Dr. Joyce Brothers speaks during the Deployment as a Family Affair conference in Heidelberg earlier this week. (Jason L. Austin / U.S. Army)
When U.S. Army Europe officials went looking for a keynote speaker to address a group contending with the problems of deployed soldiers’ families, they found Dr. Joyce Brothers.
Brothers, 77, perhaps the first media psychologist, had long ago written a paper about submariners.
“They are generally a cut healthier emotionally than others of a similar age and background because of their willingness to push themselves a little bit further and not settle for an easier kind of existence,” she wrote.
Brothers, conference organizers decided, could “tell us what we’re going to have to watch for” after deployment and redeployment. Her all-inclusive fee, including airfare from her home in Fort Lee, N.J., was $37,000.
Brig. Gen. Rusty Frutiger, USAREUR deputy chief of staff for personnel, said it was money well spent.
A psychology major in college, Frutiger said he had long admired Brothers, who first came into the public eye in the 1950s when she won $64,000 answering a question about boxing on “The $64,000 Question” game show.
She “is considered one of the most influential women in the world, and tied right up there with Golda Meir,” Frutiger said.
According to her resume, Brothers and Meir, a former Israeli prime minister, tied for 10th place in a Good Housekeeping magazine poll of the world’s most admired women, although the year of the poll isn’t specified. Meir died in 1978.
But Brothers, whose advice column still runs in 176 newspapers and who gives talks on a variety of topics, is still going strong.
A tiny woman in a tweed suit with a sparkly ‘Hooah’ pin, Brothers on Monday taped spots for American Forces Network, telling families that she knew how stressful homecomings could be.
“Now take the time to pull together as a family,” she concluded in a soft, sympathetic voice.
She said she’d been surprised at a meeting with local military families to hear about the strains arising a month after troops return from deployment, when it appears to soldiers that their spouses are far less sympathetic than their “battle buddy.” This often creates an enormous fight, Brothers said, and it’s good to know about it in advance.
“If they expect it, it can be very helpful,” she said.
Military families, she said, are different than civilian ones, in part because of frequent moves.
“If the family stays full and complete, [the children] become very, very competent and develop a resilience that is wonderful,” she said.
