Back before Christine Todd Whitman served as New Jersey’s 50th and first female governor, she was a Hunterdon County kid who came home from school, hopped on her pony and rode to the neighboring farm to hang out with her best friend.
“Sometimes we’d do homework. Sometimes,” Whitman joked as she reminisced about her childhood with New Jersey Monthly at the New Jersey Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Thursday, September 24, where she was honored for her work in public service alongside the late Donald Milford Payne Sr., a former U.S. representative for New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District.
The ceremony was hosted by fellow Hall of Famer Danny DeVito at the newly completed Dream Live Performing Arts Center at American Dream in East Rutherford. The Class of 2026 included SZA, Eddie Brigati of the Rascals, radio personality Big Joe Henry and business leader Christopher J. Paladino.
“My father always said, ‘Leave a place better off than when you got there.’”
—Christine Todd Whitman
Whitman, who served as governor from 1994 to 2001, credits her “ideal childhood” and early understanding of “human impact on the environment” with shaping the environmental priorities she later brought to Trenton. “My father always said, ‘Leave a place better off than when you got there,’” Whitman told NJM.
As governor, Whitman called for the preservation of an additional one million acres across the state. In 1998, New Jersey voters approved a constitutional amendment dedicating funding to the preservation of open space, farmland and historic sites—a move that established a stable funding source for ongoing preservation efforts.
Whitman’s administration also expanded water-quality monitoring along the Jersey Shore, helping officials more accurately determine when beaches needed to close because of unsafe water conditions. Today, the state continues to routinely test water quality at public beaches through its Cooperative Coastal Monitoring Program.
Decades after her time in office, Whitman’s upbringing and impact remain close to home—literally. She still lives on that Hunterdon County farm where it all began.
“I know about that argument,” Whitman says when asked about the hotly contested existence of a certain Garden State region, proclaiming, “I live in Central Jersey.”
