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[Air Training Officers at Air Force Academy, Morning Drill, 1976]

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[Air Training Officers at Air Force Academy, Morning Drill, 1976]

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Title	[Air Training Officers at Air Force Academy, Morning Drill, 1976]
Date	1976
Subject headings	United States--History--1969- United States--Armed Forces--African Americans
Era	Post-Vietnam, Panama, Grenada (1975-1989)
Service branch	Air Force--WAF Air Force
Item description	Air Force Training Officers at Air Force Academy practice Morning Drill at 9 a.m. on the Terrazo in M-1951 Cold Weather Field Uniform with black gloves and winter hat. Yardley "Nelson" Hunter is front right. Cadets look on in background." Text on back of photograph reads:"Basic Cadet Training (2 weeks) We marched, ran and sang everywhere we went!"
Veteran's name	Hunter, Yardley Nelson Marie
Veteran's biography	Dr. Yardley Nelson Hunter (b. 1953) served in the U.S. Air Force from 1975-1997. She was one of the selected group of officers to mentor the first women's class of Air Force Academy graduates . Dr. Yardley Nelson Hunter was born in 1953 in Buffalo, New York. She grew up in Buffalo, graduating from high school in 1971. She then went to Bennett College in Greensboro on a National Endowment for the Humanities scholarship. During her time at Bennett, Hunter (then, Nelson) entered the ROTC program at the nearby A&T State University. Upon graduation, she entered the United States Air Force with a commission as a second lieutenant in August of 1975 . Hunter attended officer basic training at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, as well as sixteen weeks of air traffic control school at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi. While at Keesler, she attended an informational session to recruit the first class of women to enter the Air Force Academy, applied, and was accepted . In January of 1976, Hunter went to the Air Force Academy with a cadre of other young female officers, where they were trained and then served as upperclassmen to the incoming freshman class of female officers. That upper class cadre was referred to as Air Training Officers, or ATOs . Hunter married a fellow Air Force officer in 1978, and they were both assigned to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. While stationed there she became pregnant and had a child (A 1976 law allowed pregnant women to remain in the United States military.) Her next assignment was to Edwards Air Force Base. She was a captain at the time, but filled a position intended for a major . Later, Hunter and her husband were assigned to England, with her at RAF Mildenhall and he at RAF Lakenheath. While they were there, her husband participated in Operation El Dorado Canyon, which was a United States bombing raid on Libya conducted in 1986 . Hunter and her husband were then divorced, and she returned to the United States, leaving the military, obtaining her MBA, and settling in Greensboro, North Carolina with her daughter and son. She then joined the Air National Guard in 1988 as an enlisted member, continuing to work primarily as a teacher, and remained in the Guard for ten years before retiring.
Type	image
Original format	photographs
Image type	Posed military unit
Original publisher	[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified]
Contributing institution	Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
Source collection	WV0503 Yardley Nelson Hunter Oral History
Collection summary	October 2010 oral history interview, a name tag from the Air Force Academy.
Rights statement	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Additional rights information	IN COPYRIGHT. This item is subject to copyright. Contact the rights holder noted above for permission to reuse.
Object ID	WV0503.6.001
Digital publisher	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5304 -- http://library.uncg.edu/
OCLC number	900815532

[Air Training Officers at Air Force Academy, Morning Drill, 1976]

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