As America marks 250 years since its founding, the instinct is to look toward the famous names we learned early in our education — the signers, the generals, the architects of independence. But anniversaries like this one ask something different of us. The next 250 years are an invitation to ask who belongs in the story we’re still writing.
Caregiving has been woven into this country’s history since its first winter at war. Behind every soldier across centuries, there was almost always someone unnamed beside them — a spouse, a mother or father, a neighbor — providing care and compassion to support a loved one’s recovery and keep a family intact.
That work is largely missing from our history books. And not a lot had changed until one woman refused to let that be our next chapter.
Senator Elizabeth Dole had already lived several careers worth of public service by the time most people slow down. She was the first woman to be appointed U.S. Secretary of Transportation and later U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina, and the first woman to be president of the American Red Cross since Clara Barton herself founded it a century before. But all of this was simply the starting point for what would come next.
At Walter Reed, her husband, Senator Bob Dole, spent eleven months recovering from surgery and illness. Senator Elizabeth Dole found herself doing what millions of Americans do quietly, without paperwork or recognition. She became a caregiver. In the hallways of that hospital, she met spouses, parents, and children doing the same — managing medications, navigating bureaucracies, holding families together. She noticed something the nation had not. There was no name for what they were doing, and no system in place to see them.
In 2012, she built the Elizabeth Dole Foundation around the idea that 14.3 million Americans caring for wounded, ill, and injured veterans deserved to be counted, supported, and known. And the foundation gave them a name. Hidden Heroes.
Senator Elizabeth Dole did not invent caregiving. She brought it into the light — and then she built something around it. That particular patriotism doesn’t storm a beach or sign a declaration. It is what makes this more than a story about the past.
On July 29, Senator Elizabeth Dole turns 90. I’ve had the privilege of watching her determination and commitment to this community shape the lives of millions of families. That legacy is a model for what American leadership can look like going forward.
The question this anniversary asks of all of us is not only what happened in the last 250 years, but what we choose to build into the next. Founding documents and famous battles will always anchor the story. But so should the people who never asked to be remembered — the caregivers who have stood beside every generation of American service, visible to no one but the person they loved. If we are serious about the next chapter, they belong in it.
On her 90th birthday, the most lasting gift Elizabeth Dole has given this country may be not just an institution, but a name for the heroes history forgot to write down and a call the rest of us are still meant to answer.
Steve Schwab is CEO of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, the nation’s leading organization supporting military and veteran caregivers, their veterans, and families. Since 2014, he has grown the foundation into a national force behind programmatic expansion and major reforms, including the 2025 signing of the Dole Act, the largest bipartisan VA reform legislation in decades. He has advised the White House, testified before Congress, and appeared on NBC’s TODAY, 60 Minutes, and NPR as a leading voice for military caregiving families.