Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
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Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
From Friesland to the Frontlines: The Transformative Journey of Rhea Pruett in the Michigan Army National Guard
What if your life's journey took you from a small town in the Netherlands to serving in the Michigan Army National Guard? Meet Rhea Pruett, whose incredible story of resilience and transformation unfolds in this episode. Born in Bagafeen, Friesland, Rhea opens up about her family's immigration to the United States, navigating the challenges of settling in West Michigan's Dutch community, and the profound impact her upbringing had on her path. Rhea shares heartfelt tales of her family's love and support, including her father's unique ways of showing affection and her mother's practical wisdom.
Listeners will be captivated by Rhea's unexpected leap from a voice major at Grand Valley to joining the military, a decision sparked by a simple magazine ad. Rhea recounts her initial experiences in basic training and the camaraderie she found within the Women's Army Corps, highlighting the evolving roles of women in the armed forces. The episode dives into Rhea's military career, exploring the diversity she encountered, the leadership challenges she faced, and her eventual transition to a warrant officer. As we journey through her nearly four decades of service, Rhea reflects on the changing landscape of military uniforms, the intricacies of contractual obligations, and her aspirations to connect with her European roots.
In our discussion, Rhea also sheds light on the often-overlooked contributions of women in the military, emphasizing the vital work of the Military Women's Memorial. We explore poignant moments from her career, including her role as a casualty coordinator and the emotional weight of notifying families about soldiers' injuries or deaths. Rhea's story is not just about her own achievements but also about the powerful legacy she aims to leave for future leaders. Join us as we celebrate Rhea's unwavering spirit, her dedication to service, and the life lessons she's learned along the way.
Today is Tuesday, january 21st 2025. We're talking with Rhea Pruitt, who served in the United States Army and the Michigan Army National Guard. So welcome, rhea.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, it's always good to see you. Full transparency. Rhea and I served together a little while in the Army National Guard and we keep running into each other at different events, so we've known each other for a little while. But I'm going to ask you some questions. We'll start out real simple. When and where were you born? I was born on October 14, 1955 in Bagafeen, friesland, the Netherlands, so I was.
Speaker 2:I am Dutch by birth. Okay, well, there's something I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, the only, only the only Frisian I can say is yeah, because when I was little, when the aunts and uncles would all come over, they say, which means hey, little girl. Which means can you speak Frisian? And I go. No, oh, okay, and but I understood most of it. I just never learned to respond. It's strange.
Speaker 1:So were your parents from the Netherlands. Yes, what's the story?
Speaker 2:here. My parents are from the Netherlands, grew up in the Netherlands, born in the Netherlands, grew up in the Netherlands. They endured the challenges of the Depression in the 30s. My mom was number four out of, or I think, out of five out of, nine kids and they were in a little town called Halleweich, which is in the province of Friesland, and she grew up there and met my dad after the war and they both had their different challenges.
Speaker 2:During the war Up in Friesland, dealing with the Germans and the occupation, had their different challenges during the war Up in Friesland, dealing with the Germans and the occupation, things like that. The biggest challenge was hunger, finding enough food, but not as challenging as the people that were in Amsterdam or Rotterdam and the southern part of the country, but they did have their challenges. My dad he has a sister. He had a father and two brothers that passed away in the 30s when he was 12 years old and then his sister had TB, but she she's made it through. She had some health challenges and so it was just him, his sister and his mom. His mom remarried but he was never a big fan of his stepfather, without getting into any details that's fine fine.
Speaker 2:Yep, but yeah, my parents were teenagers during World War II and then, after the war, in their I would say early 20s, they met and fell in love, got married and then had four kids my oldest sister, dina, and then Tina and Henrietta and Ria. That's me. I could give all the Dutch names, but it's a bit much.
Speaker 1:We'd be here for a while. Huh, We'd be.
Speaker 2:So I'll at least tell you my Dutch name. It's a Friesian name, it's Richter Rulfia. It was named after my dad's sister, tante Richter, and my mom's sister Tante Rulli Rulfia. But came to the States and mom said eh. But came to the States and mom said eh, got to give everybody American names, it's too hard, it's hard for me to pronounce. So came up with Rhea and we all have our American names.
Speaker 1:And then she had four more kids, so I'm number four out of eight kids. Oh wow.
Speaker 2:Yes, big family.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of kids.
Speaker 2:Yes, but my dad passed away in 2013. Emphysema is a tough, tough disease. And then my mom passed away a couple years ago, but at the age of 94. And we were able to keep her home the whole time. All the siblings took turns taking care of her and it has challenges, but the rewards, as I say, outweigh the challenges of making sure that mom knew where she was at, she knew she was loved. That last year was hard because she would always say, outweighed the challenges of making sure that mom knew she knew where she was at, she knew she was loved. That last year was hard because she would always say I have to do everything, with a Dutch accent I'm so tired, so tired, but it was okay, mom, it's all right, you earned the right to be tired, but she was taken care of, it was all good. A lot of families can't do what we did.
Speaker 2:Well, having eight children, right yeah and we got along most of the time Because some families, be they three kids or eight kids, they don't work well together and we had bumps every family does. But in the scheme of things we did well, we really did.
Speaker 1:That's good. So maybe you said this, but so what brought you to the States?
Speaker 2:My father made the decision he didn't want to stay in the Netherlands. He didn't see any future staying in the Netherlands and they were concerned about the Russians and what they were doing. There was a concern with them occupying and moving into Hungary that part of the country. And my dad said you know, been there, done that, Don't want to go through another war, I don't see opportunities here and in West Michigan, which has a large, large Dutch community, if you had a sponsor you could come to the States. And there was a gentleman there who sponsored hundreds of people. My parents were just two of many, along with the kids who were sponsored to come to the States. And so, December 22, 1956, they got on a Pan Am flight out of Amsterdam, flew into New York, took a train from New York to Grand Rapids and settled in the Grand Rapids area Okay, Stayed, you know, moved a couple different houses but eventually ended up in Zealand. That's where I ended up graduating from high school.
Speaker 1:Oh, all right. Well, what was it like growing up with so many siblings?
Speaker 2:Angst.
Speaker 1:And it sounds like you were like right smack in the middle.
Speaker 2:I was the middle child. I felt like I was the one that was. Maybe that's why I'm a Libra. I felt like I was the one that was balancing things out all the time. You know, can't we all get along the?
Speaker 1:peacemaker right the peacemaker sometimes Sometimes.
Speaker 2:But the oldest, she had her challenges, you know she would get upset about things. She would get upset about things. She always knew what was right. My parents were always wrong. She always had the right answer. And when number two came along, number one resented number two because she was no longer the number one child. She was the firstborn grandchild. She was the firstborn of this. So she had some angst with number two.
Speaker 2:Number three came along and she was always the kindest, easiest person to with, you know. And then there's me, yes, and then they had the firstborn son, so I became the forgotten child, at least from my perspective as a child.
Speaker 1:Two more girls and then another boy, and it's hard enough to be the middle kid, but the middle kid with all those other people around, that's, that's got to be rough.
Speaker 2:We had some challenges and my dad, you know he he worked in the factory. So an immigrant coming to this country is truly challenged. I don't care what country you come from, you know, if English is not your first language, you know. I asked my mom one time I said how did you learn English? She goes oh, I'd listen to the radio, I'd watch TV and I'd read the Reader's Digest. So when I was active duty, I was stationed in Germany I would get letters from my mom and they were almost written like with a Dutch accent. They were phonetically correct but not really well spelled, but they were good. It was still letters from home, that's all that mattered. But yeah, there were challenges. We had our fights, like any siblings will. But now that you fast forward many years, yeah, we're all there for each other. That's important.
Speaker 1:And I have to think that your mom was probably a stay-at-home mom.
Speaker 2:She was, and she never learned to drive a car. When they came to the States with four kids in tow, I think my dad tried to teach her like once, but it was just so many challenges they were happy to put food on the table. You know, I mean with the four kids. You worked in a factory, you're working, you're laid off, you're working and like. So we they lived in two different houses in grand rapids and then they had a house in wyoming michigan. For those who don't know, there's a wyoming michigan right.
Speaker 1:We want to clarify that you didn't go all the way down from wyoming, michigan little suburb of grand rapids.
Speaker 2:We were there for about a year or so. My dad bought some land and it's called Blunden Township it's in the Hudsonville area and built a house. Interesting thing is when we first moved in we lived in the basement and we had an outhouse Things you can't do today. You never get an occupancy rule, but we lived in the basement while he built the upstairs and we had a little walkout and everything. I mean my dad was a super, super talented person, very smart. He could do things in his head, mathematically and otherwise, that I wasn't even close to doing. And it's just like I think you know, had he grown up in a different family that had different financial resources, he could have been an engineer, but those opportunities didn't get presented to him, you know, and he did his best with the skills and tools that he had. But you know he had, he had his challenges.
Speaker 2:you know we all do you know, we all grow, though, and he, he, he got better.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let me ask you this, because I'm sure there's about a bazillion stories with that many brothers and sisters, but what you know when you think back, what's like one of your fondest memories as a kid growing up?
Speaker 2:Probably the sweetest memories. I've always loved horses, okay. And so when I was little, if somebody had a horse and they had four legs and it whinnied, I'd say, can I ride it? And they would let me. And so I rode horses a lot up until I was in my teens and I was in a 4-H program and there was this one family that let me borrow their little horse named Sugar.
Speaker 2:And I wanted to go to the fair, to one of the county fairs, you know, for 4-H, and they said, oh, we don't have our trailer's already full. If you can find a way to haul her, that'd be great. Well, my dad took the pickup truck that we had and he built a what do you call it? A place, a shelter or whatever over the back cab of the truck. He built, basically a way for my horse to go in there. She wasn't real big, she was like a large pony, took the ramp, put a ramp on it so she could walk up, and he hauled me to the horse show.
Speaker 2:The time, the plywood, the wood, the effort to put all that together so that I could go to a horse show, that was his way of showing that he loved you. He didn't come from a culture where they were huggy and kissy, but they expressed it by being there for you and doing things and that was his way of doing it and that really touched me so much and him showing how much he cared when he wasn't hollering at you going, be quiet, your kids are too loud, be quiet. And won't say it in Dutch.
Speaker 1:So I want to ask you this is kind of well, it's on topic, but off topic. It's hard enough to load a horse into a trailer. I know this from experience. How difficult is it to load a horse into the back of a truck? Because that's a whole different dynamic.
Speaker 2:She was a steady Eddie. She didn't care. Oh, there's some horses that just they don't care. You want me to go here, I'll go there. She was just one of those types, you know. She was about the size of a large welsh you know, so she wasn't super big, but he had.
Speaker 2:It was all enclosed and he built a ramp so she could walk right up, you know, because a pickup truck, you can't just jump into a pickup truck. But yeah, he did that. It was just like hokey pete, you know. And what he did with all wood and plywood later, I don't know, he probably used it. He was good at repurposing things, so no big deal. It was just the time that he did to do that. It was like, oh my god, I must have been, I must have been whining too much, I really want to go and I can't go. Okay, we'll make it happen, right?
Speaker 2:You know, and I'm sure all my siblings have memories of my parents doing what they could with the skills and tools that they had. My mom had a sixth-grade education but she learned enough where they said, okay, you don't have to continue going to school, and she ended up working for a doctor and she was a housekeeper, took care of the house, this, that and the other. But what my mom liked in formal education she truly did have. In common sense, especially after all these kids and things like that, she was a pretty practical person.
Speaker 1:Well, there's something to be said for the school of hard knocks, or for you know what I mean Like you can go to school and get a diploma and not be any smarter than anyone else.
Speaker 2:Well, we've all met highly educated people where you really questioned their wisdom.
Speaker 1:I wasn't going to go there, but absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Is that tactful enough?
Speaker 1:Not, absolutely Is that tactful enough Not worth the paper it was printed on.
Speaker 2:No, we've met them all.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, a lack of common sense is not a good thing. Well, so what was school like for you then?
Speaker 2:Oh, basic public education. We started out and we had moved. When I was five we had moved to the Hudsonville School District and it was a rural area and this is in the early 60s and so there were still a lot of two-room schoolhouses. So when I went to kindergarten we just walked down the road to Little Corwin Elementary and we had kindergarten through. I think it was like third grade in one room and fourth through sixth was in the other room. And then junior high. You had to go to Hudsonville and so I had my first teacher was Mrs Elzinga, it was the insurance man's wife. It was like having your grandma. But then for first and second grade they closed Corwin. They sent us to a school called South Blondin, another two-room schoolhouse. Well, this teacher, her name was Miss Ruloffs. She was not a nice lady, she was not a happy person.
Speaker 1:She was not like your grandma, unless your grandma rode on a broom.
Speaker 2:Yes, when we saw Wizard of Oz, it was comparable. I can remember my parents didn't have a lot of resources, like I said, and I remember staying at her desk, going I want, Sunday, we're going to go to the circus. We're so excited we're all going to the circus. It's going to be so much fun. We're so excited we're all going to the circus. It's going to be so much fun. She goes. You don't go anywhere on Sunday. You go to church and you go home and you read your Bible and you do nothing. I'm thinking in my brain going too bad, Going to the circus.
Speaker 1:Right. So that is a lot of Dutch reform out that way, right? Oh, absolutely, I grew up in the Reformed Church. The Reformed.
Speaker 2:Church. Yeah, it's a very conservative Protestant church. But the Reformed Church and the Christian Reformed Church they split about I don't know about 150 years ago and they don't know why anymore. Because if you go to either of the services they seem pretty much the same. You've got Calvin College there which is the synod for the Christian Reformed Church, and you've got Hope College which has the synod for the Re reformed church. But if you go to either of the services you know the doctrine is pretty much the same and how they preach is pretty much the same. But uh, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know the the reformed church was not as hard on people for not going to christian school. The christian reformed church like if you're a really good christian, you send your kids to christ school. My parents didn't have money for that. They put you on the bus and after they closed South Linden for third grade up it was regular traditional consolidated grade school Went to Hudsonville Junior High for seventh and eighth. And then my parents, my dad, bought some land in the Zeeland School district and so when I was 14, 13, 14, whatever, when you're a freshman we had to change school districts and I went to the Zeeland high school. Initially it was pretty traumatic. Oh my gosh, I don't want to change. I don't want to move.
Speaker 1:Lost all your friends. The world was going to end all this stuff, oh horrible, yeah, and it turned out it was fine.
Speaker 2:It was fine, Made friends. Well, yeah, and it turned out it was fine. It was fine. Made friends had a good time there did that. So I graduated in 73, and then I qualified for a state scholarship at Grand Valley State College before it became a university there in Allendale.
Speaker 1:They're all turning into universities. Have you noticed that?
Speaker 2:Are they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Jackson College is now Jackson University.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, because they teach a master's program, so apparently that now allows them to be a university. It's like whatever Sounds better.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it does Sounds classy.
Speaker 2:But I went to Grand Valley as a voice major for a year and enjoyed that. But I mean I can carry a tune, I can sing well. But there's certain people, they just have a passion.
Speaker 2:And it's like nah, just wasn't, you wasn't me, I, you know. Not, I don't have that. I don't know if it's ego or this need to entertain and be in front. You know, my skill set is different and so I just started switching around and um ended up filling up some paperwork showing interest in the National Guard oh okay, that's a different college. I went there too.
Speaker 1:So so did you. So you went into the National Guard fairly soon out of high school then yeah, one year. Yeah. So here's something I learned. Okay, now you can laugh at me if you want, because I served 11 years and three months in the National Guard. It wasn't until, I think, after I got out, that I realized you can join the National Guard and you don't have to have been prior service.
Speaker 2:No, right out of high school.
Speaker 1:Never knew that, Like the whole time I served and I served in a lot of different capacities and I never realized that you could just go right into the National Guard. I just thought it was like a place to finish out your you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Your reserve commitment, yeah yeah, kind of like being in the IRR individual ready reserve there.
Speaker 1:Exactly so you. So anyway, I'm sorry I didn't sidetrack us, but yeah, that was an interesting thing that I had learned, so you went.
Speaker 2:Well, it was interesting because back in the days I'm making myself sound a little un-mature side of life here, since I'm not old and it was like a Look magazine or one of those big magazines you used to get in the mail or pick up at the store or whatever, and there was a big ad in there for encouraging women to join the National Guard. You get paid one week in a month and da-da-da-da, whatever. And I'm like, well, that looks interesting. So I filled it out, mailed it in and forgot about it. Then I got a call from a captain I don't remember his name anymore, but from a captain at the Grand Valley Armory there in Wyoming Michigan.
Speaker 1:Right Be clear about that, yep.
Speaker 2:And he said hey, I see you're interested in the National Guard. I went oh, yeah, I guess I am. He said well, why don't you come on over, you know, take a few tests, this, that and the other. I went okay. So I went there and I took the ASVAB and did all these different things and he says yeah, I think you'd be a really good fit for the National Guard. And of course I was never anti-army or anti-military, I wouldn't be in the building, but I'm like oh, when we get in the military, we forget people don't speak our language.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he says it's a personnel records clerk.
Speaker 2:I went oh, a clerk. I said I can handle being a clerk. My main thing was oh, this might be a good way to supplement my college money. I had a state scholarship when I was living at home. My dad, let me use a car, but you still have to pay for your books, things like that. And so I thought, okay, I'll go ahead and do this. And I thought well, let me go home and talk to one friend and she says oh, I think it would be a great experience. I think you ought to do it. So I talked to my dad no, don't do it, the government will screw you over. I went, okay. Then I went to my mom, you know, because you're still at this age where you want your parents to help you make decisions, right. So I looked at her and I said Mom, what do you think? She goes? Ria, you're 18. If you want to go, you go.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:I have to make the decision now, which was, you know, when you're 18, you know, yeah, I've been out of school for a year, but you're still living at home. Everybody at college felt like advanced high school. You have this naive thought that, oh, I'm in college, suddenly everybody's going to be more mature, we're going to be more advanced high school. It's still a big party we used to call it high school with ashtrays. I think so, and now you can drink beer.
Speaker 1:Yes, at least legally.
Speaker 2:So I thought you know what I'm going to do this. So I went back to the Wyoming Armory and my mom went with me to make sure it was all done right, like my mom would know. But it was so nice to have her with me and I went in there and I took the oath office on April 1, 1974. And I remember driving home going oh ma, was that a joke, did I really do that?
Speaker 1:Reality sort of set in with you a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then I thought, okay, this is fine, but they didn't tell me. You know, then you couldn't start training until you finished your basic and advanced training, so you didn't go to your guard training. I'm thinking, okay, well, I'm figuring okay, I joined in April, so they'll send me in June, so I'm back in time for college. And then about a month later I got my orders in the mail and I wasn't going to basic until August. I'm thinking, oh, not that it's okay.
Speaker 1:I didn't really want to go back to college, just going to take a little extended break, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I thought nope. So I went ahead and went to basic training. Well, I went to Fort McClellan, alabama. It's in Anniston, home of the Women's Army Corps. It's in Anniston, home of the Women's Army Corps.
Speaker 2:Because what I did not know when I went to basic was and I've told this to different groups of different ethnic groups, cultures, whatever, and most get it for what I'm trying to say I go, yeah. I said you know, when I went into basic I didn't realize we still had a segregated army. And they look at you there and their eyes get big, Like what are you talking about? I go, yeah, I thought we took care of that in the 50s. Turns out no, no, no, that was a racial integration. But we still had a man's army, the woman's army, the man's navy, the woman's navy. You still had a sexual separation within the military. And I said I didn't know. So when I went to basic training, when the senior drill sergeant or any drill sergeant hollered at you because they did still holler at us they didn't call us soldiers or scumbags or whatever, it was just always ladies, ladies, this, ladies, that, and you're like ew. After a while the word ladies starts sounding like a bad word.
Speaker 1:Does that start to elicit a response in you even today, like when someone says, ladies, you're like?
Speaker 2:oh, not too bad, I'm going to have to do some push-ups or something.
Speaker 1:I just know it.
Speaker 2:Well, when we did push-ups, we did the girls' push-ups, you know bent knee.
Speaker 2:Man, we weren't soldiers, you know, we had our training. We had our fitness training, but even the fitness, you know, because, being the Women's Army Corps, we were considered noncombatants. So even when we had weapons qualification, you did not have to touch a weapon. If you didn't want to, I didn't, I didn't mind, I didn't have an issue with weapons. You know, through the whole training process, you know, we went to fitness training. The Army fitness uniform for women consisted of shorts, little green shorts, a lighter cotton green shirt and a wraparound skirt that went over your shorts. My how things have changed. Yes, it was like.
Speaker 1:So you had this cute little wraparound skirt that went over your shorts.
Speaker 2:My how things have changed, yes, and I was like so you had this cute little wraparound skirt that matched the shorts.
Speaker 1:Like you were going to go play tennis or something.
Speaker 2:Yes, we had white socks and white tennies and we'd go march off to. It was like a basketball court. Take your skirt and you had to trifold it and set it off to the side. You do some jumping jacks and you do some push-ups bent knee push-ups, you know. Um, then put your little skirt back on and march off to a class you know I had no idea, I had no idea it was. It's changed a lot, yeah but it was actually very comfortable.
Speaker 2:It was actually a comfortable uniform because it was cotton. It was just cotton shorts and a wraparound skirt and cute looking. You put your name tag on and you wear your rank on the collars. You know, remember they had the gold pins for your rank. That's what you wore on there, or black depending on what uniform you were wearing.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it was Wow, almost fashionable it was actually.
Speaker 2:It was kind of cute and, being it was Vietnam era, you had your Class A's, the greens, but you had a summer uniform and they called them cords and it was a skirt and then like a little jacket, kind of like a three-quarter length jacket with short sleeves and because of the way it was trimmed, it had a little piping on the sleeve and things like that. They called them cords.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:You know, a little garrison hat.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then either heels or low quarters granny shoes, some people would call them, you know much more comfortable, though, right yeah but it was, yeah, it, but it was the uniform at the time went through so many uniform changes over almost 40 years, you know, I would agree yeah, but you know, I got done with the basic and then they sent me to ford for my advanced training.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to back up, though. I want to ask this question when you got off the bus for basic?
Speaker 2:training At Fort McClellan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Tell me, like what's your first impression when you get there?
Speaker 2:Just took it all in. I don't remember being overwhelmed by it, just took it in, just kind of took it in, and they go over here, get in line here, leave your stuff here, okay, you're going to go in this building, you're going to be issued your uniforms, you know, and tell them your size, you know, and you walk out with all your stuff and then they, for mcclellan at that time, had actually two different areas for women's training. One area had these. They were like three or four level high-rise type buildings. We we were in another part of the post and I called them H-shaped buildings because on one end was barracks with the beds and everything On the other end was the same thing. They kind of mirrored each other and in the middle was the laundry room and showers and other facilities. But it was all one level.
Speaker 1:Kind of like a dorm almost yeah yeah, but it was still a barracks.
Speaker 2:You walked in and you had the double bunks and the double wall lockers between the bunks, you know. And so the interesting part was, you know, living with I don't know, I think there was like 30 women in our platoon, give or take, I can't remember, and you know, they weren't all dutch, they weren't all white, they were all different individuals from different parts of the world and as a whole we got along, but it was interesting. And then I got tapped as the platoon sergeant, you know the platoon leader, and like what does that mean? You're just going to let the squad leaders, you know. And then they took everything else. So I was in charge. My dad wouldn't let me mow the lawn.
Speaker 1:Was that liberating for you to take charge, or scary, scary yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm like, okay, what does this mean? But don't worry, we'll swap you out. Never happened. I kept the job the whole time.
Speaker 1:Because you were good at it.
Speaker 2:I must have been, because I was the honor grad for my platoon.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go. Do you think being from such a large family prepared you? For boot camp. Yeah, I think so yeah.
Speaker 2:Because of different reactions to different issues and getting angry over things. Or you go. What are you angry over that for, just yeah. The mix of personalities. That's just human Right and everybody's human. Just because they look different doesn't mean they're not human. I mean the assistant platoon leader. She was of Asian descent. There were black girls in there. I was from Zealand. We had won in the whole high school.
Speaker 1:So this is interesting, because I went to boot camp 10 years later. I went to boot camp in 1984 in the Navy. And I remember like I grew up in Lansing you know so very diverse neighborhood but I got to boot camp and I actually went to boot camp with people who had never even seen a black person or a person of color except on TV and it was this big shock for them. It was. And it wasn't for me, but I can see where it would be Come out of Zealand, right?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, ottawa County. Yeah, I mean, the minorities were the, the all the uh, the mexicans that come up from uh, from mexico and texas, the migrant workers right and the percentage that chose not to go back you know they would get jobs at gm or whatever and said, hey, I'm, I'm staying here, I don't want to pick anymore, I don't want to do these things anymore. I'm thinking I don't blame them yeah you know why not?
Speaker 2:why not have an opportunity to move on and be more, do more and all that? So, yeah, no, they were. I remember one time we had a platoon meeting over something and and people like, well, she just knew this already and she just knew that already. You know the little snipey things. I'm like no, I don't know any more than you do.
Speaker 2:I started the same day as you, I'm sorry if it clicks for me and it doesn't for everybody else. You know, there were two girls in my platoon though that were from the michigan guard, you know, and uh, one came back and ended up going to like wisconsin. The other one, she stayed with the guard for many years, worked at the property and fiscal office, working in the finance section. It was interesting because I, when we went through basic, she had some health issues and they pulled her out, so I thought she had been discharged. They hadn't. She'd just been recycled, which I didn't know what that was at the time. So probably five years later I'm up at Grayling doing a payroll and she comes walking in. I'm like Penny.
Speaker 1:That's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was interesting. It was interesting Somebody hadn't seen since basic training that didn't realize had just had an opportunity to continue on and was now full time with the guard. It's like, oh, and I was too at that point. So it was yeah, interesting how things overlap.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:But I also learned in the guard you know always be polite to everyone, because you don't know who they're related to.
Speaker 1:That's true. The other thing is, you don't know if someday you're going to work for them. You don't you don't, you don't?
Speaker 2:Especially in the department I was in being in personnel.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, well, I find too. Now, when I run into people that I served with, I always ask them was I nice to you Because there?
Speaker 2:were times where I wasn't nice to people. So I always ask them?
Speaker 1:was I nice to you, yeah?
Speaker 2:Was I nice to you? Yeah, well, people are really good at judging others. Wow, you should have this and they should have that. And I'm thinking shoulds yes, I love the word should.
Speaker 1:Well, especially in your job, which we'll get to. But yeah, I can only imagine that. So you leave basic training and you head to Fort Ord, fort Ord, fort Ord, california. Yeah, that's a big change.
Speaker 2:And the other side yeah, it was a huge, huge shift. Now we're on the ocean there, but there I went to a school to be a records clerk and the buildings we stayed in were actually World War II-era two-story barracks, like you see at Fort Custer there.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's where they had us. But, um, in, uh, advanced training at AIT, uh, it was a co-ed unit and so that they were starting to, you know, combine the units. You didn't have to be all female anymore and think, or all male, you know these, not all guys were in the infantry, you know, because obviously the combat arms at that point in time were closed to women. But, uh, as far as service support, yeah, we support. We had people going to cook school, we had people going to clerical schools, we had maintenance schools and we all stayed in the basic area. But I mean, obviously all the women were in one building and the men were in another building. But when it came time to march, we would march from one end of the post to the other to go to the training area, and so they'd form us up and we'd go march. I don't know about a mile, it's not like it was anything horrible.
Speaker 1:Nice little walk every morning.
Speaker 2:right it was, it was kind of a good up have breakfast. You know, it was not like basic, it was a lot more flexible and relaxed. So we would march to the training area and all the clerical types would go to their building and we were right next to the cook school and so every day for lunch we would go eat there, but it was always like a dinner meal, it wasn't like a lunch meal. So if you wanted mashed potato meatloaf, I mean it was awesome. I gained 10 pounds in AIT.
Speaker 1:It's funny because people are like when they join the Army, they either lose weight or gain weight.
Speaker 2:Well, basic, no problem. You, when you join the Army, they either lose weight or gain weight. Well, basic, no problem, you don't have time to eat in. Basic You're getting up, you're going early, You're running here, you're running there, you're going to your classes. It just didn't gain any weight. But I got to IT and it was like row, row, and then they had the Army used to call it a roach coach.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, they called it the Roach Coach in the Navy too.
Speaker 2:This truck would come in and it had full of food and they'd come by at 10 o'clock at night and they had drinks and everything they went hostess, fruit pies, burritos I did not know what a burrito was.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a Dutch family. Mashed potatoes, green beans, meatloaf, chicken, I mean whatever.
Speaker 1:you can feed eight kids that's aren't big on burritos done, I take it never had a burrito in my life.
Speaker 2:Wow, it was. It was wonderful. Was it a game?
Speaker 1:what is a game changer for you?
Speaker 2:and then, uh, I don't know how or why, but I got tapped as a platoon leader again even for ait and me and this other gal. We were about four weeks in and they our drill sergeant. She said she wanted to take me and this other gal out to dinner with her and her husband and took us to a Mexican restaurant. I had never been to a Mexican restaurant. Wow, I had never had a taco.
Speaker 1:Did you just like order one of everything on the menu?
Speaker 2:But with the Dutch. You know, my mom's idea of spice was, you know, salt. Right, let alone black pepper, so very much before the spice trade in our family. So to go to a Mexican restaurant, I didn't do the hot sauce. I was like I can't go there If you don't grow up on it. You don't have the palate for it. So I still struggle with anything that's too spicy, but I've learned to appreciate a lot of different cultural foods. I love it it's kind of.
Speaker 1:It's kind of cool how the military can kind of can do that for you it does it?
Speaker 2:does people don't realize that going in the military allows you the opportunity to properly expose you to other cultures, other people, other ideas, other ways. You know, I mean, I had family members oh, she's just a clerk, she's not a real professional. They didn't know what we did, and so it's easy to criticize something you don't know. And so that for me was the best part of being in was having these opportunities, you know. You know I mean part of the reason I said I went into the military, into the National Guard initially, was, you know, some college money. But you know that didn't happen.
Speaker 2:So when I finished my advanced training, you know, the people at Fort Ord were like, oh, you ought to stay here. You know, just get a release from the Guard and just join the Army and stay with us, you know, and you could do anything, yada, yada. I'm like, oh, and then I must have had some common sense about money at that time because I said no, because if I join the army here I have to pay for my own ticket to fly home for the holidays. I said, however, I finish the training, they fly me home, I stay home for the holidays and then I'll decide, and that they fly me home.
Speaker 2:I stay home for the holidays, and then I'll decide, and that's exactly what I ended up doing.
Speaker 1:Wow, smart move I have no idea where that came from. Smart move you don't. You don't have to be smart on purpose. You can be smart by accident.
Speaker 2:That's okay, and I think I inherited some of my mom's common sense. You know, I try to be practical about things, you know, and so I went. Yeah, so I went home, you know, and I think within about a week I went and saw an active Army recruiter and said I'm thinking about going to act. I really didn't want to go back to college and everybody else I knew was getting married, having babies or working in a factory. You didn't see a lot of other opportunities in West Michigan. When I was we're talking the early 70s it was like I thought I don't know what I want, I know what I don't want.
Speaker 1:None of those things were on your checklist.
Speaker 2:No, and I thought there's something out there. I don't know what it is, but there's something and I'm willing to give it a chance. I've always been a big believer in the open doors philosophy If a door opens, walk through, take a chance If it through a wall. Whatever you got to do Whatever, the only person who holds you back is you.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know I said I can sing, I could do more. Eh, not my niche. For some reason the military ended up being a good fit for me. It isn't for everybody. You see, people post things, you know, and they go. Everyone should this and everyone should that, because it worked for me and I'm sorry, not everybody thinks like you, not everybody has your talents, not everybody has your gifts. So no, I don't think that's healthy.
Speaker 1:Everybody should do what they should do, not what everyone else should do Do something.
Speaker 2:Not thrilled with people sitting on a couch watching the world go by, complaining about the world going by, but that's a whole other.
Speaker 1:That's another discussion.
Speaker 2:right, it is Remember the challenge with being Dutch is that we have an answer for everything. We'll tell you, trust me, so I've worked really hard that, unless you ask me, I will try to keep my perspective in check.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to clue you in on something right now my wife is Greek. I think the Greeks and dutch are somehow related they might be telling me because I actually have a. I have a thea ria, who, uh, came from greece oh, kind of a very similar situation okay, her name became ria when she came over here. I have never met a ria yeah, well, it's funny because when I, when I got married, I met my aunt, or my theory I was like I only know one other person with this name.
Speaker 2:This is so weird it's an odd, it's unless you watch the old cheaters episode and rio perlman yeah, yeah it's. At least somebody got that name out there.
Speaker 1:Exactly a little notoriety, so yeah so, anyway, you're home, uh, at the holidays, and you're like, uh, I'm not doing this, so I'm gonna go join the army. I am, I. So I went at the holidays and you're like, I'm not doing this, so I'm going to go join the Army.
Speaker 2:I am. So I went to the recruiter and he said well, I can get you in next week. He said no, no, no, no. After the holidays, he said okay, no problem, it was over in Holland, michigan met with him.
Speaker 1:Was it the Christmas holidays? Yeah, you know why he did that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably meet in quota or something.
Speaker 1:For January.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I used to recruit, yeah so I was like that, but no, I thought, no, I can do this, we can wait. And interesting thing, though was, I said, when I was at Fort Ord, between the eating really good meals in the cooking school area during the day and the roach coach at night, I gained a lot of weight. And so I can remember him looking at me going okay, now you don't weigh over 140 pounds, do you? And my mouth said no. My brain said uh-oh.
Speaker 1:You better go do something at the holidays.
Speaker 2:So I quit eating for about two weeks almost and got on a bus and went to Detroit, went to the MAPS, you know, and you're going through the whole process and they get you on the scale and I was like 141. And they're there. No, I think it was like 145. They can give you a five pound waiver and I was just a little over 145 and they said, oh, the recruiter goes. Oh, you know, sometimes if you just skip dinner the night before and get on the scale first thing in the morning, you'll drop a pound. My mouth said okay, my brain said oh, but I did. I was walking up downstairs, I didn't eat dinner, I didn't drink any water I got and I'm by nature fairly conservative. So the next morning I get there and I, I swear I wanted to strip all my clothes off just so I could make that one Right, whatever I got to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and because they made you away with your clothes on yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was, you know, it was maps, and I went and I was just under, just under, and so I went active duty. I went to Fort Carson in Colorado. I was with the 4th Infantry Division with the 4th AG Company. So it was interesting. It was interesting getting there too.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'll bet Well in Detroit MAPS, so I went to Detroit MAPS when I enlisted as well, and that was a unique experience. There was nothing like Detroit. It's not there anymore, but there was nothing like it. We stayed in a really terrible hotel.
Speaker 2:It was. Yes, I think they had all the women on one floor, because all the guys were on another floor throwing TVs out the windows.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or whatever. It's like this is the last night to party before we go. Let's all party. And all the girls on the other floor are going me, I'm going. I think I'll just stay in my room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll get a taco out in town and sit in my room, so you end up at Fort Carson. I did. How was that?
Speaker 2:Beautiful, great assignment. Interesting thing was I got there it was in January of 75, and I flew in. And the reason I went there? Because the gal I was in basic and AIT with she was active Army. She says, well, if you ever come in the Army, come to Fort Carson. I said okay and you had either what they called station of choice or unit of choice. So station of choice meant you got stationed at Fort Carson but no guarantee what unit you were in. Unit of choice I was with the 4th Infantry Division, 4th AG Company, but what they don't tell you is and it's like a one-year guarantee you will be there If for some reason the whole division had to pack up and leave.
Speaker 1:You're going with them, right? You're going with them, yeah.
Speaker 2:Never happened, but things you learn. And so I get on post and, mind you, the Women's Army Corps legally still exists. This is 1975. I'm a WAC, so so I get there and I go to the uh, I'll call it the replacement office. There I show up, I give them my orders and they look at me. They go oh well, you're not supposed to be here. This was like the 5th of January. You don't have to be here until like the 10th. I went oh, and, by the way, you're, you're'll be staying at the WAC company.
Speaker 1:Oh okay.
Speaker 2:So I go to the other side of the post and they go no, all the admin soldiers, all the female admin soldiers, don't stay at the WAC company. The 4th AG company has its own quarters for the women. You'll be staying with them. So I've already been told I'm not staying in the WAC company. I've already been told not to come back until the 10th. And I'm like, well, where do I stay? So I go talk to my friend that I went to basic and AIT with. I told her what was going on and she says, well, you can just stay in my place. She lived in Pueblo, it was south of Colorado Springs, so I stayed there for a week and then I I went back and they said, well, where have you been? I said you told me not to come back until the 10th because that was for some reason on my orders, and so I did.
Speaker 2:And they looked at me and they went oh.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Army.
Speaker 2:They sent me to the 4th AG Company and I signed in. It was like. You know what an open bay is right.
Speaker 1:I do.
Speaker 2:So it's all the bunks and everything. Well, it's kind of like an open bay, but they had these temporary walls. So I had two bunks and a wall locker with these temporary, but the walls went only up to like seven foot 12 foot ceiling Like a cubicle almost, yeah it was a cubicle with bunks and wall lockers, and my little cubicle was right next to the TV. So you're trying to sleep and the TV's going until 11 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:That could be a curse or a blessing.
Speaker 2:And my roommate. She was unique. We'll just put it that way.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's very nice of you.
Speaker 2:So after a couple months they said Ria, you are the ranking PFC in the dorm areas, they're in the quarters. And she says we're expecting an influx of women, we don't have enough. So if you want, you may move off post with quarters allowance the BAQ. They paid me to move off post, that's pretty big for a PFC.
Speaker 2:I was the senior person on the floor, though, and since I was senior, I had first dibs to leave, so I did. I didn't even have a car, I don't know. So I talked to this one guy I worked with and he goes well, you know, I'm staying in such and such apartment complex. It was called the Casbah. He says I think they've got rooms there. See if you can get a room and you can just ride back and forth with me. And I went oh cool, I mean these little things, but that really turned out to really neat little opportunities. So I checked in, got a little efficiency apartment. I think it cost me like a hundred dollars a month. I was only making 400.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you weren't making the big bucks at that time.
Speaker 2:I was a ranking PFC but I didn't have to worry about a car. I got that about six months later, but still. But you're at the foothills of the Rockies, you're looking at Pikes Peak. I would go to the local chapel and there was a family there that kind of half adopted me. They had a cabin up in the mountains so I'd go with them and took me skiing. I had a great time. What a great experience it was huge, but I wanted to see more.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I have family in the Netherlands. And I was talking to this one sergeant one time. This is when you also learn where people who have friends can be good or not, right? I'm talking to this master sergeant. I said yeah. I said you know, it'd be really nice to go to Germany because I have family in the Netherlands, because I'd been at Carson for about a year and a half, almost two years, and he said, well, he says I'm talking to somebody in DA Department of the Army. Tomorrow, let me see what I can do. I'm thinking what you can do. So he comes back the next day and goes all right, don't tell the chief and the senior warrant officer running our department. He says don't tell Mr Nassman, but you're number three on the list. Three on the list what?
Speaker 1:does that?
Speaker 2:mean. And so in the Army they had a thing called Cap 3 Levy and it was a report that would come out once a week. About two weeks later a report came out on who's going to be transferred PCS out to another installation somewhere, and I was number three on the list for Stuttgart Germany.
Speaker 1:Wow, it pays to know people.
Speaker 2:Well, at least he liked me.
Speaker 2:So, you know, if he didn't like me, you know, but he was just like, yeah, let me see what I can do. I'm like voila. So the next thing I know, you know I'm leaving Fort Carson and head home for 30 days and then get on a plane out of Fort Dix there and flew to Frankfurt. And it was funny. You get into Frankfurt and again everything's new. And you go and you check in and my order said I'm going to the 198th Personal Service Company, nelligan, germany. It's a little suburb of Stuttgart, so I go there. And they said, well, we have to let everybody know where they're going. I'm like, but I know I'm thinking all right. So I sat in my chair for like three hours. No, mind you, I've been up for who knows how many hours you know after the 10 hour flight.
Speaker 2:So you're getting really ugly tired and then they call me up, they give me this ticket looks like the size of a college diploma and this is my train ticket from Frankfurt to Stuttgart, and then you're supposed to get from Stuttgart to Nelligan. I'm like, oh no. So I'm sitting there going okay, how's this gonna work? Okay, I'm gonna lose all my stuff, I'm gonna get lost. Also, this guy goes does anybody need to go to Nelligan? I've got a van. I'm going back to Nelligan, me, me, you know. And I was able to ride with this guy in this army van all the way back to Nelligan.
Speaker 1:You have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, don't you? I do Somebody's looking out for you.
Speaker 2:Just saying, okay, yeah, I think so. I think I've been beyond blessed with these little opportunities that have just worked out well. And then you hear other people, just things just didn't seem to work and my heart goes to him because it's like I'm sorry I didn't have ugly, horrible things happen.
Speaker 1:And some people did.
Speaker 2:And they're really bitter and it's unfortunate that those things happened and it has such a scar on them personally, physically, emotionally and otherwise.
Speaker 1:You were certainly blessed.
Speaker 2:Definitely blessed. Oh yeah, I said the doors would open and I'd go. Okay, I'll jump in, and I was fortunate that I jumped in the right car, not the wrong car. So yeah, it was a great experience being in Nelligan and they took the whole company one time and did a three-day weekend. We went to outside of Munich. We took a tour. I can't think of the Brain blank.
Speaker 1:My German geography is no good either.
Speaker 2:No, but it was great. The whole company was out near oh gosh. Where did Hitler have his God? I can't think of the name of the town. We went to Neuschwanstein Castle and other castles. There's a military welfare recreation site there. I'm drawing a blank on it, but if you're military, you can stay there for almost free. It's based on your rank and it's not fancy, but you're in such a cool area you're having a great time.
Speaker 1:Sorry, oh, no problem. There's a lot of great places if you're in the military. So when I think about Germany, I think about the Edelweiss Resort.
Speaker 2:Right, and that was in that area. Yeah, and it was in that area and it's beautiful, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely beautiful. Every year we go down to Shades of Green.
Speaker 2:Yes, because my wife and I go to Disney. I mean we get our tickets from Shades of Green. Yeah, you know they're in in Kissimmee or whatever, but we always get our tickets at shades of green. I mean, it's just just so pretty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a little plug for them. If you're a veteran and you're listening to this right now. Check out shades of green If you want to take your family to Disney it's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2:It is. It's awesome All right, that's. I did, I did. I had a great experience when I was at Fort Carson. I took care of enlisted records, big old paper files they called them 201 files. There was a whole admin process.
Speaker 1:Very familiar with this. You're speaking my language.
Speaker 2:No one else knows what we're talking about but that's okay. But then the automation changed and they started automating documents, this, that and the other. But initially at Fort Carson you had this sheet for SIDPRS, which is a Standard Installation Division Personnel.
Speaker 1:Record System. Thank you. 21 and a half years in the military, I never knew what that stood for it is an acronym, sweet.
Speaker 2:It's an automated system for tracking things. They were starting to build it. They would give you this sheet. You would write whatever had to be put into the database, because it was all done by key punch operators, right.
Speaker 2:And then you had to do the little fill in the little boxes. You know they would, they would scan it, yeah. And then it had the punch cards and all the old, old ibm stuff. I've seen automation change from literally the old ibm systems to these computers in our hands, called phones yeah well, you know I was going to mention this.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to. I want to say it nicely because no matter what I say, it's going to come out wrong, it's okay. But you were born at a time where you really got to grow up and see the world change dramatically.
Speaker 2:I have told people being in the military, I have been on the leading edge of change. It was all two days behind me, but I was on the leading edge. You know, especially with the incorporation of you know well the elimination of the women's army corps, which didn't happen until July of 1978, which, if you think about it, wasn't that long ago from our perspective.
Speaker 1:No, okay. Well, for some people that seems like millions of years ago. Yeah, not for us.
Speaker 2:But so you know. So I watched the Women's Army Corps be phased out. They were starting to phase it out when I was at Fort Carson. We had in the Army you wear what they call brass. That indicates the branch that you serve in, so it would be a US, and then for Adjutant General Corps it looks like a shield. Yeah, okay. Well, prior to to that, I had to wear the women's army corps brass, which is the palace athena symbol, and, uh, that was meant you were a whack and but once you got through your advanced training, you wore your branch. Well, after 19, even after that, they stopped handing out the palace athena brass because the women's army corps didn't exist anymore, yeah, yeah. So I was like, oh, okay, and so no, it's just, it's all been changed.
Speaker 1:You know, transitioning from the Vietnam era military to where we are today, right, huge, huge change, yeah, so and I saw that in my time in the National Guard in the early 2000s, when we switched over from jungle warfare to asymmetric warfare.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I get what you're talking about, just the uniform changes. Oh my God, bdus I've gone through, or BDUs, I had the old fatigues that you had to starch all the time.
Speaker 1:Now did you actually originally have just a plain olive drab green?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yeah, before BDUs.
Speaker 1:When I came in, it was the woodland camo BDUs.
Speaker 2:The BDUs, that's my era, no prior to that, they tried to develop a fatigue-type uniform for women and it had all kinds of pockets here and pockets here, pockets on the bottom of the shirt, pockets on the pants. They had more pockets than you knew what to do with, but it was just like they weren't well made. So I ended up just wearing men's fatigues and it was optional which one you wanted to wear. But even the dress uniforms I mean for a brief while the women's uniform I called it the Girl Scout uniform- because, it was this skirt and jacket that was like this excuse me, pissy lime green color.
Speaker 2:You know it was ugly, but being an officer I had to buy my uniform so I thought I am not buying that. I never bought it, never owned it, never wore it and it phased out within about two years because everyone hated it. It was ugly. You know I've always had the greens, but even they've kind of transitioned. I mean, at one point in time I had a turtleneck that went with my dress green coat. It was a kind of a limey green color. It actually was kind of nice in the winter.
Speaker 1:Right, might not have looked nice, but it kept you warm, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Even the shirts have evolved, changed. Yeah, Of course my last tactical uniform was the ACUs and of course they have since gotten rid of that, because, really, what's a digital in combat? That was a strange uniform.
Speaker 1:It was the one they have now is more practical.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like a blend between the BDU and the ACU and as far as the style and cut, stuff, but at least it looks better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I left it was the ACU as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I saw that there's probably been three changes since.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you're hanging out in Germany, going to castles, living your best life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I took care of enlisted records In Germany at the 198th Personal Service Company. I took care of officer records, okay. So now I'm taking care of the records for the officers stationed at 7th Corps Headquarters and 2nd Support Command. And one of my favorite stories is having the OIC for a personnel unit for detachment there. He came up to me and goes Ray, he says we have to go and do an in-processing for a general officer that's going to be coming in from Fort Hood. Okay, it's General Patton. And I went. Even I had heard of Patton, but not the Patton of World War II, it's his son.
Speaker 1:Still a General Patton.
Speaker 2:And because of who his father was he had made at this point he was still a two-star Because the Corps Commander was a three-star. I can't remember the Corps Commander's name, but the Deputy Corps Commander was General George Patton. And so he says but the way the rules worked, if you were colonel and below you went to the 198th to review your records, okay, because there were so many officers, we couldn't. And we're talking about people spread out over a pretty good Stuttgart area of Germany.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We're talking about four or five different concerns that you might have to go to, concern being German for an Army post. So here in Little Nelligan we had to go to I'm trying to think of the name of the post Brain blank. Sorry, that's okay. We had to go to the other side of Germany, stuttgart, to go there to the 7th Corps headquarters, and we went to his house because he had just got in country and all I had was this tacky little manual typewriter and I had brought some forms with me and you're probably familiar with the DD-93, which is a personnel information form you know we use it for notification, whatever and your insurance form. So I brought a few forms with me. We get to the house and he's there and I said, oh, I'm an E-5, sergeant E-5. And I'd already been told he doesn't like admin people and he definitely doesn't like women in the military. I thought, oh good, two strikes against me and I don't even know this guy.
Speaker 1:You've been set up for failure.
Speaker 2:Yes. So I'm a this captain's with me. We go because it's gonna be fine, you're gonna be okay. We get in the house and I said, well, sir, do you have your records with you? No, gave them to my secretary, really, dropped them off with her in the building. I'm like, oh okay, well, at least I can do is update your personnel information. So I take this little dd93, I put it in the typewriter. Now, mind you, it's, it's like multi-layers of carbon and everything else.
Speaker 2:Put it in there all the good old days yes, so I put in the lomania typewriter I type patten george. I said, sir, excuse me, but what's your middle name? And he goes smith. My mouth said smith no, you did he looks at me. Oh, that's so unusual.
Speaker 2:I went, my mouth said no, sir, my brain said yes and I'm thinking okay, I'm already screwing this up you know, and so I'm trying to type in the address doing different things, and then I have to ask you know about his kids and their addresses and their ages, you know, and, mind you, he's kind of like his father, I guess, because every other word is god damn this and hot damn that you know.
Speaker 1:Fill in the blanks, you know right.
Speaker 2:And so they're going, really, you know, and in the background he's his aid senencio. There he looks like he should be a football player, big, tall, hooky, built-up kind of guy, and the general's got a son wandering around. Hey, where's your dad's pearl-handled pistols? You know, where are they stashed at? And I'm like you can't make this up. And so I'm going okay, this is interesting. So he can't answer my questions on how to fill out this form because it's just not his thing. So he calls the wife in and I remember Mrs Patton comes up and totally ignores him because he's being you know, hi, how are you so nice to meet you and what's your name? Rhea, it's really nice to meet you. How can I help you? And so I'm asking the questions. She's got her little address book out. She's very politely answering them, totally ignoring. He's trying to butt in. She ignores him.
Speaker 1:She's the perfect general's wife.
Speaker 2:She was. She was so sweet, just called me right down and made it all good and I said I have to apologize. I said, but this typewriter is a piece of crap and I can't type it up proper, so I'm going to go back, I'm going to retype it back at the office, make sure it's perfect, bring it back to your secretary and have it all signed. Okay, that's fine. It's like, oh, my goodness, yes, that was so. Yeah, but later on I actually had to.
Speaker 2:I think it was Kelly Barracks had to go back to this time doing an annual update of the Corps Commander. Three-star general, I think Ott, his name was General Ott. Go to General Ott's office. It was like visiting your grandfather. Hi, how are you? Sit down, it's all good, you take care of yourself. What can I do for you today? You want to review the records? Not a problem. Nicest guy right, did my annual records review. His aide goes hey, ria, he's the captain. I chatted with him off and on doing records updates.
Speaker 2:Want to see General Patton's office? I'm like, yeah, okay, so we go across the hall, opens up the door. He's got huge, heavy oak furniture. I mean, all his stuff follows him from post to post because at that level they can, and there's pictures hanging on the wall and there's that and the other, and then on a frame is this letter to the effect of that, due to him having hip surgery, he had been found medically unfit. He was what they call a P4 profile. You hit that level. One is you're outstanding, you're physically fit. Two, three, you kind of broke for you out of here, you know, and because of him having hip surgery, he'd been found medically unfit and he was all framed up in the wall.
Speaker 1:I thought that's interesting why would you do that?
Speaker 2:well, well. And the other interesting thing too is, you know they take that clear plastic and put stuff in it. Whatever his, his hip joint was in there, it was like a paperweight hanging on the desk next to that.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I was like, oh, that's weird. And what happened was because of his basically political affiliation is like, okay, you're not going to retain the son of general Patton. World war two hero.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, he got, he got a presidential waiver, he got retained, but he, you know, he put that up and did and there were just all kinds of odd little things around just over, done office and just the little thing you remember, though you're going. Well, that was different.
Speaker 1:It's a whole different view on someone right, Like that's their inner sanctum and you get to see who they really are yeah, but that was you know.
Speaker 2:It's not like it was his house. I already saw that, you know but that was. They were still unpacking and everything, but still it was just like well, that's odd but, um, I think he drove through our post once in a while he had his own jeep. You know, I had riding on the front, so I'm like you know 10 little horses or something, I don't know. But his own jeep came with him, his furniture came with him. You know, again, at that level that wasn't that uncommon. Then there's the rest of us.
Speaker 1:Right, we put all our stuff in a duffel bag and we're good to go, yep.
Speaker 2:So how long were you in Germany then? Let's see, when did I go there? October of 76 until April of 78.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you were there for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I had come up for E5. I'd gone before the NCO board and then I was going to get promoted, but I had to have four more months on my current contract. So I went to the retention NCO going hey, I just need a four-month extension so I can get my E5. Oh, no, no, you can't extend for four months, you have to reenlist for three years. I went that's not what I've heard. No, no, it's true. I said, hmm, okay, let me think about it.
Speaker 2:Well, because of where I worked and I try to be nice to everybody I went to a different retention NCO, not my retention NCO. I went to a retention NCO in a different command, I in a different command. I went to his office and said, hey, do I really have to reenlist for three years to get my E-5? I thought I only had to extend for four more months. He said no, you can extend for the convenience of the government. That's the only reason you need. I said oh, all right. He says here's the checklist, here are the forms All these people have to initial off that they're OK with you extending for four months to get your E5. I said okay.
Speaker 2:So I went to my boss. I had all these people the company commander, the first sergeant, the sergeant major I didn't care. Last person was the retention NCO because he had initial off to it, brought it to him and I said I need you to initial this. What's that? It's my extension for my four-month extension so I can get my E5. Oh okay, oh okay, initialed off and I went to my boss, got my extension Four months later. So you want to re-enlist for three years now? I said no, I won't do anything with you. You wouldn't work with me. I'm not going to work with you. So that's how I ended up getting out of the Army.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Next thing, I know I'm on a plane and I'm back at Fort Dix going, but before I did that I already let the National Guard know I was looking at going back to them. What I didn't know was because I had joined under the Women's Army Corps rules. Women then when they joined, if they signed a contract for three years, that was it three years. You did not have an additional two, three, four years in the reserves of service obligation six, eight years, like it is now Right.
Speaker 2:So now when a woman joins it's either a six or eight-year three, four years in the reserves of service obligation, six, eight years, like it is now Right. So now when a woman joins, it's either a six or eight year contract, with the first two or three active duty and then the rest in the ready reserves.
Speaker 1:Okay, Right, and just for people who are listening, a lot of people don't realize, like they don't hear it when it's told them and they don't realize it that you may go in on a two yearyear enlistment but you're going to have six years of obligation at the end of it. It doesn't mean you're going to be on active duty.
Speaker 2:Your name is on a list and they might say, hey, guess what, we need you with your skill set in, and yet suddenly you're on orders. Desert storm it happened, you know. 9-1-1 it happened. People got tapped out of the ready reserves. You know. Retired reserves put on orders, you know, and sent off and they came back. They got put back in the reserves yeah, we had a.
Speaker 1:In fact, when we were there we needed a radio operator and I'll never forget I can't remember this kid's name, but I'll never forget the kid. He showed up and he was not happy but he was good at what he did and he said you know, three weeks ago I was sitting on my couch eating potato chips, watching TV. He hadn't been in the military for a while, like he was getting close to the end of that obligation, and they came and got him, got him his uniforms and sent him over and he worked with us in Mosul, iraq. So you know, it does happen, it does happen. But so so the women's army corps did not at that time because of the way the law was written.
Speaker 2:But once they eliminated the women's army corps, I was under the old contract right but anybody. After 1978 they were under the same criteria as it was all one standard, right, you know you didn't have one standard for women and one standard for men as far as your contractual obligations, so that all started to change there in 78.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But again, when I got out I was still under that old contract and so when I went to the National Guard and I signed a contract to join the National Guard, I had a two-week break in service National Guard. I had a two-week break in service Because I got out in end of April mid-April, something like that of 78, and signed a new contract first part of May with the National Guard, back to the Grand Valley Armory, and I was like, oh so I technically had a break in service.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:But not by choice. I just didn't know Now.
Speaker 1:You had to keep your rank and everything, though, correct? Yes, oh yeah break in service.
Speaker 2:Wow, but not by choice, I just didn't know Now, you had to keep your rank and everything, though, correct. Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't lose anything, it just you know they had to do the math and you know it affects. You know some admin rules.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Doesn't that impact your? Was it your PEFD or something like that? Yeah, your pantry basic date.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your PEBD and the acronyms have changed, but yeah, it was called the PEP, your pay entry. So what, your pay was driven on.
Speaker 1:Right. Cause I cause I had a five year break in service, and so my that that I can't even figure out the math.
Speaker 2:There was a way to take this date and you take that date and you separate the two, and I used to know how to do that.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 2:Cause I would. I would call you and go, hey, I don't know what this means, and you'd be like, oh here's, this is what it is. You don't need to know how he got there. Don't panic, it's a good thing, it's actually a good thing, it doesn't hurt you. But they need to know that for total cumulative service for retirement purposes, you know. So they have to close the gap and there's the day you originally joined and then there's the date that's adjusted for pay purposes, slash retirement planning purposes.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I'll be a happy collector of my retirement pay in April.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it does work.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I will tell everyone though. Plan ahead, start early.
Speaker 2:Yes, make sure it's all in. Make sure it's all been submitted. Make sure they got all the paperwork done.
Speaker 1:Call and check up on it.
Speaker 2:Yep. Then, depending on how much active duty you have, you know you get the TRICARE and then, when you get close to 65, but a year out, start planning on the TRICARE for life. Right, you know, barring all that changing? Hopefully not, but it's been good. It's worked really well for me and the hubby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really well. Yeah, I'm looking forward to all of that, so I digress. So you so you uh, so you go into the national guard. You're in the armory.
Speaker 2:I'm back at the grand Valley armory. Yeah, and I was a uh, I was just just a traditional guards person at this point, you know cause, when it and I have to back up just a second when I was in the guard the first time we're talking in 1974. Yeah, when I finished my, my advanced training, I could finally start going to to to the drills training periods with the guard. Well, the unit I was in was an AG detachment, admin detachment, and they only drilled on Monday nights.
Speaker 2:Oh so it was Monday night from seven to 11. It was like, okay, so get there on Monday and then they'd have us work on like one form all night. It was really boring. And then about 10, 30, they go ah, you can leave, you know. Wow, and it was every Monday, you know. And then you got paid quarterly. It was like, okay, that was weird, we used to get paid quarterly, yeah, okay, but you didn't get paid hardly anything. Now the only unit that still trains one night a week is the band, because they need to meet on a regular basis and rehearse. But everybody else obviously now does traditional weekends the Saturday Sunday, maybe Friday, saturday Sunday, maybe Friday, saturday, sunday, monday.
Speaker 1:Depending on where you're at in your training cycle right exactly right, so that's how you would get your four amutas for the month.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, wow okay, yeah, but you know, yeah, so I did get paid, I think after I joined the army finally got paid. It was interesting, but uh, but yeah. So you fast forward to being back in the Guard and I was with the 46th Brigade Headquarters.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because they could have. But I wasn't assigned to the infantry, I was actually assigned to the state headquarters, and then they attached you back to these different units. They called them augmentees. You know they don't have to worry about augmentees anymore now that women can be assigned anywhere and everywhere. So we were there but not there right it was different.
Speaker 2:So I did work and then across the hall at the armory was an engineer detachment and that. So I had been there for a couple months. I'd gone to grayling for my first um annual training session and you know, I haven't not been out of the army that long. I kind of felt like I was back in the army, you know. And we were at at grayling. They got all the nice pretty buildings there now, but they used to call it the sea area or tent city, yeah, you know. And so they had all the women staying in a big, large tent, very large. What was it?
Speaker 1:a gp medium, I think they called it gp medium yep, and they always smell funny yeah, they did that so.
Speaker 2:But the thing is I didn't know, being in Grayling in August, that it can get cold at night.
Speaker 2:Because, they gave me sheets, they gave me some blankets, they even gave me a sleeping bag, but I left that in the car. I'm thinking what do I need a sleeping bag for? I mean, it's August, right? So I'm in the tent there with all these girls and then about I think about two or three in the morning I think it was like 35 I'm freezing to death. So the next day I got the sleeping bag out of the car, threw that on the bunk and never slept under sheets, another at after that, ever, ever.
Speaker 2:If it's warm, you open the sleeping bag. If it's cold, you zip it up.
Speaker 1:It's really good well, that's, that's the funny. That's the funny thing that people don't get about grayling is?
Speaker 2:you don't know cold as heck at night and it can be hotter and a bugger during the day, yeah yeah, so it was like you know.
Speaker 2:So I was. I was a sergeant e5 at that point in time and uh, worked with the 46. And they hired. I didn't really want to go back to college I could have. I had my GI Bill at this point. But this one guy said would you like a temporary position? It was a civil service job working for the 46th Brigade. They used to call them admin supply technicians. I was a GS-5.
Speaker 1:I didn't make any money.
Speaker 2:No, it was it was tight and so I went sure, cause I really didn't want to go to college anyway and I didn't know how to apply for a civilian job. You know, I didn't know how to talk civilian, so I was like sure. So, yeah, I started out as a temporary GS5 and then I had been there for a while and I think they liked how I worked and what I did and my professionalism. And then down the hall was the 126th Infantry Battalion and there was a warrant officer that used to work there but he kind of decided to have a little relationship with somebody down the hall, a female that's frowned upon.
Speaker 2:Well, especially when you're married to other people. Yeah, so they encouraged him to resign his warrant, which he did. The odd thing is they hired him back as an NCO, which I never did understand, but that's a whole other interesting thing.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to say welcome to the guard. You know, I've seen weird things like that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's harder to get away with that kind of nonsense in the active duty. It's just because the rules are just written different.
Speaker 1:Because I mean really in the Guard, everyone's a civilian.
Speaker 2:If you're civil service.
Speaker 1:Well, until you're on duty in the Guard, right, Right on the weekends.
Speaker 2:And he wasn't active duty Guard, he was an AGR, he was a GS-7. So he just wasn't a warrant anymore. He resigned his status as a warrant, reverted back to enlisted. They moved him down to a different unit, so it's not like he was rewarded for what he was doing.
Speaker 1:No, no, that's punishment.
Speaker 2:That's enough Under the circumstances. They deemed it was enough. I didn't lose sleep over it, but that opened up his position. I thought, oh, I wouldn't mind being a warrant officer. So I put my name in for that position. It was a GS-7. And they said, yeah, we want you to have that job. And I said, oh wait, you can't have that job because you're a female and you can't be in the infantry. And it's like what? And so I had to get a special waiver from the state headquarters. I was technically assigned to the state headquarters and attached back, so I worked for the infantry, but I wasn't in the infantry. I just worked for the infantry.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I worked for the, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a nice little end around, but it works. The end result was the same.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, that's a nice little end around, but it works. The end result was the same Exactly. It's not like they were going to send me out to battle in the infantry and then when the warrant officer opportunity presented itself back then you didn't have to go to officer candidate school. You do now to be a warrant officer.
Speaker 2:It was a direct appointment program. The only ones who had to go to officer candidate school were those who were going to be pilots, because they're going to invest so much money in them. To be a pilot, they had to first make it through officer candidate school and then they would send them to flight school. But then years later they changed the rules and said now, if you're going to be a warrant officer, you're going to go to warrant officer candidate school.
Speaker 1:And that that school is no joke.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's a hard school. No joke.
Speaker 1:I went to OCS. That was hard enough, but I know a lot of warrant officers. But yeah, that school is tough.
Speaker 2:I had an opportunity to go to Lansing, sit in front of an interview board Basically it was three officers and then you had another warrant officer who was the technical expert who would ask the technical questions. And then the technical expert would tell the board if they thought you had the skillset to be a warrant. And that's what I did. I went to Lansing, got interviewed and then they excused me and then they called me back in. They said congratulations, raise your right hand. And I took an oath of office right then and there as a warrant officer.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. It was weird.
Speaker 2:And I mean like, and that was it. And I went and Ray and I were engaged still, I think at that point and I said I'm a warrant, that's why I would not ever want to go back to the warrant program, a direct appointment program, ever and fast forward many years when I was a command chief warrant for the state and they would talk that nonsense at the national level. Some states would we should go back to direct. I said no, no, no, I did not like having to figure out this. What I am on my own. At least when you go to warrant officer candidate school, somebody's giving you a foundation of what to expect what it means to be a leader versus a really good E6 who's now wearing a warrant officer bar.
Speaker 2:It's just like. No, I don't want to go through that twice. Not like that, Right, just like no, I don't want to go through that twice, not like that.
Speaker 2:So, no, there are exceptions. There are special force sworn officers who are senior NCOs, who have already been in leadership positions. Okay, there are exceptions. Okay, and there should be room for exceptions. I have no problem with that. But as a general rule, especially if you don't have a lot of depth of experience in a leadership role guiding, directing whatever you know you should go to Officer Candidate School. You really do.
Speaker 1:Well and correct me if I'm wrong, but for folks out there who don't understand because for a long time I didn't understand like warrant officers, the enlisted people don't mess with them and the officers are afraid of them Because they don't know what the hell you people do, especially with civilians who don't know the military, I'll go oh, I was a warrant, and you get the blank.
Speaker 2:Here's how I try to explain it to civilians. I said everyone pretty much knows the enlisted ranks Private to sergeant major. Everybody knows the enlisted ranks private to sergeant major Yep, yep. Everybody knows the officer ranks, second lieutenant all the way up to general, yep, yep. I said well, the vast majority of 99% of your warrant officers are going to come out of the enlisted ranks and they're subject matter experts. You know, except for the high school to flight school, we're going to teach you how to fly Right.
Speaker 2:But everybody else is coming in with a certain level of depth and technical experience, coming in with a certain level of depth and technical experience and because of that experience that you have and the leadership skills you have, you are put into this small group and it's like 2% of the force is a warrant officer and because of the technical expertise you bring, you are now appointed as a warrant and then you can go all the way up to CW4, and then 5% of this group will have the opportunity to make CW5. It's a very tiny slice, so it'll make 5%. I said it's kind of like a foreman, you've been on the line, you work the line, you know the line, you know how to talk to the boss, you know how to keep the business running and help the business be more effective. It's kind of like a foreman that's the best analogy I could come up with and they kind of go oh, that kind of makes sense you're the technical experts yeah, we're the smes now.
Speaker 2:In civilian world smes are paid a lot more than general specialists that's true.
Speaker 1:That's true. None of us, none of us joined the military because we thought we were going to be rich no, if you're in for that reason, you're really in for the wrong reason, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And if you want to make the big bucks, there's ways to do that. But if you want to do something that's bigger than yourself and that's what worked for me. It ended up being bigger than me and having experiences I never would have had if I had stayed in Ottawa County, got married, raised kids, and that's okay. I have again one out of eight. You know all my siblings ended up having kids. You know Ray and I never did. Yeah, we inherited one. That's a whole nother story and it's a good story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, it's a good story.
Speaker 2:It's got a happy ending, but um it just I didn't. Everyone's different on where they want to go forward, and if you have those opportunities presented, what a blessing there's a lot of people in this world that don't get the opportunities that we've had. That's true. The key, then, is to take advantage of them Appropriately, of course.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, not to the point where you lose your commission, but certainly.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. Certainly take advantage of the situation.
Speaker 1:So you go and take a board and you walk in an E-5, and you walk out a warrant officer. I was actually an E-6 at that point.
Speaker 2:I did make E-6, working for the 126th Infantry initially as a GS, I got my E-6, and then before I so I was at least that far enlisted rank-wise, and then, yeah, direct to W-1, warrant officer one direct appointed and worked up through the ranks. After a couple years, you know, I got promoted to my CW-2. But again, I'm technically assigned to the state headquarters.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I'm an augmentee to the 126th Infantry and it worked out fine. You know when we'd go to Grayling. You know I got to drive a quarter ton from camp Grayling out to different parts of Grayling where they'd be, you know, camped out for a week or two or whatever training they were doing, and I had to go do the strength report and then go back to post. I had my own quarter ton. It was pretty cool. I enjoyed driving a quarter ton.
Speaker 1:How many of your, how many of your friends, can say that?
Speaker 2:Well, actually, probably a lot of your friends, the younger troops, you know, you know, I had a niece that ended up going into the army and she went to Iraq and she was she was a sergeant majors driver, so she she drove a lot of different vehicles and things like that.
Speaker 2:So, but yeah, yeah, yeah, it was all good, all good experiences to have that. After a couple years, though, the Michigan National Guard decided that they were going to create a consolidated records section. This was something other states were already doing. They call it a personnel service branch, and they took all the military personnel files from all the different armories, because, at that point in time, every armory took care of their own records. Some did great, some not so good, depending on the skill set of the full-timer working there and they said, no, we're going to consolidate them all, and they needed somebody to run that section. So I put my name in the hat, got interviewed, and I got selected as the chief warrant officer for the personnel service branch, had 22 people working for me, I had over almost 12,000 records, and we brought everything up to Lansing, and, because there was not enough room at the state headquarters, we put everything on the drill floor, slash the gym up at South Washington building. Do you remember the armory on South Washington?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I served out there. I actually was counter-drug with Colonel Francisco at the time yes, yep. And so spent a lot of time at that building.
Speaker 2:Yep, well, we were on the drill floor initially, uh-huh, and so they got all modular furniture. I think it was all from Hayworth or whatever. We had big walls, we had this outer perimeter, we could lock the doors and inside we had all the flipper cabinets and we had all these different cubicles set up. I think I had like four records teams and an officer records team and an actions team. We did ID cards. I had a little baby AG company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right there on the drill floor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I had a senior NCO working for me and, yeah, it was great, did that for about four or five years and then another position opened up and I moved there and then I was doing the policy and actions working for the director of personnel, also known as the G1. And that was back under, I remember, colonel LaChance.
Speaker 1:Oh, that name's familiar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, back in the day I worked for him and worked for him for a couple years in that position and then they moved me from there to running the officer branch and while I was working at the officer branch I was in different assignments. The opportunity to become the command chief warrant officer for the Michigan Guard came up. Put my name in the hat. It had some challenges that came with it, but I got it. We don't need to go into all that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, we won't. I'll spare you having to do that.
Speaker 2:But the thing is, you know, I got promoted to chief warrant officer five in, let's say, 1998. 1998. And I did a little rough math, it wasn't too hard. From every indicator I was the first female CWA five in the state of Michigan.
Speaker 1:That's an accomplishment.
Speaker 2:We're talking the Army and the Reserves and the Guard.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because there aren't that many women.
Speaker 1:No. And then, two years after that, the, the reserves and the guard right because there aren't that many women, you know, you know.
Speaker 2:And then two years after that, the command chief warrant officer position opened up because the previous guy he got his 20 years agr and he said I'm done, which was fine, and so I put my name in for that position, got it and, uh, I was the first female command chief warrant officer in the united states army. Because at that point in time the army didn't even have command chief warrant officers, the national guard created the command chief warrant officer program. The United States Army Because at that point in time the Army didn't even have command chief foreign officers, the National Guard created the command chief foreign officer program. It's comparable to your state command sergeant major right.
Speaker 2:And so the National Guard developed the program. The Army Reserve said ooh, we like that.
Speaker 1:That's kind of neat, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they tapped into it. And then the active Army looked at that and went oh, I think they got something there, and so they have command chief warrants of the different branches, you know.
Speaker 1:So you were the first of the first, really, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then literally the first female. So when I went to my first national conference at the national guard bureau, I'm in this room of you know 54 command chief warrant officers, you know 54 chief warrant officers, you know 54 states and territories, so we're all sitting in this room and, uh, I'm the only girl in the room I was gonna say there's a lot of testosterone in that room but you know, having worked for the infantry for a number of years, didn't bother me at all.
Speaker 2:No, when I was with the one, you know people like oh, one, two, six, and you know they're not that great a unit. They're not not that. You know what. I had 656 big brothers. Nobody messed with me. I made sure that they were all supported properly. I made sure the units got the support they needed. And I can remember one time being up at Grayling and we were in, I think, the 200, 300 area but they had all the women, one of these two-story buildings and all the women from that area were all on the ground floor and the guys.
Speaker 2:there were some guys upstairs, but this is where the bathhouses were, like you know, 20 feet away from the building kind of thing. And so I remember sitting there. I'm sitting in my bunk, you know, and I had my t-shirt on. It's not like I was, you know, inappropriate. But these two guys come walking in, just drunk. They come walking in, they're looking around. I'm going what are you doing here? My inside voice is going uh-oh.
Speaker 2:Right my outside voice is get out of here, Get out of here now, Get out of here now. Okay, you know so, but it was just so. I came out of the building I said hey, did you see those guys? Yeah Well, they were in our barracks. Don't worry about it, that won't happen twice.
Speaker 1:They'll definitely take care of business for you so, but yeah. Yeah, the one, two, six is. That was a rough bunch, but they got.
Speaker 2:I went to OCS with a couple of people who went there, well, and that's where I met my husband.
Speaker 1:It's not all bad.
Speaker 2:Not all bad Future husband.
Speaker 1:So you made CW5 in 1998. Yes, 1998.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I came into the National Guard. I'll never forget February 14th 1999.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, still running the officer branch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I came in as I was an E6 and then went to OCS.
Speaker 2:Did you go to Fort Custer? I did RTI.
Speaker 1:I did, and every time I drive by there now I still cry. I went to OCS with a gal. Her last name was Barker.
Speaker 2:Oh Trish.
Speaker 1:Trish Barker yeah, so her and I went to ocs together. Yeah, and um, we would ride I think she just retired did she I think so finally yeah, we would drive there together, yeah and we would be like, oh, this is gonna suck, you know and be.
Speaker 1:And then at the at the end on sunday, on the way back, we're like, oh, that wasn't too bad, this was like a big joke for us in a way that was hard because you like had to pump yourself up, go through that training and then finish that training and then be like what?
Speaker 2:a month later go back and do it all over again and try to remember what you did the month before exactly me, send me to Fort Benning, or whatever it's called. This week do my eight weeks be done yeah you know, and the moron officer candidate school you could either go to not called fort novicell, but it was fort rucker before.
Speaker 2:So you go down there for six, seven weeks for your officer candidate school, but there's also a reserve component officer candidate school where it's the same idea right it's one weekend a month down at camp atterbury, indiana, and you do that for like a year and then you do a two-week phase and then you get pinned. Yeah, same idea, very, very similar they run through the RTI Regional Training Institute program.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and Rutger is where they also teach helicopter Flight school. Yeah, so, trish, like, fast forward, we graduate, we're off doing our own thing. And one day she calls me and she's like, hey, guess where I'm at. And I'm like where. She's like I'm on the highway. I'm like, oh, so what, you're on the highway. Yeah, I'm headed to Fort Rucker, I'm going to be a pilot. And she had put in her packet just on a whim, like because she was, she'd gone to degree in kinesiology. And yeah, she's like I'm going to be a pilot. And she was, she ended up being a pilot. Yeah, yeah, I haven't talked to her in forever, so I've got to find her again.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Somebody at Grand Ledge probably knows.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're a pretty tight group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll have to get a hold of some of my friends out there and see if they can put me in touch. Anyway, so you become the um. What's it called? The command?
Speaker 2:chief chief foreign officer and what were those? What were those duties? Like Um, to some degree, we kind of had to make it up as we went along because, you know, running the officer branch, I knew this is what I got to do to promote others. I was a very hands-on, direct person on taking care of people and it's a very micro-level type job. It's very specific regulations, laws, policies. What does the big boss want? How do you want to manage the troops?
Speaker 2:Whereas the command chief foreign officer because it's comparable to the state sergeant major. Now it's supposed to be more macro and we had never done it before in in this capacity and so it's like, okay, what do you do? How do you do it? And so you're coming up with basically 54 variations on the theme of what it meant, you know. So, depending on what kind of leadership support, what kind of direction you got from the adjutant general or the assistant adjutant generals, because that's what you work for, that's your boss, you know, know, cause the person who gave me the most awesome support was actually general color, when they had former adjunct general from Michigan air guard. You know he helped me a ton because there were a lot of individuals who only wanted warrant officers to be. The old term was an NCO with a club card. In other words, you're just, you're just a super NCO. You're not really part of the leadership.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And the intent of the command chief program was to say no, your warrant officers have to be more than super sergeants. Okay, you know you have all these expectations and leadership expectations of your sergeant majors. Yeah, why, especially once you become a senior warrant officer? Okay, why wouldn't you expect more of them? Why wouldn't you? The bandmaster is a warrant officer. They've got to know what it means to be in that type of a leadership role and how to function at different levels of command. It's one thing if you're a warrant officer for an infantry battalion, but what if you're the senior warrant officer for an entire brigade? Now you're talking different macro-level operations and command structure and different activities that are going on. You're the SME to this whole organization. What is your role within that operation? Or within aviation, you'll get these different W-5 positions. What kind of guidance are there? Because the W-5 position didn't get created in the guard until 1995. Okay, so there's.
Speaker 2:There was like maybe one or two W-5s promoted ahead of me and it was just. What does it even mean to be W-5? Because only a tiny percent is going to get that. Well, just to be a fancy W-4, what shouldn't you have more expectations on these individuals? Isn't that why it exists. So it evolved and grew over the years to be a more macro leadership level position. But again, how it's utilized still boils down to that senior general officer for the state and the other general officers and the colonels and their expectations and some they were very open to having this person be their SME and make sure basically be responsible for the whole warrant officer program. Right, I mean, I remember talking to one officer one time. Names are never necessary, of course.
Speaker 2:But, I was frustrated about trying to handle different things within the warrant officer program this, that and the other, what I was trying to do, and I was getting some kickback from different people. So I went and vented on a chief of staff. Well, you know, when I was in the aviation battalion, I always made sure my warrant officers were taken care of. I'm thinking, okay, that's fine, that's one that's, you know, one-third of the state, but it's, you know, it's just this little slice. We're talking overall expectation of the warrant officers, career management, professional development from start to finish, and all these different macro level things that really no one, no one really did. The old grades were worried about who's going to make 06, you know, 07, whatever they enlisted. Their focus is I want to be the sergeant major, which is all good, but there's a certain percentage here. Who's monitoring and managing and directing and guiding.
Speaker 2:You don't have any command authority but you have influence to the sergeant majors, the senior officers, and that on how they can best utilize their warrant officers. Because some warrant officers they get appointed and they'll stay in that same job, literally the same unit, until the day they retire. That's too long, yeah. Now your officer grades, because of the nature of staff command, staff command you tend not to stay in the same position for more than three years because warrant officers are your SMEs. You don't really get good until about the fourth year. It takes the first year for you to get, when you're talking to SME type work. So four to five years and you're still going to work in your career field.
Speaker 2:But you really should then go from this command to that command, because every command function is just a little different and that's how you grow. But if you always stay here, you never grow, even as an SME. And so you're trying to monitor that whole program and try to find guidance and direction to that. And the person who opened up the most doors for me again was General Cutler, saying I get it, but maybe because he was blue and not green Air Force, not Army, he didn't have. I mean, the Air Force has only just now brought warrant officers back into the Air Force. They got rid of their warrant officers, I think in the 70s and recently they brought warrant officers back, but they're going to be IT people, but they're going to be SMEs, right, and they said, oh, even they realized, oh, there is a role for this unique group.
Speaker 1:Well, and if I'm maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but they're kind of like the middle child of the military right.
Speaker 2:It's a forgotten child.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you sort of.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like I remember when my husband was deployed to Afghanistan and the chief of staff at the time would make comments to one day he can walk it in because I could call Ray in Afghanistan via the DOD line. They're like oh yeah, you can call him, it's okay, no problem. Oh, he sounded like he was in the room next door. It was amazing. So I was venting on him on something that was going on at the time and hung up.
Speaker 2:Chief comes walking in. So I suppose you told Ray about what's going on and what you think about this. I said, yeah, I did. I kind of talked to somebody, yeah well, it's nothing inappropriate or anything.
Speaker 2:And I said, sir, can I tell you what I think you know? Yeah, go ahead, Right. This is how my perception of how the warrant officers are sometimes treated Chief, do this, do this, do that? That? Great, great job. Now back to the little kid's table. I said we're either part of the leadership or we're not. You can't pick and choose when you want us to be part of your leadership team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't just break the glass and pull me out and then put me back in the box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's what some, not all. Some got it, Some don't want to. But how much of that's human nature too?
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:Think of all the different directors I worked with Working in the personnel department. I've lost count how many different directors of personnel I worked for. My favorite one was a former Marine infantry officer. Okay, he knew he wasn't a personnel expert. He didn't pretend to be a personal expert. He used good old leadership expectations. Okay, I'm empowering you and expect you to run your team effectively and correctly. If I find out that there's an issue that hasn't been accomplished or done to standard, okay, I'm not taking on them. You and I will talk. I went oh, that's cool, you know.
Speaker 2:Then I had one come in and he had been an OIC, an officer in charge out in the field. So he knew admin, he knew personnel, he technically was pretty good, but he was a micromanager. He couldn't empower anybody. If there was an issue within a section, instead of just going to that section leader, he would go all the way down to the bottom. We're talking a department of what? 40 people, 50 people, all different sections, all different operations.
Speaker 2:You know you can't. You know it shows a lack of trust and I knew when my people were coming in, I knew they were going out. I wasn't losing sleep over the five minutes here and the five minutes there Were they getting their job done? Were we being effective? Right, and he would show up. So we had some people on like a 6.30 to 3.30 schedule. And then there was the 7.30 to 4.35, whenever you leave people and he would show up a half hour early to see if they really showed up on time. I'm like, really you got nothing. But yeah, when certain opportunities presented themselves that were to his personal gain, he did.
Speaker 1:It was just like oh sorry, well, did he stick, stick around? Those people were working like 15, 16 hours a day, oh, no, he never stayed late yeah, no no, didn't see who was.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I saw what he wanted to see. You know, again, I had a plethora of different directors coming in, but the vast majority they were. They knew they had to work with the team leaders, they knew they couldn't do everything and know everything, and so the vast majority, they were fine.
Speaker 1:They were fine, I think the thing I learned so going from enlisted to officer, was that when I come in as a platoon leader, right Like you said, they move officers around all the time they do.
Speaker 1:So when you come in as a platoon leader, you're Like you said. They move officers around all the time they do. So when you come in as a platoon leader, you're not going to be there that long. Nope, Now that platoon sergeant, he's the one that all those people have relied on for all this time. That's right. He's the constant Yep or she's the constant Yep. That officer better figure out. That's the working with.
Speaker 2:This is their opportunity, especially as a second lieutenant, to just sit back and grow.
Speaker 1:And learn.
Speaker 2:And learn from all these experts in their field, whether they're a warrant officer or an NCO, and then later on, as they go into higher levels of you know, become, you know, the company commander or whatever the different positions out there, be it staff or whatever that they continue to grow and grow and grow and that by the time they become a company commander or a battalion commander, they're ready. It's a training phase and those NCOs do the training.
Speaker 1:Well, and even as a company commander, I've got my first sergeant, who I'm still learning from right.
Speaker 2:Because they've got 20, 30 years of service.
Speaker 1:There's that partnership. When you become a battalion commander, you have command sergeant major. You're still learning from that command sergeant major. I mean you're ultimately making the decisions, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind closed doors.
Speaker 2:But you need a good advisor. You have to be open to your advisors. If you're not open to your advisors because I know everything, no one knows everything You're going to be the emperor with no clothes on is who you're going to be if you don't listen to those people, yes, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:So when did you actually?
Speaker 2:retire from the National Guard then 2014? Yep, my first day of retirement was 1 February 2014. So it's going on 11 years. Yeah, it's hard to fathom. But I still stay engaged with different things. Like I still every year go to Grayling for the Warrant Officer Association meeting and dinner and it's just basically an opportunity for all Warrants past, present and future to get together and kind of just chit-chat and find out what's going on in the Warrant Officer world and just a couple hours of just pure warrant officer time up at Grayling.
Speaker 2:So I'm the secretary, so once a year, get together, I take minutes and it's just kind of a nice way to stay up and then hear the third-hand chitter-chatter about oh gosh, you have no idea what's happening in such-and-such a section and you have no idea what's going on. And it's like you know it, at some point in time that person will, will pass on and hopefully the next one coming in will fix what that other person broke. That's all you can hope for, you know. But yeah, it's, it's. It's tough change, you know. You hear the transitions a bit. Uh, changes in automation, changes in personnel, change is constant. It's how you choose to adjust, to change, because that's the only thing you can control.
Speaker 1:So you joined the military. I just want to put this timeline together here. So you joined the military 10 years before I came in right Yep 18. Yeah, and then you left the military three years after I retired, so you did some time and you only had that two week break in service.
Speaker 2:Wow, 39 years, uh, 39 years, seven months, three days, something like that, I don't know. So how did you?
Speaker 1:how did you serve? So this was, this was my downfall. When I got my 20 year cause I was going to I was like I'm going to stay until they throw me out. I got that 20 year letter and it changes you. It does, and you're either going to go one of two ways You're going to do what you did, or you're going to do what I did.
Speaker 2:Well, when I hit my 20, especially I had 20 active duty, okay, and the command chief warrant officer position came open and someone wanted to use that W-5 position just as a means to promote people to W-5. Because my predecessor nice person did nothing with it. I was running the officer branch and we had issues at Fort Rucker. Whenever we had issues with candidates, whenever we had any issues along that line, it all got thrown on me Right, like no names, you know. So it was like whatever. And so when that person chose to leave, I thought I'm already doing the bulk of the work, you know. So it was like whatever. And so when that person chose to leave, I thought I'm already doing the bulk of the work, you know. And I knew they wouldn't let me be a full-time command chief, because most states at that point were not allowing that to happen. It was a dual-headed job, so I'd run the officer branch. But I'm thinking it's a perfect fit, I'm already doing it, I already know what's involved.
Speaker 2:And someone else wanted to use that just to promote somebody because they didn't have a five slot in their department. Like well, it's not to be used for promotions, right. And then people are like well, you know? I mean, you're already a five. Why is it a big deal? The chief of staff is already an o6. What difference does you know? Why do somebody want to be chief of staff? Well and it's, it's, it's, it's sergeant major. Is it ready in e9? Why be the state's art major?
Speaker 1:Because it is a big deal.
Speaker 2:It is a big deal.
Speaker 1:It's a big, big deal.
Speaker 2:But again, if you don't understand the warrant program because you're not involved in the warrant program and you've never been a warrant, the challenge is it's kind of a stepchild, yeah, and some of the step-parents have been good, some, you know, not so much, not so much, but it's a people thing. I don't take it personal. Not even I'm not saying any of them were bad people.
Speaker 1:No, the people are just different and have different values different ethics different perspectives on how to get things done. You, though, were a legend. I'm just going to tell you, I want to put this, I want to put this out there. I don't know about legend Good for my ego If ever there was a problem, I was always told you're the person to call and I think honestly in my phone, if I look in there, I think I still have your number in there somewhere.
Speaker 2:It's possible.
Speaker 1:But I would also tell other people that as well. Like, don't call her if you've got a, something stupid that you can just take care of, but if you've got a problem that you can't solve, you call re-approve, you call chief Pruitt, and she will fix this for you. And so I would have to think, when you go to these meetings, that that people still listen to what you have to say, because even though and I don't think they knew who I was right.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know who I am anymore.
Speaker 1:I don't think you're the kind of person that says, well, this is how we used to do it, but I think you are the kind of person that would say, well, if that problem that you're talking about, this is how it's been solved in the past.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, when I left, when I retired and the next command chief warrant officer came in there was if I had known it was going to take them three months to hire my replacement, I would have begged to stay three more months so. I could have a straight 40 years of service.
Speaker 1:Right and do a proper handoff Right Okay.
Speaker 2:So when he got hired he asked me if I could show him my system and I said absolutely. And so I went to Lansing a number of times and talked him through it, and then he would send me emails and ask about what about this guy? What about that guy? What about this one? What about that one? And so after about a year he quit talking to me, which was fine because he had his battle rhythm going. It was all good.
Speaker 2:I the the current command chief I've known since he was a pfc okay, but he doesn't need to ask me anything because he has more depth of experience and he was able to have a proper handoff from the guy he replaced. And it was interesting because before I left I wrote up basically a position description overview for the current agent general, for general, for general Vandana, and one of the things I tried to stress is that you know, you don't need a super clerk. I was the right person at the right time because I could bring some technical depth into writing a lot of policies and guidance and regs and whatever I said. But what I lacked? I learned a lot and it took me a while. I was in the job for 12 years years. It was probably about six years too long, but I wasn't holding anybody back.
Speaker 2:But the thing is you need somebody who's got some deployment experience, who's got some macro overview, who's worked at multiple levels of experience and this, that and the other. I had some at least. I'd been in the army, I'd been in germany, I've been in carson, right, you know, I'd been at the battalion level, I'd dealt with the infantry. I did have some experiences that some SMEs don't have because they just worked in this one position forever. And I remember being asked well, why don't you think so-and-so should be a future command chief? And I said no, because that person has only been in one unit their entire time in the National Guard.
Speaker 2:One unit Never worked at the company level, never worked at the battalion level, never stay head course the whole time, and that's not a real unit. It's an operational command to provide resources to everybody else, but it commands no one. You know the 46th Brigade does not take command orders from the state headquarter, it takes it from division. Okay, and it's like. No, it's not. You need someone who's got some depth of experience, you know, and it took me a long time to learn a lot of that and attending staff meetings. They originally didn't want to invite me to staff meetings. You know General Cutler changed that me to staff meetings you know General Cutler changed that he went to a staff meeting.
Speaker 2:He looks around the room because my husband told me this one. They're looking around the room and General Cutler says, hmm, I think the command chief warrant officer should be attending this meeting Do they all scramble?
Speaker 1:Oh, we'd hold her.
Speaker 2:I think they were kind of mad at me for a while and I'm like whatever that's okay. It's fine.
Speaker 1:That's okay. You know, I have seen a lot of times where, when a position like that comes up, it gets written for a certain person, right? So you have all this institutional knowledge. You're amazing at what you do but on some level, I think those jobs should be written for the job and not the person, right? Right, like, I have this place in this hierarchy and that's what this place should do, regardless of who sits in it.
Speaker 2:And it took me time to figure a lot of that out Again. A lot of things I learned through my entire career. I made up as I went along. Remember I was on the lead. He had to change. It was all two days behind me, though the person who came in behind me was handed something. I was given nothing, I had to make it up.
Speaker 2:When I joined the Guard, there weren't hardly any women, just everything the type of training women get today on leadership expectations. When I was stationed in Germany, I did go to I can't think of the post now, but I went to an NCO development class. But they had two different types. They had one for the combat arms and they had one for service support. So I went to the NCO class and it was the first time I ever sat in a room and they talked about what it meant to be a leader. I was like, oh, is that what it means to be a? You do this, you do that. How do means to be a? You do this, you do that. How do you do evaluations? How do you counsel? How do you? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Again, I didn't go to officer candidate school. Nobody taught me how to do those things. So when I was a super junior warrant officer, I had an nco who was an absolute. You know, pick a word, it's pretty accurate and one of the things that we handled were attendance issues, you know, and I kind of had a philosophy if you miss more than so many drills, we're talking a walls, we're supposed to throw you out, right, okay, I think it's like nine absences, right, depending on the rule of the week, right, but if there's any way to fix and recover and save this, especially if they're just young, young and junior, we should do that. Oh, yeah, and so I'd be working with the units. How can we find a solution? A lot of people are like well, the book says no, because no is easy. Yeah, it does say no. However, we're not talking law, we're talking policy.
Speaker 1:Right, these are guidelines.
Speaker 2:These are guidelines, expectations and some people. You can't save them all, but if we could save one and turn them into a better soldier and make them a better resource, maybe they'll actually end up being a better person. I don't know, but maybe it's a little. I didn't think all that. But how can we help fix this situation, especially if it turns out there's underlying reasons why this person didn't come to drill? We're not talking substance abuse issues, maybe just life. Life happens the car was broke, the wife is sick, whatever.
Speaker 1:Kids, kids, life does happen.
Speaker 2:So I would try to fix this. Well, this guy that was supposed to work for me he was supposed to be a legal clerk no-transcript and I'd be talking to Ray about it. We'd be driving back and forth, we carpooled, you know, for many years, and he'd go what you ought to do is and he'd give me the suggestions. You know, he was the best mentor I had because I didn't have anybody else providing me with any guidance or direction on how to lead, how to direct, how to supervise, how to counsel. They were teaching that in the NCO classes after I'd already been promoted to the next grade. It's not like they do follow-up training. Oh, you should already know that I should. You're right, I should. How do I get it Right?
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, well, you do run into problems where you have somebody who's really good at their job but they're just not a leader.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know that, and we throw them into a leadership position and we don't give them any training. I've seen so many, yeah, yeah, and that's our fault.
Speaker 1:That's not their fault. That's our fault for putting them there.
Speaker 2:Well, because it's hard, the supervisors of those people aren't doing their part because, not everybody writes honest evaluations, because it means telling the truth.
Speaker 1:It's hard. You think we have a problem with the truth sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yes, we all do as humans. It's a human challenge because the confrontation is hard. Unless you're a narcissistic bully, but there's no empathy behind those individuals. We don't want that either.
Speaker 1:No, we want to develop people. Yes, we don't want to injure them with our words. Yes, so you retired. It's been almost 11 years. Yeah, 11 years, is it?
Speaker 2:almost February. Yes, come February 1st It'll be 11 years. I'm at that point in my career now where people go Ria. Who?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's a good place to be. It's okay because I get to ride a horse now. I had a 35 year break from horses. Now I'm back into riding horses and I have this beautiful Afro-Arabian Friesian horse that I ride at least three days a week and then, of course, supplement with the Military Women's Memorial, and that's just a little psychic.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about what you've been doing, since I love that you ride horses and I'm gonna. I'm gonna just let you know my daughter, uh, has been riding horses since she was probably I don't know 10 or 12 that was five she still shows, she still shows horses, she loves it, she's got, she's got a horse. Um, so when you talked about it, like I get it, because some people just don't get the whole horse thing- but, but I totally get it and um, so that's, that's awesome that you have time to do that now.
Speaker 1:Um, but the women's memorial is something that we've talked about a couple times. Let's, what is that? What do you do? How does that work?
Speaker 2:a couple years ago, uh ray and I took our daughter becky to dc, just go. It was a spring break thing Drove out there. And Phyllis Wilson is the current president of the Military Women's Memorial. She's a retired CW5, former command chief foreign officer for the entire Army Reserve.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah, and she's got like a nurse's degree.
Speaker 2:She was an MI warrant on active duty with the Reserve, so she was AGR, so she had quite an extensive career and very extensive experience. Nurse's degree. She was an mi warrant on active duty with the reserve, so she was agr, so she, she had quite an extensive career and very extensive experience. And so after she retired she was looking at different things and, um, the position of president for the memorial had opened up and she was kind of half toying with the idea and but almost didn't, because she just assumed they would just hire another general officer. And hey, she's just a warrant, you know and you know, and it was another general officer that works at the memorial that said, if you don't apply, you're right, that's what's going to happen. At least throw your name in. If it doesn't happen, okay, at least throw your name in. And she did, and they selected her and she's done an amazing job at promoting the military women's memorial at the national level. So she's gone, gone to American Legion national conferences, vfw national conferences, things of that nature, and shared the story at the national level. And then what she started pushing for was to have an ambassador from each state.
Speaker 2:So back up to us in DC and I thought, oh, I met Phyllis when I was the command chief warrant for Michigan. So I got to know her a little bit and she knew who I was and I thought, well, she's single, probably living in a condo. When she's not at work she's probably hanging by herself a lot. So I said hey want to meet in Crystal City for dinner and it's just outside of the DC area, it's a nice place. So she joined us for dinner and she's like yeah, I was looking at individual stories that have been shared at the Military Women's Memorial. She says here's one from somebody from another state and it's the person's picture and it's all filled out. Well, I've been technically a member of the Military Women's Memorial since 1997. And I thought, oh, that would be a cool program. I'll sell them a dollar. You know right, I'm on the mailing list you know she goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I opened yours up and it's totally blank and I said, well, I'm in admin, I take care of other people, not me, you know. And then the thought of you know filling it out and I thought, oh, you know what I do that. So I got home and put one of my favorite pictures in there and I just shared a little consolidated state. How do you consolidate almost 40 years of experience into a paragraph and a half?
Speaker 1:Right Right, Cause we've been talking for almost two hours. It was hard, you know so.
Speaker 2:I tried to capture it down about general experiences. But one of the things I shared in there and this goes back to still being in the Guard one of my most what I want to call emotional things that I did was I was the key point of contact for all casualty issues in the state of Michigan, because the active Army has no casualty contacts Okay, we're talking injured and or deceased soldiers. Okay, army soldiers, not the other branches. And so when I became the policy and actions warrant you know like 98, 99, whatever when I took that position, that job came with being casualty coordinator. Okay, well, we didn't have anything extensive going on yet.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a big deal at that time.
Speaker 2:It was getting a phone call from Fort Knox because they covered the lower peninsula and Fort. Leonard colors the upper peninsula. Why it split, don't know. Ask the Army.
Speaker 1:Because they think they're two different states.
Speaker 2:I think so, but I could get a call from them, but most of my phone calls were from Fort Knox and this lady would call me and she'd say I've got an active duty death and we need a notifier to go to the house, and then we need a casualty assistance. So in most cases we just needed the casualty assistance officer Because, with them being active duty, the family's already been notified, so we didn't have that duty. The family's already been notified, so we didn't have that. That's a hard job, yes, okay. So mostly they needed a casualty assistance officer, maybe a chaplain, to help with the funeral and those kind of issues. In the state of Michigan, I mean, we literally had one where it was a person hit by a bus. I mean suicide, car accidents, heart attacks, but not duty deaths. You know combat deaths.
Speaker 2:Well then you fast forward to 9-1-1,. You know, because even during Desert Storm, we didn't have much.
Speaker 1:Right, it was a pretty quick in and out, yeah.
Speaker 2:But 9-1-1 happens and now we're getting all these units activated and deployed and I was getting calls every week either because of an injured soldier or a death. But when it was a death it was not uncommon that they had parents or somebody in Michigan and we would have to send a notifier. And initially it was just the notifier all by themselves, and you don't do any notifications between midnight and 6 in the morning, you can't at 11, something like that. But so six in the morning they're standing there and they're class A's knocking on the door to tell somebody the worst thing they're ever going to hear. And some of those circumstances were not great and I learned over time to start calling them back going. How are you? And I know they're okay, they'll, they'll get through it. But how are we? I'm fine, chief. I mean I would call them to go because they all had to be trained. There's a training session they have to go through.
Speaker 2:So we had to have all that and eventually we added chaplains. So I had to keep lists of all these things, kept track of everything and tried to do my part to help facilitate all that, and so I figured of all the things that I did. That adds second and third order impact on individuals. That was one job, because you can't do anything for the deceased soldier. Now it's all about the family and we did our best with the resources we had to reach out and help that family go through the hardest thing they're ever going to go through, and some of the circumstances were really tough. And then of course we lost 12 of our own, you know, and those had to be handled. But there was even one situation where we got called because Fort Knox was having a hard time finding somebody from the Army Reserve to handle one of their own.
Speaker 2:I'm like what Are you serious?
Speaker 1:You know, as I think about the National Guard, though we tend to step in.
Speaker 2:We step up, we really do.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter if it was active duty or reserve or guard, we're going to do it.
Speaker 2:They're part of the family. Yeah, and so we would. We would step up and provide the support that the Army needed for one of their own that had died and needed casualty support for that family here in the state of Michigan, because there are no active Army resources to do those things. But yeah, that I'd like to think. I did that for almost 10 years. You know, didn't plan on it.
Speaker 1:Things got, things got busy, unfortunately, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So but yeah, of all the different things I did, yeah, that one, I think, had the most most emotional impact on individuals lives and I knew that. And, um, when I would call people at two and three in the morning, you know, first off getting called, they already knew it wasn't good. 99% of the time answered the phone. There was always that one where it was like come on, you know, but most of them they'd go, chief, it's what we got to do. I mean, they knew that when they took the class. They knew that when they got their name on the list and they all stepped up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they really did. So that's what you included in your profile.
Speaker 2:Yes, sorry I digress. So I finally did that. I put my story out there. So if you go to the Military Women's Memorial, if you ever go there physically to the building, you go to the computer. You can type my name in. You'll see my story.
Speaker 2:After we had visited with Phyllis and had dinner, about two, three weeks later, she sent me an email going would you like to be, would you mind being the ambassador for the state of Michigan? And I said, as long as it doesn't turn into a full-time job. I said because I don't want another full-time job. So that's what I do A day here, a day there, a conference, whatever. If I can go there and set up my stuff and chat with people, I will do that and encourage women to share their story. Or if you have a family member who served and is no longer alive, their story can still be shared. They can go online and they can type in Aunt Matilda's name and her information and put that picture in there, or grandma or whoever. And even those stories of people who have long passed can all still be added to the database. But what a lot of people don't know about the Military Women's Memorial is one, they don't know it exists and two they don't realize it's at Arlington Cemetery.
Speaker 1:So if I go to Arlington Cemetery I can go visit the Women's Memorial you can.
Speaker 2:You'll see it when you come out of, if you come off the metro or if you pull your car up and you go to the visitor center to go through security, you'll see the building. It's that the road kind of comes to a T and there's this big, beautiful arched building. That's it. But you can't get there from there. You have to go through the visitor center.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then a lot of people, because they don't know what it is, they're off to visit all the graves and the Tomb of the Unknowns, absolutely, absolutely. But if you just take a few minutes, turn right and then turn right, you can go into the building. They got a beautiful museum in there. They got lovely displays and what's really nice, what a lot of people don't realize there's stairs that you can go up. You go on the upper level of the building. You have the best view of all of Arlington Cemetery. Up you go on the upper level of the building, you have the best view of all of arlington cemetery. But everything inside there is dedicated to this, to women's service, from the revolutionary war forward, because women didn't really start getting recognized by the department of defense until like world war one right you know.
Speaker 2:but we know women served in a various capacity so they want those stories shared also. So, if you know, I've seen, seen the Motley picture and the things we learned about in high school and whatever those stories are in there. But it's the other unknowns that they're trying to capture and it's hard. It's hard to reach out and find people to share their story and get it in there. So I've gone to different conferences and you know you've seen me with my little cards and handing them out.
Speaker 1:In fact, on my desk in the other room right over there, I have your card on my desk, which is how we got together. So if I'm not in the DC area, how can I find out more about the Memorial they?
Speaker 2:have a great website.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I think it's just militarywomensmemorialorg. Okay, it's pretty simple. Just type in Military Women's Memorial under Google. It pops right up.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Go in, go into the site. They've got a little like any place. They've got stuff they sell. But the key is, you know, and it's like any website, you kind of have to poke your way through a little bit. It's not ugly hard, but it is a website. Go in there, you plug the information in, but if you get totally confused or totally frustrated you can call and talk to a real person who will talk you right through the whole thing. They're very, very nice.
Speaker 1:Excellent.
Speaker 2:But yeah, phyllis is still the current president and again she's the one that's promoting the ambassador program and they did a big push to try and get I think it was like 10,000 names. They wanted each state to try and get 500 names, which you know. Michigan had a great year and not because of anything I did. I had the privilege of going on a honor flight, a veteran's honor flight. Mid-michigan honor flight put together a flight of just women veterans, you know. So I threw my name in the hat for that and all the guardians, that because they always have the veteran, the honored veteran, and because they always have the veteran, the honored veteran and then they always have a guardian that goes with them. Well, traditionally that guardian could be a family member, a neighbor. They don't have to be a service member. They wanted they made sure all the guardians were also vets. So they had 150 women on that plane.
Speaker 2:Uh, that were uh veterans, women only and flew out to baltimore most amazing two days in my life. You know just when I'm thinking. You know what I did was not that big a deal. You're meeting out. Some were actual Vietnam veterans, had actually been to Vietnam, they were nurses, but the vast majority were those who did maybe six months, maybe 40 years, but it was. It was a great collection of women that were proud of what they'd done and they were recognized. And one of the stops is the military women's Memorial, but we went to the Marine Corps Memorial because our group was so big. That's that's what they have in the background photo. It's an amazing picture 150 women with their blue shirts on.
Speaker 1:That's amazing it was amazing yeah. Well, and I think it's important. You kind of said it briefly and I know we talked about this earlier but you don't have to have served in combat to have served your country. The people who didn't go into combat made it possible for the people who did. Like everybody in the military, everybody performs a function.
Speaker 1:And if that function doesn't get done, the machine doesn't operate, and so anyone who's listening, who thinks, well, I'm not really a veteran, if you served, you served. And especially if you're a woman who served, I think that that story is so very important to get to the women's memorial.
Speaker 2:I go to the casino once in a while but, I'll be there and you'll see the veterans, whether they've served one year or 30 years, they've all got their hat on they do I don't like hats. I don't know if there are many women I have. On a rare occasion I've actually seen a woman vet wearing a hat, but most of us we don't wear a hat. There's nothing we could put on without it being a baseball cap that says I was a veteran. I served too, and it's a hard one.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned Erica Hoover.
Speaker 2:Yes, navy, veteran.
Speaker 1:Yes, I want to say it's her. Maybe it's not, but I think she's the one that does the thing where she will be talking to a group of people and she'll have them close their eyes and say okay, I want you to picture in your mind a veteran. What does a veteran look like to you? What are they wearing? What do they look like? Now, open your eyes. Do they look like me?
Speaker 1:And 90% of the people in the room are like thinking of a guy in a uniform and they don't think of a woman in a uniform or the guy with the hat.
Speaker 2:Yes, world war ii, now you know, army, navy, whatever, or a lot of, a lot of women veterans who are married and go will go to a party or whatever.
Speaker 1:Uh, for veterans and someone I may consume with the husband is the veteran. Um, people don't think about women in the military, and I think this is a great way for them to start doing that.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's even a challenge with the American Legion or the VFW.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Is you know, when my husband and I first moved to Caledonia, we joined the local American Legion. We're both members of the American Legion. We had been in Caledonia for about a year or maybe six months and I got an email from the auxiliary asking me if I'd like to join and I said I really appreciate the offer. I said, but I'm already a member of the American Legion as a veteran and it was like it's an assumption that you know, they know and they understand.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to take it personal or anything but it was just like ah no, no, I'm a Redium member, what are you talking about? But at our post my husband's very active in our Legion Riders group and there are a couple other women veterans there, especially in the Riders group there's a gal named Brandy. She's former Navy and stuff and I saw my little pin. I tried to carry extras of those with me and I handed one to her and she's got it on her vest and stuff. So I encourage the few women there. Hey, here's a card and what I've not made the time to do is to meet with the local director president, whatever, for the local American Legion post post commander and say, hey, I'd like to do a presentation at one of your monthly meetings.
Speaker 2:I've not made the time to do that, but that's kind of what it takes is just one little Now. Again, when things do pop up, especially if it's I know it's a women's group I try to see if I can get my name in the hat, because last March they were doing something over in Muskegon, over at the museum there, for I think it's called the Silversides. It's a submarine there.
Speaker 2:USS Silversides very familiar with that Yep beautiful place and they were doing a women's activity. I thought, you know, it's an only an hour's drive to Muskegon, so I sent them an email. Hey, do you mind? They said well, we've already got our agenda already built. I said, I don't mind, I just want to hand out some cards. Okay, so I wore my shirt and I showed up. Well, it turned out they had a little time to kill and they gave me five minutes. Just get up and yada, yada, and I can yada, yada, as you can tell.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:No problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not a problem. That's not a problem at all, to get the word out there. So we've been talking for a couple of hours now. It doesn't even seem like it. Not really To be honest, I'll talk funny the rest of the day so, as we kind of come to the end of our conversation, I don't want to stop the conversation until I found is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to share?
Speaker 2:I don't have any one thing, it's just you'll say something and it triggers a thought. You know, because there are so many great experiences, the positive so far, always the negative. You know. Yeah, there were some bumps along the way and there were some people that said some things that really ticked me off, you know, just like any other human being, but I think the part, especially working in officer brains, working in the personnel arena, for whatever reason, that was a good fit for me. Don't make me a mechanic, I'm not mechanic-oriented, don't make me a pilot, but I'm glad those opportunities, especially to fly aircraft, some of the opportunities that are presented to women now, that didn't exist when I first went in. I think it's great. And of course you hear all went in. I think it's great.
Speaker 2:And of course you hear all the concerns. You know, listen to the news, look at your social media about you know the role of women within the military and what's right and what's not right and this, that and the other, and some valid concerns are brought up. But the one that is you know what is the standard. Are you lowering the standard? You know to, to, to me, get a quota. You know, is it it or is the standard met so high that you know only a tiny select will ever make it? I mean you, you can adjust things to meet. You know the, the, the. It's like statistics. You know, when you do a strength report, you can play with statistics. You know, if you have five people, you know and two are gone, or three are gone, oh my gosh, your AWOL rate is horrible. Well, what if you got 500 and those two people are gone? Oh, your stats are great. You know, you still have two people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's still two people AWOL, you know so. It's not a reflection. You know they're dealing with a small organization or a large organization. What's the standard? What do you expect from those individuals? Me personally, the concept of going into combat arms? No, but that's me. Some individuals.
Speaker 2:My husband was special forces. He was airborne ranger, special forces, it, intel, depth of experience Never, ever indicated ever issue. In fact, fact, he said he was my best mentor and supporter, a lot of issues that came up with being in the guard, and he said the key is the standard. He said there are some men I would not want to serve with. He says I'm sorry, they're dangerous. He says there are some women. They scare me. They're that tough. Yeah, he says if they got the skill set to do what needs to be done, you know, when you look at afghanistan and they're that tough, he says if they got the skill set to do what needs to be done, when you look at Afghanistan and they're putting women into special ops units, technically they weren't there.
Speaker 2:Technically I wasn't in the infantry, but yet because someone has the skills that they need to help, whether it's cultural or technical or physical, special forces teams are a team of 12 unique skills. Okay, so you know, I mean, hubby's been through both the Q course and ranger school and they're both hard, you know. But they have different expectations and if the standard to meet to get those patches is a well-established standard and they're all held to the standard, great, go for it. You know, um, there's a lot of people that don't want my job. They think it's boring. I thought it was fascinating. I like taking care of people, you know, and most of the time I could, I could help people. You know. I would usually tell people what I thought they needed to hear not what they wanted to hear but do it in such a way they'd walk away and go okay, now I get it. You don't have to piss a person off to help them understand. You really don't, it's not necessary.
Speaker 1:I used to work for a guy named Charles Montgomery and he would say tact is important. And then the definition of tact was the ability to tell someone to go to hell and make them look forward to the trip, right, yep. So yeah, tell them what they need to know, yes, and when they walk away, they're going to whether they appreciate it at the time or not at some point they will.
Speaker 2:The director. I used to have to write responses to congressional complaints where some individual would be at a bonus problem or whatever Stuff happens and they would write their congressman oh, the National Guard, nah, nah, nah, nah. And of course you get this nice proper letter from the congressman with that person's issue attached to it, and I would get it and I would research it and more often than not the reason they didn't get what they wanted was because we couldn't give them what they wanted, because a lot of times it was against the law.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I would tell the congressman tactfully and say well, be more than happy to provide support to this individual. However, based on the way the current constraints of the law are written, there's nothing we can do. However, when the day comes that you get the law changed, we'll be more than happy to help the soldier. I'd basically put it back on the congressman.
Speaker 1:If you want to change this, we'll do whatever you tell us to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I will not violate the law. I won't do it, you know. But if I can find yes based on a regulation or a policy, I'm good with that too. I try to find yes, yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1:Definitely not the land of no, no, all right, so you know, we're kind of coming to the end of our conversation.
Speaker 2:So I want to ask one more question, and I know you're not a one thing kind of person.
Speaker 1:But but no, in this the answer can be as long as the answer needs to be. So don't, don't, don't, don't feel any way about that, but I always like to ask you know, you have had, in my estimation, an amazing life. You've done a lot of really cool things. You had a great family, you know you're married. You have all of these things that you've done, all these accomplishments, and, yes, you are a legend, whether you want to be one or not. But the question I want to ask is at the end of the day, what do you want people to take away from your life and from this conversation we've had today?
Speaker 2:Actually kind of a simple answer. I had one little slight digression I had. One gentleman that worked for me didn't like the fact that I was following direction from the G1 at that time. Okay, I need you to go do such and such. Okay, we need to go do such and such. And this NCO got mad at me. Ah, chief, you know, you just roll over anytime they think we should do something. Everybody knows you don't care. Oh man, I wanted to punch him.
Speaker 2:I don't have all the answers, no one's perfect, but I have always cared, and so I think it always boils down to is I cared a lot about what I did, whatever it is, you know, and that I'd like to think. Because of that I did make a difference for a lot of people, and now it's my new norm, is, you know, having a 17 year old in my house? That's a whole nother story, but again, it's it's. It's a good story, yeah, and, and a husband that went through cancer last year, but he's doing good, he's in full remission, caught it early, u of M did a great job and I have a horse.
Speaker 2:So I'm living the dream, as they say, but there's times I, man, I don't want to sit around the house. I'm coming out here and doing this. I still want to get out. I still want to do this, as long as the good Lord lets my body do something. That's why I'm riding the horse. I want to keep doing something. There's some people I look at their Facebook posts, whatever and there's some people who do amazing things forever and it's like but I'll be honest, I don't want to work that hard.
Speaker 1:I'm with you.
Speaker 2:But if I can do something without it turning into a full-time job, because I got obligations, I have responsibilities to Ray and Becky. Now's the time to do that, now that I can. But if there's something that comes up, when my mom passed, I helped with all the administrative end of helping my sister and brother because they were the co-trustees.
Speaker 1:I did all the paperwork you know cause I got the skillset you know and it worked out fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so those skills have carried over into other parts of my life, and I'm glad but, I, care, I do care.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I can tell you from personal experience you have made a difference. Thank you Well. Thanks for being here today.
Speaker 2:It's been fun, much more fun. I thought it would be always glad to hear that.
