Oral history interview with Rosie Noel, 2011

              1
WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Rosie Grosshans Noel
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: April 12, 2011
[Begin Interview]
TS: This is Therese Strohmer, it is April 12th, 2011. I am on Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. This is an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I’m here with Rosie—is it Noel?
RN: Noel.
TS: Noel. And Rosie how would you like your name to read on your collection?
RN: Rosie.
TS: And your last name—you want a middle initial?
RN: Oh—Rosie Grosshans Noel.
TS: Okay, very good. Okay, Rosie, well, thanks so much for joining me today for this interview, I really appreciate it. Why don’t you start off by just telling me a little bit about, like, when and where you were born?
RN: I was born in 1967 in Warren, Michigan. My parents were Eugene Grosshans, and my mother was Madeline Grosshans, and I was raised primarily in Michigan.
TS: Were you? Do you have any siblings?
RN: I have an older sister, Laura.
TS: Older sister Laura. So it was just the two, growing up in that area?
RN: Yes.
TS: Well, so, Warren, is that like—is it a suburb, is it a city, what—2
RN: It’s a small suburb outside of Detroit.
TS: What was it like growing up in Detroit?
RN: For the most part, it was typical, you know, childhood, growing up. It wasn’t the Detroit that you hear about, with, you know, cars burning and, you know, people tagging their little signals all over the sides of buildings with spray paint, it wasn’t like that.
TS: Yeah. What’d your folks do for a living?
RN: My dad, when I was younger, worked for a trucking company, and they laid asphalt. So a good portion of I-90—or, no, I-75, my dad had something to do with. [chuckles]
TS: Wonder if he went all the way up to West Branch [TS’s hometown], because it went right by there. [chuckles]
RN: Yup, probably.
TS: Yeah. Well, now, so what kind of things did you do as a kid, like, for fun?
RN: Well, I was the second of two girls, so I was pretty much raised as a tomboy, and so it was nothing for me to be out there, you know, climbing up trees that didn’t have any branches to get back down. Was not into, you know, playing with dolls or any of that. Definitely into sports.
TS: What kind of sports did you play?
RN: When I was younger, I would hang out with the guys and, you know, play, you know football in the streets, and kickball, things like that. And then when I got, you know, to school age, where I could actually play a team sport or whatever, I was into basketball, got into soccer, and then I started doing, you know, volleyball and basketball in high school.
TS: And did you, did you like school?
RN: I rather enjoyed school. It was one of those—I guess I took to it as far as, it was like an extension of my family, and you know, made friends real well, and I went to a very small high school, and so it was kind of like just an extension of family at the school, and so I really enjoyed that, and I actually got good grades, so my children have a lot to live up to. [laughing]
TS: Oh, is that right? And now, in elementary school, do you remember anything about growing up and going to elementary school?
RN: Not as much. I do remember the, you know, playing—again, very active, outdoors type stuff. Of course, back then, the generation wasn’t sitting behind a TV or playing video 3
games or any of that, so I can remember doing a lot of outdoors-type activities. I can remember, even back then, you know, again, climbing trees and I even, you know, enjoyed doing like, hiking and that kind of stuff.
TS: Where’d you go hiking at?
RN: Some of the stuff that I, you know, as far as hiking was—we had trails when I was growing up, up north, and Wolf Lake area, I don’t know, I don’t remember the exact city, but we would do a lot of like trail hiking, and I can remember going—you know, picking berries and things like that. Things that, nowadays, your kids would look at you like “Yeah, whatever.”
TS: [chuckles] They wouldn’t want to go pick berries?
RN: No.
TS: No?
RN: Yeah, down at the local Food Lion.
TS: Oh, okay. [laughing] So, you—did you do, like, Girl Scouts or 4-H or anything like that?
RN: I did do Girl Scouts. And the funny—and I never even thought about that, but yeah, I did Girl Scouts, and I can remember, even back then, when—in the middle of the night, if any of the girls, you know, in our tent or cabin had to, you know, go out and use the little port-a-johns or whatever, they’d always wake me to go, because they were afraid to go by themselves, and I was the one that would usually, you know, be the one to go with them.
TS: Yeah. Were you the one that started the fires, too, you know, for camp?
RN: Not so much. But you know, I definitely was the one that wasn’t afraid to, you know, catch a fish, kill a fish, clean it or whatever. And I can even remember in high school, in biology class, being the one that, you know—
TS: Dissected?
RN: Yeah, wasn’t afraid to dissect a frog, and I can remember, you know, being the one that got the furthest into dissecting, so.
TS: Yeah, that’s cool. Did you—did you have, like, a favorite teacher in school?
RN: I would have to say, you know, no one that really sticks out. Again, I went to a really small high school, so all of the teachers were, you know, kind of significant in that regard.4
TS: What school did you go to?
RN: I went to Harper Woods High School, secondary.
TS: So they were all—about how big was it, then?
RN: Oh, there was less than a hundred people in my graduating class. So it was a pretty small school.
TS: Yeah. What did you like best about school?
RN: Sports.
TS: Sports, yeah. So did you play, like, on the varsity and travel and do things like that?
RN: Yes.
TS: For your teams. What was your favorite sport?
RN: I think volleyball—
TS: Yeah?
RN: —Was probably—because, and I think, you know, part of that is because I, you know, still can get out there and do that. And what’s kind of funny is, playing basketball with my Marines, they were expecting me to get out there and, you know, gunny just go, because it was, you know, PT. And then they realized that I actually, you know, wasn’t afraid to get in there and take an elbow, give an elbow, so. So it was kind of nice.
TS: [chuckles] And did you—now, as a young girl growing up in this area, did you have, like, expectations about—or hopes or dreams about, like, what you were going to do when you grew up, I guess is what I mean.
RN: Well, I definitely didn’t think I was going to, you know, make a career out of being a Marine. Initially, I wanted to be an architect, and then I saw myself sitting behind a desk and just—but I was very active, so I just, you know, envisioned myself sitting behind a desk and I just didn’t think that was something that I was going to enjoy doing. So my major in college was phys ed for the mentally and physically impaired, and go figure, I ended up being a Marine. And again, you know, when I first joined the Marine Corps, I actually envisioned that I could make a career of it, and then I was disillusioned a little bit, and not every Marine is that poster, you know, of what you envision being a Marine. But, you know, given the opportunity to actually experience a little bit more of the Marine Corps, I got to realize that there are, you know, no matter what job you’re doing, there are good Marines, bad Marines, just like there are good people at any job. And so I stayed and did twenty and—5
TS: Well, our interview’s done, then, I guess. [both chuckle] Now, when you finish high school, then, did you have an expectation of going to college, was that like a—for sure, you were going to go to college?
RN: At first, I didn’t think I was going to go to college, just because financially, my parents weren’t going to pay for me to go, and one of my high school counselors didn’t—you know, didn’t settle for that. And he helped me get, you know, some scholarship money and some financial aid, and because I actually didn’t live with my parents my senior year, I actually moved out when I was sixteen, and so I qualified as an independent student, so I qualified for extra aid, and—but, you know, once you get to a certain point in college, that aid doesn’t pay your whole way, and you know, so I was working two jobs and it was just, you know, getting more and more difficult. But initially, I didn’t even think I was going to go to college.
TS: Where’d you go?
RN: I went to Northern Michigan University, and it was—I don’t want to say it was a culture shock, because I grew up in Michigan, so, you know, being around snow was not that big of a deal.
TS: Well, for people who aren’t familiar with Michigan, describe where Northern Michigan University is.
RN: It is right up on Lake Superior, which is about as far north in Michigan—almost as far north in the United States as you can get.
TS: And it’s the Upper Peninsula [northern part of Michigan between Lake Superior to the north and Lakes Michigan and Huron to the south].
RN: Yes. And it’s so cold in Lake Superior even in August that you can’t swim in it. So it was kind of a culture shock for me.
TS: From going—from a city.
RN: Right.
TS: To a rural college, really, up north.
RN: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. A Yooper [slang term for residents of the Michigan Upper Peninsula], right?
RN: A Yooper, yup!
TS: Well, what year did you graduate from high school?6
RN: I graduated from high school in 1985.
TS: Nineteen eighty-five. And in that—let’s see, I’m trying—so Ronald Reagan was president then. Well, you—did you have any awareness of like, world events or things like that, like, happening?
RN: Well, actually, I can remember back as early as the—the early ‘80s, when Reagan was running for president, and Barbara Bush was doing like a speaking tour, I guess, and she came to my high school. And you know, I didn’t—never did I think that I was going to, you know, get to this point, but I can remember her coming to our school and, at, you know, doing a Q and A. And I can remember asking some pretty pointed questions, at that point—I was only in like the eighth grade, and was already asking some pretty politically pointed questions.
TS: Well, what kind of questions were you asking?
RN: Well, I was wanting to know, because that was during the Iran hostage crisis.
TS: Yes.
RN: And so I was kind of, basically wanting to know what he was going to do about the hostage situation. So, like I said—and this was back when I was, you know, an eighth grader.
TS: So what’d she say, do you remember her answer?
RN: They didn’t answer it! [laughs]
TS: No? They let that redirect, sort of?
RN: Basically, it was—she couldn’t answer anything that was a political—in that regard.
TS: I see.
RN: And I went away rather disappointed.
TS: Did you?
RN: In that, as a matter—and I can say this now, because I think Ronald Reagan was an amazing man, but back then, I was just pretty disillusioned. I was like “Really?” So, but I think even back then, I was all about, you know, what our country was doing and where we were involved, politically, and I even served on the high school government, and I was actually president of the residence hall that I lived in when I was in college.
TS: Is that right? I’m going to pause it just for one second. [recording paused] Okay, all right. That’s kind of neat that you got to meet Barbara Bush at, you know, as a young girl, and 7
get that, you know, perspective, at that time. Well, you had said earlier that you had—you’d moved out when you were sixteen? Do you want to tell me about that at all?
RN: Both my parents—I don’t want to say I was young when they got divorced, but I was definitely pre-teen when they’d gotten divorced. And when they both remarried, they—seemed to live independent of having children, and my sister, I want to say, she definitely was needy, and—
TS: She was older than you?
RN: She’s my older sister.
TS: Okay.
RN: And so I don’t want to say that she was oblivious to, you know, the circumstances of the divorce, but she was getting all of whatever her emotional needs and everything met from, you know, getting poor grades and whatever attention she could get. And I excelled at school and sports and seemed to function well, and got to a point that, I don’t want to say that I didn’t need my parents, but I definitely was at a point where I served myself better by being independent, and I think it made me a stronger person, and I removed myself from—not a bad situation, but I removed myself from a situation where I had a stepfather that, you know, could have bordered on abusive. As a matter of fact, he felt that I would never amount to anything, so my mother—she’s not married to him anymore, and so we kind of chuckle about that now, to see where I’m at today and for him to think that I would never amount to anything. And my stepmother definitely had a very—I used to refer to her as my stepmonster. And she had some of her own little issues. And so I—you know, I couldn’t live with my stepparents, basically, and—
TS: In either one of the households.
RN: In either of the households.
TS: I see.
RN: And I—again, excelled well on my own, and I was a live-in babysitter, and the people that I was a live-in babysitter for were amazing, and they had two small girls, and I did a paper route, you know, before school, and then would watch the girls and go to school, and if I was needed during the week or whatever, and just—it worked out well for me. So.
TS: So you were able to continue to go to the school that you went to.
RN: Yes.
TS: That’s interesting. And so, you are already showing a sense of independence, at that age of sixteen. Probably before. [laughs]8
RN: Before, before. And again, it—you know, having an older sister that was needy, she took up a lot of the attention, and I was one of those, you know, give me a clod of dirt and I was happy. So, again, I think that every experience that I’ve had from, you know, early on, has made me a stronger person, so—the independence definitely was there at an early age.
TS: Now, how did you end up at Northern Michigan? I mean, why did you pick that college?
RN: Well, they had a program for special needs. And it was, to me, again, I can remember even back then, it was a—not so much a political thing, but I knew that children that are born with disabilities are kind of—their life expectancy is shorter, and part of that is because they’re not—they’re not looked upon—this was back then—they weren’t looked upon as viable, and so, their physical health wasn’t an issue, it wasn’t important to people. And I felt that if someone took it upon themselves to ensure that they are also, you know, physically fit, we have all learned that your heart—you could be fat on the inside, too. And so I thought that that was important, and so I went to school for phys ed for the mentally and physically impaired.
TS: How’d you get interested in that?
RN: Well, one, I have a cousin that’s mentally retarded, and I was involved a lot with the Special Olympics and things like that. I was involved in a club called Interact in high school, and so every year, you know, we’d help out with the Special Olympics. And I can remember hearing stories, because my cousin’s name is Dorell[?], and we call her Dory, and she’s older than me, and I can remember hearing stories of—that my aunt was told, that she would never be able to be potty trained, she would never be able to ride a bike, she would never be able to do this, whatever. And she’s highly functional, and she’s—I want to say that she’s held down a job at one place for over twenty years. And so, you know, for her to be, you know, mentally handicapped and be able to do that, I know people that there’s not a single thing wrong with them and can’t do that, so. Very proud of her.
TS: That’s true.
RN: And again, it was because somebody—a family took her in, and raised her, and my aunt did not, you know, put her in an institution. She couldn’t handle her herself, but she did not put her in an institution and she was raised by a loving family that raised her as if there was—and I hate to use the term “wrong”, because I also have a child that is autistic. My eighteen year old son is autistic. So I hate to use the term that there’s something “wrong” with them, they’re just different.
TS: And so when you went up to Northern Michigan, how did that go? How was that experience?9
RN: It was—for me, it was an amazing experience, not just, you know, the going to college, but because I was an outdoorsy-type person, I thrived. It was great. I even took—before the military was even a thought, I even took a class that I was able to do rappelling down the sides of, you know, rock faces, and cross a rope bridge, you know. So when I got to do it in boot camp, it was kind of like, yeah, been there, done that. But, so in that regard, I really enjoyed it. We had Sugar Loaf Mountain, so I could go hiking. Just—I mean, there’s thousands of acres of, you know, unexplored—
TS: Lot of wilderness up there.
RN: It was beautiful.
TS: Yeah. And so, how—you were saying you were working—you were working a couple jobs, right?
RN: Yes.
TS: And going to school and so how did it go as you progressed?
RN: Well, it got to a point that it was just difficult to, you know, manage going to both the jobs and to school. And part of it too, was—I don’t want to say I was killing myself, because I wasn’t killing myself, but I was just, you know, struggling financially to end up where I just wasn’t sure, you know, if that’s where I wanted to be. And I often joked that I hung around with people that their idea of roughing it was black and white TV. And so, that’s, I think, really what led me to the decision to join the military.
TS: Had you talked to anybody, did you know anybody that had been in the military before you decided to join?
RN: Well, my father had even been in the Reserves—actually, National Guard, and I didn’t have—I didn’t have any family members that, you know, I really was in contact with that were in the military. I had a cousin that had gone in the [U.S.] Air Force, and I did have a cousin that I really didn’t talk with about the Marine Corps until I was like getting ready to ship, that had been in the Marine Corps for four years.
TS: Well, how did you pick the Marine Corps, then?
RN: It was the toughest.
TS: Yeah.
RN: So I basically—
TS: You wanted to do the toughest?
RN: I wanted something that was—10
TS: That wasn’t the air force? [chuckles] [TS’s former branch]
RN: [laughs] No. I wanted something that was a challenge. But—and being that the one cousin I talked with—it was kind of scary, you know, because some of the stuff that he told me, like just before I was shipping, was like “Maybe I should have talked to him before.”
TS: Before.
RN: Before.
TS: “Before I signed the paper and raised my hand.”
RN: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. And so what year was this that you decided?
RN: Nineteen eighty-eight.
TS: Nineteen eighty-eight. So, okay, so—I still don’t get the—why you picked—why you wanted to go in the military. I mean, there’s other options out there for you, right?
RN: Right. I was a really good waitress. [laughs]
TS: Okay.
RN: No, I think that it got to a point where, again, I’m hanging out—and don’t get me wrong, they were great friends, but they were spoiled. And I don’t think anyone that I was hanging out with really appreciated what they had. And I don’t think—you know, you can go all the way back to when I was in the eighth grade. I don’t think anybody appreciates the freedoms and liberties that we have, and I’ve always been like that, I’ve always, you know, been grateful that I was an American. And so, I joke a lot with people that I came in because we have indoor plumbing. We’re—we take for granted that you walk into a room, you flick a switch, your lights come on. And if they don’t, you get really annoyed.
TS: True.
RN: Indoor plumbing—it was that basic, and you know, then I find myself, fast forward seventeen years and I’m, you know, in a country where I don’t have indoor plumbing.
TS: [chuckles] Yeah.
RN: But again, I think that’s what it boiled down to, is that we as Americans take for granted the basic liberties that we have, and I truly believe that our military, whether it’s the 11
Marine Corps, the [U.S.] Army, the [U.S.] Navy, the [U.S.] Air Force, Coast Guard—we have those liberties because of the freedom that they provide. And so, at that point, it’s—
TS: So is this, like, eighteen, nineteen year old Rosie talking, or is this—
RN: When I came in, I was twenty. I was almost twenty-one.
TS: Okay.
RN: I was in college at seventeen. But again, it’s—I’m also the type of person—don’t complain unless you’re willing to be part of the solution to the problem. And so that’s when I thought, well, you know, if I’m going to be part of the solution, I’m really going to be part of the solution. And I went—was actually paying my rent, and my landlord owned the building that the recruiting office was in. And I paid my rent and went back downstairs and didn’t even bother walking into any of the other offices, walked right into the Marines—
TS: Yeah. And so, did you say—did you have an idea of what you wanted to do? I mean, like, in the Marines? Besides the challenges that you’re talking about, that, you know—
RN: Right. Well, I’m really glad that the one thing—and the only thing I can think my recruiter did that was good for me, is he told me I didn’t want to be a cook. [laughs] But, you know, I wanted to do—because I knew they had some culinary—that’s how they sell it.
But he’s like “You don’t want to be a cook.”
Well, I took the—they give you like a little pseudo-ASVAB[Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery], if you will, and it’s an Armed Forces Quotient, where they basically, you know, determine how intelligent you are. And I could basically do whatever job I wanted to do—that women were allowed to do.
TS: Right.
RN: And they came back, they offered me a bonus and everything to come in, guaranteed me an automatic promotion and everything.
TS: To do what?
RN: Aviation.
TS: And was that interesting to you, did that, like—did you know anything about aviation? Or was that something like you’d say “Yeah, I want to go in aviation!”
RN: “Oh look, airplanes!” Yeah, that was my extent of knowing—
TS: So, it had to do with airplanes.12
RN: Yeah, it was airplanes. That—I mean, I didn’t know anything about fixed wing, rotary wing, I didn’t know the—I mean, by terminology, I didn’t know the difference. And—
TS: But did you feel like, at that time, well, yeah, I can do—I’ll try whatever, you maybe didn’t worry about what laid ahead for you?
RN: Nope, didn’t worry at all. I knew I could do whatever it was that was put in front of me, so.
TS: So you signed up with a bonus, does that mean—how many years did you sign up for, initially, then?
RN: Four.
TS: Four? And then, so you—how did you, what did you—after you graduated from basic, what was your rank?
RN: I actually got paid as a PFC [private first class] from day one.
TS: Oh, you did?
RN: But I wasn’t a PFC, I was a recruit.
TS: Right, right.
RN: [chuckling] I wasn’t a private, I wasn’t a PFC, I was a recruit. But I—upon graduation, I wore, you know PFC chevrons, and you know, as long as I did what I was, you know, supposed to do and successfully completed my, what we call A-School, my first school, then I was given, basically, a check—less taxes—for two thousand dollars.
TS: That was for your bonus?
RN: Yes.
TS: Now did—now, okay, so you go, you sign up, and you said you went out of Milwaukee, is that where you were shipped out of?
RN: Yes.
TS: How—tell me about that. Do you remember your first days?
RN: Well, I—one, I can remember driving all the way to Milwaukee, which took forever. But I can remember—while we were waiting to ship, which was—again, I’m twenty, and I’m—already been living on my own. And we got into trouble—we weren’t doing anything wrong, we weren’t drinking, we weren’t fooling around with anybody, but me and the female that I was rooming with, we were across the way, hanging out—door was 13
open, hanging out with some of the guys that were waiting to ship, and she was waiting to ship, I want to say for the army. And we were hanging out, and of course the cutest—you know, not to brag or anything, but the cuter guys that were waiting to ship were going into the Marine Corps. And we basically got—I don’t want to say got in trouble, but they came and, you know—made us go back to our own rooms.
TS: [chuckles]
RN: And I thought it was stupid, I just, you know, I thought, this is just silly, I’m a grown adult. But you know, it wasn’t until later on when I was a drill instructor, and you’re like—you’ve got these recruits that, you know, two months into recruit training, find out they’re pregnant, because they’re stupid, but—but, so that was like before I was even at Parris Island, you know, I was already getting into trouble. [chuckles]
TS: Well, what—before you go forward, what did your family think about you joining?
RN: Well, my mom—I think her exact words were “Why not the air force?” [chuckles]
TS: Just teasing.
RN: Yeah. Well, I mean, just—typically, you know, the [U.S.] Air Force treats—and they do, they have more creature comforts than the Marine Corps does. And I’m not going to say that they don’t—the difference in how the individuals are treated, I think every branch, you know, has their own sense of camaraderie and everything. But yeah, she was—I think she was really kind of scared for me.
TS: So yeah, she was worried, because—
RN: Yes.
TS: Yeah, she probably didn’t know much about what the Marine Corps was for women.
RN: No. As a matter of fact, I, you know, think now, especially like now that I do speaking engagements and things like that, my mom’s pretty tough, and if ever there was somebody that—as far as a female influence in my life, if her generation was now, I think she’d have been a very successful Woman Marine. So.
TS: Did you tell her that?
RN: Yeah.
TS: That’s cool. So, what about your dad?
RN: No. He wasn’t—I can tell you that I—just from hearing the stories, he wasn’t very disciplined in the National Guard. You know, he was kind of—I don’t want to say a troublemaker, but he wasn’t—he did not behave himself very well. Not to take that away 14
from him, at least he, you know, raised his hand and served his country without being told he had to.
TS: So—but he wasn’t too crazy about you going in the Marines, or?
RN: Actually, at the time that I came in the Marine Corps, I really wasn’t on speaking terms with him, because of my stepmother. So.
TS: So you didn’t really have a conversation about it.
RN: No.
TS: How about your sister?
RN: Well, she always thought I was crazy. [both laugh] So.
TS: Well, what about these friends that you were talking about, that you—
RN: A lot of them—well, the guys were like “You know, people are going to think you’re gay.”
Because again, the Marine Corps is definitely the toughest, and of course, you know, some of my girlfriends, they’re like “That’s a pretty good selection of guys you’ve got going there.”
So I mean, it was—I think it was a mixed bag in that regard. But I think all of them were kind of not so sure that that was the best decision for me. And again, like I said, my stepdad totally thought I was never going to amount to anything. So.
TS: So, but it was your choice and you decided to go, right? And so you get to—where did you go for your basic training?
RN: Parris Island, that’s where all the women go.
TS: And so how—tell me about that experience. After your trouble-making—[chuckles]
RN: Yeah, after my trouble-making in Milwaukee.
TS: That’s right, Milwaukee.
RN: Well, we all fly in, and I’m pretty sure we flew into Savannah, eventually, that’s where we all ended up, and it’s like they have us in this room, and I don’t want to call it a holding cell, but that’s pretty much what it amounted to. And over, you know, a period of hours, you know, people would come in and you would slowly, you know, accumulate a roomful of, you know, both men and women. And I don’t know how they arrange it, but you know, even as a drill instructor, it seemed like it rained every time recruits showed up. And it was cold and wet, and it was May, and I can remember the bus ride from the airport, and having, you know, come from where it was cold, I had a jacket that was—it 15
was one of those lightweight thermals. So, I was fine. But I can remember all of the girls that were on the bus were, you know, cold, and so I was letting them—even back then, I was Mom—and so I was letting them take turns, you know, keeping warm with my jacket, because—I mean, it was tropical to me.
TS: I was like, you just came from northern Michigan. [chuckles]
RN: Yeah. So it was tropical to me. So I was letting them take turns warming up using my jacket. We get to what they call processing, we get there and they immediately go through all of your stuff and take away things. And I can say it’s kind of akin to, now, going through security at the airport, because they took away my Emory boards, so I couldn’t file my nails.
And, again, I’m thinking “These people are stupid!” And—I mean, that was my first impression of, you know, the whole process. I’m like, they’re taking away my Emory boards? And I can remember, that night, they sent us—you know, we got processed, and we’re supposed to take showers, get cleaned up. And I’m in the bathroom, the head, and one of the drill instructors comes in there and starts yelling at someone for doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. So, me, I immediately popped to the position of attention, and the towel hooks that stick out from the wall? I hit the back of my head. I still have a scar from the towel hook.
And so, my head starts bleeding, so I go up to the quarterdeck to the drill instructor to tell her that my head’s bleeding, and I say—you know, tell her—I said “My head’s bleeding.”
And she goes “My, my, my. Gotta be an individual.” I mean, she’s chewing me out for, you know, saying “my”.
And I’m thinking—you know, again “These people are stupid.” So I show her my hand, you know, because I’ve got blood on my hand from the back of my head, so I show her, and I say “Well, could you at least look at it?”
“You, you, you, I’m a female sheep?”
Which, so, I’m thinking, whatever. And so I go back to the rack and, you know, get in the rack, and having taken first aid in college, all’s I know is I need to put pressure on it, it’ll stop bleeding eventually. I don’t think, maybe, I don’t know, about an hour goes by, whatever. And I have this drill instructor, mind you, who’s supposed to be mean, she comes up and she’s checking on me to make sure that I’m okay. And at that point, I already realized—I mean, I hadn’t even been on Parris Island twenty-four hours, and you know, she’s all checking on me to make sure I’m okay. And I’m thinking “This is a joke.” And pretty much, that’s recruit training from that point on. I know that they can’t kill me. And believe me, there was times that I was just, you know, don’t get me wrong, it was no cakewalk. But I knew they couldn’t kill me. And I knew that they were, you know, as stupid as things were, they did it for a reason, or whatever. And ironically, that particular drill instructor, I actually worked with, because she was an air winger, years later.
TS: Is that right?
RN: So.16
TS: So you—did—when you were going through the training, and you realize that, you know, there’s this game, sort of, that’s being played. But what was it that challenged you about basic training?
RN: There—honestly? I don’t want to say it wasn’t a challenge, but having been a phys ed major, and you know, I was kind of into bodybuilding and that kind of thing, and it almost seemed like it was a game, with the drill instructors—when they had someone on the quarterdeck, because I was a phys ed major, even though we were told that they didn’t know anything about us, I definitely know that’s not to be true. So every time they had someone on the quarterdeck, I was on the quarterdeck.
TS: Why?
RN: Because I was physically—I was physically fit and I was, you know.
TS: So what does that mean, to be on the quarterdeck?
RN: It’s incentive training. They have you up there doing push-ups and jumping jacks, and—you see it in the movies all the time, where they say “Drop and give me, you know, a hundred.” It doesn’t work that way, but that’s the gist of it.
TS: So you had to go, too?
RN: Yeah.
TS: No matter who was up there?
RN: Right.
TS: Every time?
RN: If I was in—
TS: Sight? [laughs]
RN: I was up there.
TS: Yeah. What’d you think about that?
RN: Well, at first I thought it was—again, stupid.
TS: Yeah.
RN: And—but after a while, it didn’t bother me. It got to a point that it was like, okay, we’ve got this many days of training left, they can only—they can only IT me this many times.17
TS: What’s IT mean?
RN: Incentive training.
TS: Okay. So, you’re—physically, it’s not that challenging for you. Mentally, you’re getting—you seem to not have really had issues with it. Except for, like you said, about the silly things they were doing. How about the fact, you know, how are you feeling about wearing your uniform and those kind of things?
RN: Again, I—having been already on my own and I was one of those individuals, even in college and high school, I would iron my jeans. So, to iron anything was kind of not new to me. And even the drill instructors thought that I was one of the older recruits, just because of the way I carried myself. And I wasn’t, by far, the oldest recruit, but again, because of the way I carried myself, and the way I nurtured the others.
TS: Yeah, I was just going to say, now, how were the other women reacting, with, you know, in your platoon and—
RN: Well, I think you had some of them that were, you know, out for themselves. You know, that were individuals, and you had some—I could have cared less if I was the honor grad. Which I wasn’t, but I could have cared less. That just—that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to become a United States Marine. And you had some that wanted to be the honor grad, and you know, they kissed butt and all that other stuff. And I’ve never been like that; I’ve never been a butt-kisser. And as a matter of fact, you know, when I did get higher up in rank, I let my people know, you know, you’re not going to get anywhere—
TS: Don’t even go there.
RN: Yeah, don’t even bother.
TS: Yeah.
RN: So I think in that regard, having, again, having been already independent and on my own definitely played a big factor in how I adjusted to being in recruit training. I can remember, I got sick about halfway through training, and again, it was probably just going from Michigan down to Beaufort, South Carolina, the humidity, and I ended up with bronchial pneumonia. And they put me in—I was in the—they called—I don’t know what they call it now, but they called it MRP, which was medical rehab platoon. And I was very upset that they’d put me there, because, you know, I didn’t think that I should be there. And again, you know, I’m a tough cookie, so I was very upset about it. But I was more concerned that they were going to send me home. And I can remember sitting in the passageway waiting to see the doctor, after they did all the tests or whatever, and there was a girl in his office at the time. She’s boohooing and boohooing that she wants to go home. The first thing I said to him when I got in there was “I don’t want to go home.” And so, when I got sent to MRP, I thought for sure that that was just like one step 18
to getting sent home. And ironically, I had a follow-up at medical after, like, the weekend had gone past or whatever, I had follow-up at medical, and I got to join my original platoon.
TS: Oh, you did? So you got to graduate.
RN: I graduated with my original platoon.
TS: So, what do you take away, then, from your basic training?
RN: I think that just the whole premise of, you know, give it your one hundred percent. And again, people aren’t—whether it’s, again, recruit training or life in general. People are only going to do to you what you allow them to. And be the person that you know that you should be, and I knew that I was capable of doing that, and I didn’t allow anybody to take that away from me.
TS: Now, what did—where did you go next?
RN: I went to Millington, Tennessee.
TS: And this was your training.
RN: Right, that’s the—it’s currently, now, in Pensacola, Florida. But at the time it was in Millington, Tennessee, it was NAS [Naval Air Station] Memphis. And that was my A-School. And I want to say that I got there—wow, August of ’88. And I left there in maybe February of ’89. And I went from there to Lemoore, California. And that was like a—they called it a C-School, it’s like a more specialized aviation school. And I did that school, and I was there until May. And I did—I actually did some other extra schools, because they—there weren’t that many females. I was—matter of fact, I was the only—at one point, they finally just convened a class and it was just me and a chief. Because there was no one else classing up. And I had to stay in the chief’s barracks, because they didn’t have facilities, at that time, for women.
TS: And where was this at?
RN: In Lemoore, California.
TS: Lemoore, California. So how was the training for you?
RN: Cake.
TS: Really.
RN: Yeah.
TS: No problem with it academically or anything like that?19
RN: Yeah, it was pretty easy. Especially in Lemoore. It—you know, kind of easy to get, you know, a good grade when you’re the only student in the class. [chuckling]
TS: Well, not necessarily! You could fail really quickly, too, right?
RN: Right.
TS: So. And, so, did you have more freedom, in your training? I mean, obviously had more freedom than in basic. But did you have restrictions on you, or did you have free time on the weekends or at night, or?
RN: In Memphis, there was definitely a lot of restrictions, and rightly so. You had a lot of people that, this was their first time away from home where they had liberty, if you will, and so they did not know how to behave themselves, conduct themselves. And again, you know, I was—at that point, I’m twenty-one. I’m old enough to drink; ninety-five percent of the people that are living in the barracks with me aren’t old enough to even drink. And of course, I wasn’t a drinker, so. But it definitely was, for a majority of them, it was kind of culture shock, because they—this was their first time being independent. I’d already been independent for almost—
TS: Five years?
RN: Five years. And so, for them, they didn’t know how to handle it, and so they got into a lot of trouble. A lot of the girls got pregnant.
TS: Did they get out or did they stay in, or?
RN: Back then, you could actually get out, if you were pregnant, you could actually opt to get out of the Marine Corps. Which, I didn’t—again, I—being, you know, a mature adult, I didn’t think that was right.
TS: That they could get out?
RN: Right. They—I didn’t think it was right that they get pregnant their first enlistment. Of course, you know, to this day, there’s still a lot of people that agree with my philosophy, but go ahead, try to get away with that in the Marine Corps, or any branch of the service, for that matter, and infringe on somebody’s rights.
TS: Yeah. So then—so where was your first actual duty station at?
RN: Beaufort, South Carolina.
TS: Oh, you came back to Beaufort.20
RN: Oh, yeah. And that was the other thing, it’s like the whole “I don’t want to go over to Parris Island.”
TS: You didn’t want to come back?
RN: No.
TS: Did you have, like—could you select places that you were hoping to go to, or?
RN: Actually, there—and of course, this was another one of those, just, you know, I don’t know—irritate people. I could think of another word, but it probably wouldn’t be good to be on the oral history. But myself and another female, we both got orders, and you got to pick where you wanted to go. You had three choices. You could put East Coast, West Coast, overseas. That was your choice. And you know, whatever order you wanted. And this other girl got Yuma, Arizona. And—or, I got Yuma, Arizona, and she got Beaufort, South Carolina. Well, I’m from the East Coast, I wanted to be, you know, at least close to home. And she wanted overseas, West Coast, East Coast. Something—well, that’s just, again, stupid. You got two people, and we both got almost a hundred and eighty degrees from what we had asked for. So we basically went and asked someone up in admin, you know, is it possible to switch our orders? And back then, they thought—and I know this is terrible, because I know today they wouldn’t get away with it. But they basically thought, oh, WM for a WM. No one’s going to care, you know, a woman’s a woman. And—really, that’s just—they just switched our orders.
TS: Just like that?
RN: Yup. Typed up two different sets of orders.
TS: And that wouldn’t happen today, you don’t think?
RN: No. No. And I really hope that the mindset wouldn’t be like that. But back then, you know, when a woman checked in, it was like “Here’s another one.” They didn’t think that we were going to be worth anything. We definitely weren’t treated like we were going to be worth anything.
TS: How were you treated in your training? During your training?
RN: Again, it depended on who you had as an instructor. We still have what I call dinosaurs in the Marine Corps today that still have that caveman mentality. But back then, again, we weren’t embraced. So they weren’t thrilled.
TS: Well, okay, so, in what ways were you not embraced? Can you give an example?
RN: Well, to a big extent, a perfect example was my first work center, in Beaufort. We were going to be ruining their fun.21
TS: In what—how were you going to be ruining their fun?
RN: They—the desk, I can remember it like it was yesterday. The desk that they had in the main workspace, we call it the INU, which is like the first room that you walk into, they had a huge desk that had a drawer full of porno magazines.
TS: Yeah.
RN: They would not get away with that today. But, again, we were ruining their fun. The clock on the wall, the typical government—
TS: White background.
RN: White—yeah, white background—
TS: Black frame, black letters, sure. I can see it.
RN: Yup.
TS: We can probably look around here. There’s no clock in here!
RN: There’s not one in here, but yeah. The typical government clock. And they had removed the face, and the background of the clock—now, this is in a Marine Corps work center—was a centerfold boob shot of Fawn Hall, who—I believe it was Fawn Hall, she’s the one that got in trouble with Gary Hart, who was a presidential hopeful.
TS: I remember, yes.
RN: That was the face of the clock in the INU. And that would never fly today. But you know, twenty years ago, that was the norm. The government desk that was in there was one of those big grey desks, and the little penholder in the—they used that as an ashtray. Now again, can’t smoke in government buildings now, but back then—and they used the desk drawer, the tray that was supposed to be for pens and pencils, as an ashtray. And again, the filing cabinet drawer—filing cabinet drawer, not little drawer, filing cabinet drawer, was full, to the top, with dirty magazines. So we’ve come a long way.
TS: [laughs] Well, how did you—how did you cope with this kind of stuff, then?
RN: Well, I was very—again, independent, mature, confident. Overly so, I think, you know, now that I look back. Well, even now I’m kind of—I’m not going to, you know, apologize for it, but I was definitely, back then, not hard on the eyes. I was a cute, you know, by then, twenty-two year old, and I didn’t let that flap me. Even if it did bother me, to let them know would have just fuelled the circumstance or whatever, so I just, you know, pretty much ignored it. But they used to, you know, take—when I would walk in or whatever, they’d pull one of the magazines out. They were probably doing something else that was entirely different, but they would deliberately, you know, get out magazines 22
when the girls would walk in, whether it was me or any of the other girls, just to mess with us.
TS: Trying to get a rise out of you or something?
RN: Right.
TS: So you just ignored it, mostly?
RN: Pretty much.
TS: Yeah. Did they ever—I mean, did you ever have anything said to you about your capability for work?
RN: Nobody ever really questioned—and you know, it’s funny that you say it. No one ever questioned my abilities, because I never gave them an opportunity. I’ve always, always, been one to work twice as hard as anybody else and get half the recognition, and that was fine. That—it benefited me in the long term, you know, when I got higher up in rank. It benefited me to—and I think, you ask any successful woman in the military, they’re going to tell you the same thing, that they’d had to work harder, and it was—that was a parameter I think we put on ourselves, I don’t think anyone else put that on us. We just had to prove ourselves and move on.
TS: And did you—since we’re on this subject, this is something I usually ask later, but I’ll ask it now, in that when you saw another woman that you were working with that maybe was not doing a hundred percent or something like that, how would you react to that?
RN: Depending on the rank, and depending on at what point in my career I was—when I was younger and more junior, probably didn’t say or do as much. But I know that as I got higher up in rank, I would eat them alive. It was not beneath me as a sergeant, matter of fact, a lot of the males would come get me, because this was post-Tailhook [refers to a series of sexual assaults and harassments at the Tailhook Association symposium in September of 1991, and ensuing investigations.]— that they would be concerned about even counseling a female without another female being present. And so I would be the voice of reason, that kind of thing. And I had no qualms about taking a female aside and doing the proverbial jerk a knot in them [colloquial phrase, to jerk a knot in one’s tail or head, meaning to punish or straighten out]. I can even remember, at one point, we had a female that we had an issue with when I was an instructor in A-School, and she was no longer even a student within the area I was in, and I just happened to be over at the headquarters building she was in, in office hours and she was in trouble and she was, you know, going before the colonel. And the—she was pregnant, which had nothing to do with her office hours, but they asked her to step out, and they had had me come into the office hours to speak with the colonel, and the gist of it was, you know, he was hesitant to punish her as harshly as he normally would have because he felt that, you know, she was pregnant, she, you know, was going to have to worry about her finances and her family and so on. And because I was in there and because he knew the type of person I was—I’d 23
give any Marine a chance to prove themselves. Make a mistake. If you make a mistake, it’s only a mistake and an honest mistake, if you don’t learn from it—or, as you were. It’s only a mistake, an honest mistake, if you learn from it. If you don’t learn from it, then it’s definitely—fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
And I stood right there and I told the colonel “Absolutely not, sir. She knew what she was doing; she should be punished just as if she’s just any other lance corporal.” And he, because I, again, because I was there, it was dealt with a little bit differently. But it was because we as Marines need to, you know, hold everyone to the same standard, and it shouldn’t matter what the gender of that individual is or what their circumstances are.
TS: Was there ever a tension, though, because, I mean, as a female, and knowing that, you know, you have to prove yourself? That when another female wasn’t pulling their weight, that—compared to maybe a male Marine not pulling their weight, that that woman would reflect on all women, whereas for the man, that wasn’t necessarily the case, reflecting on all men. You know what I’m saying?
RN: Yes. It happens all the time, and part of that is, again, we only make up six percent of the Marine Corps. So when you think of how few females that there are, and when I check in, say I check into a duty station, I check in, and five guys check in. By the end of the day, everybody knows who the female is. Everybody. Nobody’s going to be able to tell you—maybe one of the guy’s names. But everybody knows—and again, if the female is cute, or whatever her attributes are. Those are the things that you know about. Nobody says “She is the greatest aviation electrician that God has ever graced the earth with.” It’s not what they’re known for. They’re known for whatever their attributes are, or—positive or negative.
TS: Physical, you mean? Yeah.
RN: Yeah. And again, we don’t do that with the guys. And I guarantee you that happens to this day. And again, we only make up six percent.
TS: So you’re in Beaufort—thank you for that. You’re in Beaufort, and it’s your first duty assignment, and—tell me about that experience. Just, you know, for you—the work experience for you, how was that?
RN: It was good.
TS: I mean, you’ve told me about the environment, right?
RN: Right. Actually, you know, I started out as an aviation electrician, and the basic job, pretty—I don’t want to say boring, but we were wire-chasers, basically, and you know, you have something that doesn’t work, and it’s only because power isn’t getting there, so you have to find out—it’s the equivalent of a, and I’m going to get basic enough that I tell you how I used to teach my students in electronics. If you have a pipe and water runs through it, if you open up the pipe, the water can’t get to the other side. Well, it’s the same thing with current that flows through a wire. So basically, that’s all we were doing, 24
was chasing down wires to see where the opening in the wire was. Pretty boring. Pretty basic stuff. After I’d been there for—well, about a year, they had an opening at one of the schools that was—it’s no longer there, but they had a school aboard the base that was micro-miniature repair. And one of the students that was supposed to fill one of the seats rocked out, basically failed his A-School, so he wasn’t—
TS: The slot was open, then, for somebody else.
RN: So they made the slot available for someone, and what they would do is pull from the Marines that were aboard the base. Again—
TS: It was easy to get there.
RN: Right! We’re already there. And again, you don’t know until—it’s like, what we call short-fused orders.
TS: Okay.
RN: And so they came down and basically asked if anybody wanted the seat, and we had a female in the class—or, in our shop, that was what I’d consider a kiss-butt, and I’ll be nice, but she volunteered for the seat. And whether I wanted the seat or not, I just wasn’t going to, you know, rush out there and, you know, be “Oh, me, me, me, look at me, look at me!” And—but she was pregnant. And micro-miniature repair involves soldering with lead. And again, it’s a hazard, so they basically shot her down. And again, oh, well, a female volunteered, so a female for a female!
TS: Oh, so they replaced her with you.
RN: So they just—so I got sent. And luck would have it, I enjoyed it, I did very well.
TS: How was it different?
RN: You were given—if you’ve ever seen the inside of a computer or anything electronic, for that matter, and it’s got little chips? We would de-solder those chips, put new chips in, and re-solder them. We would run new lines, if there was like a modification to a component. We would run wires that are just a little bit bigger than a human hair to re-route—I mean, so it was kind of tinkering at that point, that was pretty cool stuff. And some of the work that we did, we had to use microscopes, and—but I excelled at it. I excelled at it so well that the—the OIC [officer in charge] of the school was a master gunnery sergeant, and he spoke with the master gunnery sergeant that was in charge of my division, and basically told my master guns that he felt that I should be in the next micro school. Which, typically, you have to be a corporal or above to even go, plus they want you to do mini-comp[?] for a year or two to prove yourself before you can have a micro seat. So I excelled that well, and I think part of it was maturity, part of its, you know, I had the dexterity to do it, and so basically, back then, it was he contacted Headquarters Marine Corps and they did what they called an MOS [Military 25
Occupational Specialty] conversion and I went from being an aviation electrician to a micro-miniature repair technician and I did that for the remainder of my—
TS: Remainder of your time. And so you went to that school, and where was that at, the?
RN: Micro school was also—
TS: Same place. So how long were you at Beaufort?
RN: I was there for-ev-er. [laughs] I was there from ’89 to ’96, the first time.
TS: Really? That is a long time in one place, isn’t it? That seems unusual.
RN: No, not everybody’s begging to get to Beaufort. [laughs] So it’s a matter of, you know, supply and demand. So, if you don’t have people leaving Beaufort, you don’t have people coming to Beaufort, so. And you had a lot of people, I want to call them homesteaders, that would stay there. And of course, I, at that point, was married, and so—
TS: How’d you get married?
RN: How did I get married? Momentary lapse of intelligence. No, I shouldn’t say that. I got married to someone that I actually had worked with.
TS: So, another Marine?
RN: Another Marine. And we were married for fourteen and a half years.
TS: So, was he stationed there too?
RN: Yes.
TS: So you were able to jointly be stationed at the same place.
RN: Right.
TS: So that was probably convenient, too.
RN: Right. And then I went to Pensacola, Florida in ’96 to be an instructor.
TS: What kind of instructor?
RN: Aviation. Just aviation electronics, basic school.
TS: Yeah. How was that, did you like that?26
RN: I loved it. I loved it. And as I said earlier, someone had convinced me that, don’t judge the whole entire Marine Corps on a few—basically give others, you know, an opportunity to make an impression on you.
TS: So how were you judging it, up to this point?
RN: The drawer of porno magazines. [both laugh]
TS: Really? So—that’s—so you were in the same place, the same people, the same—
RN: The same environment.
TS: For—
RN: A long time.
TS: Yeah.
RN: So—and, I mean—I don’t want this to be about sexual harassment and sexual discrimination.
TS: No, no. Right.
RN: But it existed. And it still exists. But it exists in the civilian sector as well. Again, it’s how you conduct yourself. And—
TS: But so, you’re six years in one place. That’s a long time, for the military, to be in one place. Okay. So you go to Pensacola, and so you get a new fresh view of the Marine Corps.
RN: Yes. And you know, I’d already been an NCO for a while, and here I’m a sergeant, and I’m treated, for the first time, like I should be treated as an NCO. Which, again, different environment, different people.
TS: Well, for someone who is, you know, reading this transcript or listening to this transcript, can you explain the difference in treatment? I mean, treated how you should be, what does that mean?
RN: An NCO is a non-commissioned officer. Which means you’re not a boot, it means that you’re—that you’re entitled to, they call it RHIP, rank has its privileges. And you should be treated with a certain amount of respect and esteem. Not put on a pedestal, but you should still be treated with a little bit of dignity and respect, above your juniors. And I was never even held to the same standard as my peers. I was treated differently than my peer group.
TS: In what way?27
RN: Like I was less than they were. Like I was still a lance corporal.
TS: You mean in the way that they talked to you, or the way that, like assignments you got?
RN: The way I was ranked, the way I was treated, the whole—anything in regards to how the day-to-day was conducted. Even though I did my job just as well as they did, if not better.
TS: So you’re getting promoted, at the—
RN: I got promoted, every time I was eligible for promotion, I got promoted, because I did my job—
TS: So it’s not that, it’s not—
RN: Well, they had no control over that, that part.
TS: Well, who does your ratings, has some control, right, over how the rating—
RN: To a certain extent, but at that point, not so much, because I wasn’t getting promoted based on my fitness reports. Luckily for me, I got out before that happened. Because it’s not until you get into the staff NCO ranks that your fitness reports really affect your standings in your career.
TS: Okay, so you go to Pensacola and they start treating you with that respect that you weren’t necessarily getting before.
RN: Right.
TS: Okay.
RN: And I mean, it was just a different environment. And I just, I remember working, you know, with staff NCOs that respected my opinion, and I wasn’t treated—again, like a lance corporal, I was treated like part of my peer group. And so it was kind of nice. And I think that was the other thing, I—because I didn’t fall into that whole, you know, looking at the porno magazines and, you know, the smoking and putting my ashes in the drawer, I was kind of ostracized, and I wasn’t ostracized for being what I call a cookie-cutter Marine, I was, you know, believed in pressing my uniform and shining my boots and being respectful and respecting others, and so it was a different environment.
TS: And then, you really liked the training, apparently. Because I feel not only like I could go in and fix any wire just from what you’ve told me—so—
RN: It did, well, again, my major in college was phys ed for the mentally and physically impaired. So, to be a teacher, to be an instructor, I really enjoyed that, I really excelled at it, and I was able to take and break something down, so that—and I know we joke a lot 28
about Marines, you know, muscles are required, intelligence is not expected. But I was able to teach Marines and sailors basic electronics. I taught aviation fundamentals. I taught algebra to Marines and sailors. So. So I enjoyed that.
TS: And what—what did you get out of that? For yourself?
RN: I think it was a sense of accomplishment that I was training the next generation of Marines and sailors. You know, to have touched that to a certain extent, which was what led me to go to Parris Island. When I left instructor duty in Pensacola, I went to drill instructor duty in Parris Island.
TS: Did you volunteer for that?
RN: Yes.
TS: Why did—why did you volunteer for that?
RN: Again, that female that I talked about earlier? She—I did not want the product that was leaving Parris Island to be that. And—
TS: And which person is this that we’re talking about?
RN: The female that was at office hours and was pregnant.
TS: Okay.
RN: And the—I did not want the product that was leaving Parris Island to be that. And so I thought—well, again, I can’t complain about something, kind of like coming in the Marine Corps, can’t complain about something unless you’re going to be part of the solution, to fix it. So, I went to Parris Island, you know, thinking that I could be part of the solution.
TS: What year did you go there?
RN: I was there from ’99 to 2001. And—it’s, you know, I actually have some of my former recruits that I keep in touch with on Facebook now.
TS: Yeah.
RN: So that’s kind of neat.
TS: Well, tell me about being a drill instructor there.
RN: I enjoyed training recruits. Other drill instructors, not so much. [chuckles] It’s what they call cutthroat. I mean, it’s very competitive, I even had—29
TS: Within the drill instructors?
RN: Right.
TS: Really?
RN: Yeah. Very competitive.
TS: Like, is it like, for your platoon, you have to—you’re trying to compete against each other, or? How does it—
RN: Well, that—even individually. I mean, they—to—because, it’s one of those—to—you want to be the cream of the crop. And that’s what a lot of people look at drill instructors, as being the cream of the crop. But I had some people even question that I wasn’t mean enough to be a drill instructor, and it got to the point that—one of the drill instructors that had questioned me, by the time the conversation was over, I had her crying. But don’t mistake kindness as weakness. And I had her question, you know, why I was even a Marine. And I thought, you know, who are you to question me being a Marine? Especially—I love being a Marine. And like I said, I had her crying by the time the conversation was over. But, matter of fact, she’s one of a handful of Marines—and I’m not proud to say that I’ve made Marines cry, but she’s only one of a handful that I’ve made cry, and I made her cry twice. [chuckles] But, as a matter of fact, my nickname on the drill field from the other drill instructors, not from the recruits, but from the other drill instructors, was Mary Poppins. So.
TS: Not in a positive way.
RN: Oh, no, it was in a positive way. They—I was one of those, you know, I would stock our fridge with Gatorade and—I was a mom by then, so—
TS: So, nurturing type of—
RN: Right.
TS: Of drill instructor.
RN: Now, again, not to the recruits, but you know, like my team or, you know, whatever drill instructors I worked with, when we had the Crucible, the people that ran the command post, the CP, they loved it when our series was out there, because I always brought in homemade banana bread and brownies and—because that’s just, that’s me. When we’re on the rifle range, same thing. [audio file 1 ends, audio file 2 begins]
TS: What’s the Crucible, can you describe that?
RN: The Crucible is what the Marine Corps has as the culminating event for recruits that have gone through recruit training. And it’s a fifty-four hour evolution of sleep deprivation, 30
hiking, and the first day, I want to say, they put about twelve miles on their boots by the time the day is over on their first day. And it ends with a, I want to say a nine mile hike back from Page Field, which is Parris Island. I can’t speak for how they do it at San Diego.
TS: Right.
RN: But—and then it was, you know, it ended with the Eagle, Globe and Anchor ceremony, so. That, you know, at least for the generation of drill instructor that I went through, that was a very emotional and prideful experience, knowing that when I handed that Eagle, Globe and Anchor to that recruit, that they’d earned it. And I would tell them, when we were on the Crucible, because each drill instructor would be like a team leader and the recruits would have to go through and they would have to use teamwork and do these different events, and the obstacles—some of them were almost impossible to complete, but it wasn’t about the—completing the task as much as it was getting them to work together to try to finish it. And I would tell them “It’s a cold piece of metal if you don’t earn it.” And that whole—we joked “bird, ball, and hook”. It’s not an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor unless you’ve earned it. And it’s—it’s—you know, put out there a lot. It’s something that is not given, it is not inherited, you cannot buy it. It is earned. And they had to earn it.
TS: Do you have—do you remember any recruits in particular that you were especially—I don’t know, that were memorable?
RN: Not really, I mean—I did five platoons, and like I said, I had some of them that I’m friends with, you know, now on Facebook.
And it’s kind of funny, you know, because some of them, they see you and they’ll be like “You don’t remember me, do you?”
And I’ll be like “No.”
And they’ll be like “Well, I was in platoon whatever-whatever”, you know. In my own defense, I did suffer a brain injury, so, you know, some of them might—you know, I don’t remember.
TS: But they—it’s much easier to remember one person for them than for you to remember—
RN: Oh, absolutely.
TS: The faces in the crowd, sort of.
RN: Well, one of the things that I learned a long time ago is, I remember all the names of my drill instructors. And had it not been that I went to a very small high school—I can tell you the names of a lot of my teachers that I went to high school with. But your drill instructors, as Marines, your drill instructors, especially if you make a career out of it, are almost as important as Mom and Dad. And so that’s a big deal. And matter of fact, Semper Toons[?] even has a cartoon out there that says—shows a picture of a drill instructor standing there, looking over the shoulder of this young kid that’s writing home, 31
and says “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I’ve arrived safely. The bad news is, I’ve got a new mom.” So—and it holds true. So, we remember the names of our drill instructors. You know, if they’ve done their jobs, and so that’s—I think that’s a testament to what we do. And again, even if you have a drill instructor that’s just evil and ugly and wasn’t the best drill instructor, you probably still remember them. So, good, bad, or indifferent, you remember your drill instructors. So.
TS: Now, were you at—were you a drill instructor when 9/11 happened?
RN: No, I had just left the drill field.
TS: When did you leave?
RN: I left—officially, I think the date officially is April of ’01.
TS: So where did you go to next?
RN: Because I was married at the time, my husband was stationed over at Beaufort Air Station [chuckling], so I was back at Beaufort Air Station.
TS: So you went back to Beaufort after that? And so that’s where you were when 9/11 happened? So, what can you tell me about that?
RN: I was actually—at the time, a friend of mine, the actual day, a friend of mine that was still on the drill field—we were roommates in DI [drill instructor] school. I had her two kids with me when it happened. And I can remember it being—again, because, you know, I still had friends that were on the drill field, I can remember it being a really big issue for them. And they—you know, they let the recruits know. Especially—you had a bunch of them that had family and friends that were—that were there. So I’m sure that was, you know, a big event. It’s kind of like, you know, people say “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” I was, you know—it was one of those time-stood-still type moments. And I can remember it being all over the news, and—I can remember—you know, I was still in the Marine Corps, so it definitely was going to affect myself, and I was married at the time, so I knew that there was going to be another evolution that I was going to have to think about. Having been in during Desert Shield, Desert Storm, so. I don’t want to say it was old hat, but you know, at that point it was, okay, just waited for what was going to come next.
TS: What happened during Desert Shield, Desert Storm?
RN: I was already slated to go to Japan, so that was the rotation that I did. We ended up staying because of the way the rotations get set up, we got, I don’t want to say thrown off rotation, but we ended up staying almost ten months instead of the traditional six or seven, to Japan, so. It was awful, I hated being in Japan for that long. [chuckling] I’m kidding, it was wonderful.32
TS: Oh, really?
RN: Yeah.
TS: Well, tell me about that, then. We skipped that somewhere. Because we’re going back in time now.
RN: It was a—what we call a unit deployment, so.
TS: Oh, okay, so you deployed out of Beaufort.
RN: I wasn’t stationed in Japan—right, right. I was in Beaufort and got stationed there from Beaufort. It was just fun, I mean, especially—I didn’t have any kids at the time, and I was already married and my husband and I were both on the same rotation.
TS: So you were both there.
RN: So we were both there. And we joke—I conceived my son over there. So he’s made in Japan.
TS: [laughs] That’s cute. And so what kind of things did you do that were so fun?
RN: We went and saw the Peace Dome, which is where the—one of the bombs was dropped, in Hiroshima. And—and that was definitely an eye-opening experience. We went to the—there was a museum there, and we did that. We rode—you know, took trains and buses and, so that was kind of an interesting cultural experience. There was a little island there called Miyajima Island that we would go to, and they had—like, deer that would walk right up to you and eat right out of your hand. Again, a lot of sight-seeing. There were some caverns that you could go into and do tours, so we did a lot of that kind of stuff. Ride around bikes.
TS: Touristy.
RN: Yes.
TS: What about—did you get involved in the culture at all? I mean, did you—I mean, other than the tourist route, I mean, did you—
RN: We did a little bit. We did some trips, like we’d go to orphanages and play baseball—which is a really big deal over there. And we would do cook-outs, and the kids there, I mean, it’s different. They—it’s almost like—you could have like a handful of candy and they would just flock, like birds to seed. But I can remember—this was, you know, before I had my kids. They had—they asked for volunteers to umpire the Little League aboard the base. And you know, Japanese kids would play with the American kids. And I think I was one of the only ones that volunteered to umpire. And they ended up coming back, to get people to do it, they paid us. And I just enjoyed it, I mean, it was just a really 33
good experience to umpire, and the little—the Japanese kids were so serious. I mean, they really take their baseball serious. And that, I think, was probably one of my more memorable—
TS: Yeah. Did you play any sports while you were in the Marines?
RN: Not for the Marines. I played softball for my church, and I coached soccer for the base, for the kids.
TS: For the kids, like youth soccer.
RN: Yes.
TS: Stuff like that. But you didn’t—did you have an opportunity to do that, or is that something—because you had played a lot, in school, I remember, so.
RN: You know, it—again, my first duty station, they didn’t really encourage any of that. They weren’t—I don’t want to say that they weren’t the best role models, but pretty much—they weren’t the best role models.
TS: [chuckles] Okay.
RN: So. So it wasn’t encouraged, to do that, and—you know, by the time it was ever something I even thought about, I had kids and it just wouldn’t have been a responsible thing to do, even though I would have probably enjoyed it.
TS: Yeah. So then, back to—forward to 2001. You talked a little bit about your—you knew—you had said you knew there were going to be some changes. What changed?
RN: Well, I just knew that one, being where I worked, I worked where there’s a secure flight line. So I knew that there was going to be heightened security, a lot of those kind of issues. I just—it was one of those—kind of like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. You knew it was something that was going to change the world forever, and it did. It really did. I was very proud, though, that I already owned a flag that I could hang, outside my house. But that was—you know, that was definitely a big deal.
TS: And—I mean, because soon after that, you know, we went to war against Afghanistan.
RN: Afghanistan.
TS: And did your—where you were at, did any of them deploy, over?
RN: We had—at that point, because I’m F18, at that point, we were F18s in Beaufort [F18s are naval fighter jets which were in use for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom.]. So we, you know, offered some support, but it wasn’t like a whole unit deployment type situation. So we didn’t—we had our—I don’t 34
want to call them onesies, twosies, but we didn’t really offer a huge amount of support. And it wasn’t—and I was already slated, again, it was one of those—you’re slated out so far for certain things. And—being married to a Marine, that was the other issue, is we couldn’t both be deployed at the same time, especially with a child that has special needs. So those were a lot of things that we had to start, you know, working on.
And we have—the Marine Corps has—and I’m sure all the other branches do too—we have what’s called a Family Care Plan. And there was a big rush to make sure everyone had their Family Care Plans. If you were dual military or a single parent, that you had the paperwork in place in the event that you were deployed, so that whatever family member was supposed to take care of your children in the event that you did deploy—that all that paperwork is current, up to date. Again, a big push to make sure everyone’s wills were done, make sure that their—your SGLI, which is your life insurance policy, make sure all that stuff was up to date, and make sure that all the Ts are crossed and Is are dotted. And that was a big deal.
TS: So there was like an intensity level that kind of raised up with all that. And you said you were slotted to go—where were you slotted to go?
RN: Well, we had—back in ’01, I mean, we already had projections for, you know, the next couple of years. I was going to—I went, I did go to the advanced course on ’03. And that was back when we first went into Iraq, and I was in the advanced course at the time that that took place. And—and I left in February, I believe, of ’03, and I was in the advanced course. And a friend of mine, that we were in DI school together, was killed in March of ’03 over there. So it became—I mean, not that it wasn’t already real, but it really became real when that happened.
TS: When that happened, yeah.
RN: Because you don’t—at least for me, it—when you do a job that you know is dangerous and you expect it or whatever. But when someone that you know is affected by it, then it’s—the reality really kind of sinks in. And he had a small son, and you know, I had two small children. So it was kind of—you know, in that regard, you think back and it’s like “Wow, he was at my son’s birthday party two years ago,” or whatever. And you—it’s that kind of thing that you just can’t put your finger on until it happens.
TS: Right.
RN: So.
TS: And did you have any expectation that you would ever go over?
RN: I think at that point, I wanted to go over.
TS: Yeah?End of Part One.
Interview continues in Part Two.