Tipper Gore lives mostly in Virginia these days, spends time traveling to New York and California to visit four grandchildren, continues to take photographs, advocates for those less fortunate than she and still plays drums although it’s with family members now and not on stage.

The former second lady was in Nashville, a former hometown, recently for a fundraiser for Tennessee Voices for Children, a statewide organization that she founded in 1990 when services for those with mental health issues were not as available as they are today.

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“I’m enjoying where I am and particularly that I’m a grandmother,” Gore said in a rare interview.

Gore and her husband, former Vice President Al Gore, have been low key since they separated in 2010. Al Gore, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee, remains in Nashville.

But Tipper Gore doesn’t mind being high profile when it’s something she believes in. And that’s how she said she felt about giving the keynote address at the Tennessee Voices for Children inaugural Green Ribbon Gala on Nov. 5 at The Westin Nashville.

“They contacted me months ago. I said I’m just going to do that. It felt right. It was sold-out and was very successful,” Gore said.

Rikki Harris, CEO of Tennessee Voices, said a goal of $100,000 was reached. She said Gore was excitedly responsive when asked to speak.

“She wouldn’t take a dime. She paid her own expenses and bought her own table,” Harris said.

The organization serves 50,000 children, youth, families and child-serving providers. While Gore said she’s “very touched and very proud” of what Voices for Children does, 49 percent of kids and families with needs still aren’t getting services.

“There is still a stigma attached (to mental illness),” she said.

Anyone interested in more information about the organization can call 1-800-670-9882.

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Gore was interviewed by phone for this story on the condition that politics not be discussed since she was representing Voices for Children, a 501(c)3, nonprofit organization. It was arranged by her chief of staff, Elizabeth Spencer, who was present during the interview. Spencer is employed by the Carthage Group, a private personal business in Nashville established by Al Gore.

A “meet-and-greet” reception was held the afternoon prior to the gala which was attended by Ann and Dick Ince of Knoxville. Ann Ince succeeded Tipper Gore as president of the board when she left that position for Al Gore to run for vice president in 1992. The two women met when they worked together in Washington, D.C., with the National Mental Health Association and Tipper Gore chaired the children’s committee.

“She seems very content, very low key, very comfortable with herself,” Ince said in describing a half-hour visit with her former colleague.

She said Tipper Gore used to seem “bigger than life,” wearing clothes with shoulder pads with her hair fixed. She was at the reception in a comfortable black outfit, straight hair and was thinner.

“She looked like she could run out the door grabbing her camera to go be a photographer,” Ince said.

Gore said her speech at the gala touched on how she came to establish Tennessee Voices for Children and it involves meeting a former Knoxville pediatrician after her son, Al Gore III, nearly died in 1989 following a Baltimore Orioles baseball game. The son, 6 at the time, was running across a busy street outside the stadium when he was struck by a car and thrown 30 feet.

She was able to take a year to be with him as he recovered, Gore said. Afterward she met Dr. Andrea Eberle, who had a 7-year-old daughter who had been diagnosed as bipolar.

“We’ve had to mortgage our house to pay for insurance,” she said Eberle told her. “When that runs out we can turn her over to the custody of the state and then the state will insure her. A lot of people are in a similar situation, having to move or double their mortgage, or need continuing help for out-of-pocket expenses.”

Tipper, the former Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson, grew up in Arlington, Va. She and Al Gore met at his senior prom and dated five years before they married in 1970. She attended a private Episcopal school in Alexandria, Va., in high school and played basketball, softball and field hockey as well as the drums for an all-girl band. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boston University and a master’s in psychology from Vanderbilt University’s George Peabody College.

She worked part time as a newspaper photographer for The Tennessean and as a freelance photographer in Washington after her husband was elected to Congress in 1976 to represent the district that included Carthage in Smith County, which was Al Gore’s hometown.

She was active in social issues through the Congressional Wives Task Force that included volunteering in homeless shelters; founded the Parents Music Resource Center which successfully lobbied for an agreement which led to recording labels being voluntarily placed on music with violent or sexually explicit lyrics; served as Mental Health Policy Adviser to President Bill Clinton, and has long been an advocate for the LGBT community. In 2013, she was honorary chair of the Nashville AIDS Walk & 5K Run.

The Gores have three other children besides the son: Karenna Gore Schiff, a lawyer and author who lives in New York City and has three children; Kristin Gore, a screen and TV writer in Los Angeles, and Sarah LaFon Gore Maiani, an artist who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif, who has one child. Albert Gore III lives with his wife, the former Brittany Toscano, in northern Virginia outside Washington, D.C., in the community where Tipper Gore grew up.

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The children bring Tipper and Al Gore together on family occasions, sometimes to Carthage. Each has been reported by the national media as dating others.

Tipper Gore has a second home in the Santa Barbara area, where she does volunteer work on behalf of the homeless and LGBT community. She said when she visits daughter Sarah Maiani, her husband, Patrick, a musician, and their two-year-old, that she practices the drums.

“She has a full drum set. I play when I’m visiting her and her husband,” Gore said, adding. “A couple of years back, I played with Mickey Hart in Washington.” That was during an appearance of The Grateful Dead in April 2009.

She is co-chair of the advisory board of the Diana Basehart Foundation in Santa Barbara, which assists homeless and low-income people with animal care. In 2014, she had a photography exhibit at the Wall Space Gallery to support the Pacific Pride Foundation that provides services to the HIV/AIDS and LGBT communities of Santa Barbara.

With the only reference to politics in the interview, Gore said that she had been asked to do photography leading up to the last election.

“I turned down the offer. I won’t say for whom. I do (photographs) for causes,” she said.

She has published several books featuring photography to tell a story, such as “The Spirit of Family” with Al Gore in 2002.

Tipper Gore said that she was active recently, as were the Maianis, in Concert Across America, an event held Sept. 25 in which activists sponsored simultaneous musical performances to honor victims of gun violence. Sept. 25 is the date Congress has designated as the National Day for Remembrance for murder victims.

She co-produced with Bill Allen, former editor of National Geographic magazine with whom she’s been linked several years, a two-minute video on gun violence prevention.

She said the purpose was not to lobby Congress.

“It was to start a conversation,” she said.

Georgiana Vines, retired News Sentinel associate editor, may be reached at 865-577-6612 or [email protected].

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