Kate Donnelly
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Kate Donnelly de Romero is a former First Lady of Puerto Rico, having served in that role from 1977 to 1984 while her husband, Carlos Romero Barceló, served as Puerto Rico's fifth elected Governor. Prior to that she served for eight years, from 1969 to 1976, as First Lady of San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital city.
Born in Long Island, New York, "doña" Kate moved to Puerto Rico in the early 1960's to work with Citibank. She met a young attorney who subsequently became her husband and the father of her two children, Juan Carlos and Melinda Romero Donnelly, a former member of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico.
During her years as First Lady of San Juan she kept a relatively low profile, due in part to the fact that she was raising her two small children, as well as giving support to her husband's two sons from his previous marriage. By the 1976 gubernatorial campaign she began a more active role in her husband's bid for La Fortaleza, the Governor's Mansion.
As First Lady, she assumed an active role on many issues, including providing support to the widows of policemen killed in the line of duty. She wrote a cookbook with her favorite recipes, "Cocinando desde La Fortaleza", the proceeds of which were donated entirely to charity. She also became active in the rights of the disabled, becoming one of the few First Ladies to ever testify at the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly when she lobbied in favor of approval of a bill regarding the removal of architectural barriers affecting the physically handicapped, a bill suggested by architect George McClintock and filed by then-House Consumer Affairs chair Jorge Navarro Alicea.
Other issues that attracted Mrs. Romero's attention were environmental conservation, the arts, children's causes, education and historic preservation.
In spite of not having been born in Puerto Rico, "doña" Kate, in her heavily accented Spanish, was one of the most active First Ladies in defending all things Puerto Rican.
After leaving the Governor's Mansion, she began assuming roles independent of her role as spouse of an active politician and in 1999 was appointed as one of three Trustees of the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, a Congressionally-created trust that owns and manages several of Puerto Rico's most valuable environmentally-sensitive areas. The Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, and Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá appointed her to a second term in 2005, joined by recent appointees Loren Ferré Rangel and Mack Mattingly.
