to Lopez Obrador taking office.

“She was just so nervous about the inauguration,” Grahame said. “I emailed her and said, ‘Your big day is coming. We’re proud of you, and don’t forget us. Love, your family.’

“She wrote back and said the big day had come, and unfortunately her mother had died two days later,” Grahame said. “It’s been a very emotional time for her.”

Lopez Obrador won the election on July 1 with more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Victorious in his third campaign for the presidency, he is Mexico’s first leftist president in decades. During his campaign he promised to clean up crime and fight government corruption.

Gutierrez Muller was a journalist for more than a decade, writing for national publications, before earning a doctorate in literary theory. She has written several books, including a novel and a collection of poetry. After the election, she took to social media to thank Mexico and say, “Together we’ll make history.”