5 things to know from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s new book | Opinion

For Michigan politicos, the release of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s book, “True Gretch” — out today — is maybe the most anticipated memoir since Prince Harry’s “Spare.” Here are some of the book's revelations.

Gretchen Whitmer has a shark tattoo

In “True Gretch,” Whitmer cops to having not one but two tattoos. The first, which she got with daughters Sydney and Sherry, is a smiley face. When the girls were young, Whitmer writes, she’d draw smiley faces on their stomachs with marker before they left for sleepaway camp — a small reminder that she was always thinking about them. As adults, the trio got matching smiley face tattoos.

The second is a shark.

Whitmer explains in "True Gretch" that she’d heard comedian Na’im Lynn, opening for Kevin Hart at a 2018 show in Detroit, use the phrase "It's Shark Week, m-----f-----," in a bit about how the language women use to discuss menstruation has changed. (When Whitmer was in high school, girls were vague, referring to “a visit from Aunt Flo” or other obfuscatory terms.)

Whitmer writes that she loved the change in attitude — that menstruation shouldn’t be secretive or shameful — and, it cracked her up. It became a pet phrase that she used to reference female empowerment, and to lessen anxiety in tense situations ... like a virtual speech during the 2020 Democratic National Convention.  

Waiting to go live at a UAW hall in Lansing, the mood was tense, Whitmer writes. “Somebody say something funny,” she said. A staffer replied, “It’s Shark Week!” and Whitmer responded, “It’s not just Shark Week, it’s Shark Week m-----f-----,” mouthing the expletive.  

Whitmer writes that she didn’t expect video of her mouthing the word would get out. At first embarrassed, she was relieved that most people seemed to find the gaffe amusing. “It made sense to run toward the fire,” she wrote. Soon, Shark Week memes and merchandise started popping up. Whitmer’s sister made her a cake that said, “It’s Shark Cake, MF.” Her husband Marc bought her a ceramic shark dish. And Whitmer got a shark tattoo.  

Whitmer’s front teeth aren’t real

The teenaged Whitmer had just gotten her braces off before spending a few weeks at a church camp in West Virginia, where she took a header into a concrete slab after another child pushed her during a game of tag. She lost her two front teeth.

Interview:We talked to Whitmer about her new book and asked about tattoos, Gen X and 2028

It was just the latest in a long line of klutzy tumbles, Whitmer writes. When she returned home, her father dubbed her “Gravity Gretchen,” a nickname the governor says made her laugh, and taught her not to take herself too seriously.  

During her first pregnancy, Whitmer writes, her body rejected the teeth her dentist had implanted years before, and she spent the rest of her pregnancy — and the entire legislative season — with a “flipper,” a retainer with false teeth attached.  

Her second husband is a dentist.  

More:Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been consistent in addressing '24 presidential run

Whitmer gets along great with her ex-husband

Whitmer and her first husband, photographer Gary Shrewsberry, share two children, daughters Sydney and Sherry. The couple married in 2001. When they split up in 2008, Whitmer writes, they stayed friends, “in part for our daughters, but also because it made all our lives simpler.”  

Whitmer is aware that some still consider her sprawling modern family — her first husband, their children, his wife, their children, her second husband, Marc Mallory, and his children — unconventional. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

She wants to talk to the men who plotted to kidnap and kill her

In 2020, Whitmer became the subject of a kidnapping and assassination plot. A group of men angry at the governor’s pandemic restrictions planned to abduct the governor and take her to Wisconsin to “try” her for treason. According to FBI informants and wiretaps, the plotters discussed shooting her at her front door, or setting her adrift in a boat in Lake Michigan.  

More:3 years after plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, here are the trial outcomes, verdicts

Eight of the 14 men were sent to prison.  

In “True Gretch,” Whitmer writes that she’d like to sit down with one of them. Sympathetic to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the hardship of the stay-home orders, she found the depths of the plotters’ fury hard to process. “What was I missing?” she writes. “I genuinely wanted to understand how people had gotten angry enough to actually want to kill me.”  

Because some of the plotters’ have ongoing appeals, Whitmer’s lawyers have advised her that the time isn’t right, but she hopes to start that conversation some day.   

She really believes kindness can make the world a better place 

The chapter titles of “True Gretch” have names like “Be a Happy Warrior” and “You’ll Never Regret Being Kind.”  

Whitmer writes that she wants to do right by people – her daughters, her parents and the Michiganders she serves.  

It’s a lot of positivity, and it’s natural to wonder if, well, maybe it’s a little put on. But if you make it through all 158 pages of “True Gretch,” it’s pretty clear that this is who Whitmer is. And if you don’t like it, well, she won’t hold a grudge.  

Nancy Kaffer is editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at nkaffer@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters and we may publish it online or in print.