I always wanted to be a military pilot but women weren’t allowed to fly military aircraft until 1976, and that was the year I graduated high school. The service academies decided to let women into the academies at that time, so they could go serve their country and even fly.
I did not want to go to the U.S. Air Force Academy, which was in Colorado Springs, because I would have been in the first class. Some of my very best friends to this day were from that class. They call themselves the “Eighties Ladies.”
I went to Colorado State University and, in 1978, started going through the process of qualifying, taking some written tests and so forth. I went to San Antonio, Texas, for officer training school which took about six months. For pilot training, I was assigned to Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, which was the best base because it was just outside of Phoenix and the weather was always good. Of all the things I accomplished, going through the year-long pilot training program was really, really difficult.
In pilot training, we were trained on the T-38, which is a really fast supersonic [trainer] jet. For females, the T-38 was the only fighter jet that we could fly. It was just so much fun — breaking the sound barrier and just flying fast. It wasn’t until the late 80s that women got to fly fighter jets. I felt really fortunate to do that.
Depending on your ranking, you get assigned a jet and a base. I chose the KC-135 [jet powered aerial refueling tanker], and I wanted to be based overseas. I had follow-on training in California for another eight months to learn my airplane, the KC-135. Because it was strategic air command — and it was during the Cold War — I learned all the “secrets” and the job of the KC-135, which was to support [refuel] the B-52s and the [other] strategic bombers.
I was based in Okinawa in the ’80s at Kadena Air Base. We were on a joint base with the Navy and Marines. When you are far away from the U.S., the service members all work together. We worked very closely with the Navy. We had a lot of joint exercises with the Navy, with their airplanes, fighters flying off of the aircraft carriers, and we did a lot with them, especially going down to the Philippines. They needed us because we would drag them, and their fighters couldn’t get very far without air refueling.
We did several exercises a year with them and I spent a long time with the Navy. The biggest exercise was Cope Thunder [ Asia-based air combat fighter training]. It was so much fun and the weather would take a toll on us. It was always in summer, during typhoon season. It was always pushing us to the edge.
One of the biggest experiences I had in Okinawa when I was a young co-pilot was in 1984 when Korean Airlines flight 007 was shot down by Soviet fighter jets. It was an emergency order from the president. We ran out to our planes, not knowing what was going on. They said, “You will find out when you get airborne.”
My airplane was air refueling and we went and did circles in the sky. The Navy was there and they took gas from us. The Russians were there in the air, and the Japanese, and the Koreans. We didn’t even know who was going to come up for gas. Navy would show up — whoever showed up we’d get gas to. It was an emergency order with the Navy. It wasn’t an exercise. It was real life. It went on for weeks. We would just go up and pass gas to everybody.
When I left the service in 1988, I was hired at American Airlines a few weeks later. I was there for almost 35 years