Veterans spotlight

  Finding Her Place in the Air Force

Marty entered the Air Force as a jet engine mechanic, working on the engines that powered F-15s, F-16s, and A-10 Warthogs. Her work happened primarily in maintenance shops rather than directly on the aircraft.

“When they took the engines out of the jets, they trailered them over to the big shops,” she explains.

Whether it was routine maintenance, filing down turbine blades, troubleshooting problems, or a complete overhaul, Marty's job involved taking those engines apart and putting them back together.

Her choice of career field wasn't the result of a lifelong fascination with aviation. Marty had scored well enough to qualify for nearly any career field available to her, missing electronics by just one point. Mechanical was among the fields she qualified for, and she chose jet engine maintenance.

There was another reason, too.

“The truth is, I wanted to impress my boyfriend at the time who was only a car mechanic,” she says.

Working with tools wasn't foreign to Marty. Her father had raised her to never be dependent upon a man, so learning to use them was already part of her upbringing.

What began as a practical choice became work she genuinely enjoyed. Marty discovered that she was good with her hands, and her smaller size and adaptability sometimes allowed her to reach components that required the men around her to use extensions and universal sockets.

As one of the only women working in the shop, she also understood that there were people who doubted whether she belonged there.

“I guess it was more of proving people wrong that a woman can do a man's job,” she says.

Marty did that by doing the job and doing it well. Her attention to detail eventually earned formal recognition when she discovered mistakes in official technical orders and recommended changes that simplified maintenance procedures. Her recommendations were accepted and incorporated into the technical orders, earning her certificates and monetary awards.

Yet being one of the few women in that environment required more than mechanical skill. Marty spent much of her time trying to become “one of the guys.” She joined in the joking, swearing, innuendo, and rough shop humor because she believed that was part of earning acceptance.

It took decades for her to reconsider that experience.

“I didn't realize how bad that was for me as a woman back then,” she says. “You don't have to pretend to be one of the guys, and you don't have to go down to the dirty talk, innuendos and all that kind of stuff to be one of the guys.”

Looking back, Marty believes many of the men she worked beside would have accepted and protected her without her having to change herself to fit in. That realization has become one of the lessons she most wants to pass along to younger women entering military service.

“Document, document, document and never be afraid to speak up.”

Marty's service coincided with the Gulf War. Although she did not deploy to a combat theater, she served during the conflict. Her experience was different from that of veterans who deployed into combat, a distinction Marty is careful to acknowledge. What she would eventually learn, however, was that different did not mean unimportant. The military mission depended upon thousands of people performing different jobs, and the engines Marty and her fellow mechanics maintained were part of that much larger mission.

After training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where the August heat resulted in both heat exhaustion and heat stroke on the same day, Marty continued her technical training at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois. She eventually received orders to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska.

For a young woman accustomed to suburban New York, Alaska might as well have been another world. Suddenly, she was surrounded by rugged wilderness, extreme cold, hunters, fishermen, and wildlife on a scale she had never experienced.

Especially moose.

In Alaska, there are legitimate reasons for calling out of work. A moose standing in your yard is one of them. Temperatures dropping below minus 50 degrees can be another.

When Marty finally saw a moose up close, she fell in love with them.

“Realizing how incredibly huge they were, I kind of looked at them as kindred spirits,” Marty says. “Long skinny legs and big noses, and it just kind of fit me.”

Moose remain her favorite animal to this day.

“They always take me back up there and everything that I did in the service.”

Some of Marty's memories from Alaska are funny. Others are more complicated.

While stationed there, Marty became a mother. Her first son was born at Fort Wainwright because, as Marty recalls, Eielson had only a clinic. She returned to a workplace filled almost entirely with men while she was still nursing.

There was no dedicated place for her to pump. The bathroom happened to have an electrical outlet, so Marty would wheel an office chair inside and use it.

The men knew what she was doing.

“They would stand outside the bathroom door and moo like cows because they knew what I was in there doing,” she recalls.

At the time, Marty laughed along with them. Today, she sees the experience differently. It became one of many moments that helped her understand, years later, how hard she had worked to fit into a culture without recognizing what that effort was costing her.

Eventually, the strain became more serious.

Marty describes experiencing difficulties with members of her shop leadership and came to believe that some did not want a woman performing what was traditionally considered a man's job. The stress became so severe that it began affecting her ability to nurse her five-month-old son.

Marty went to her first sergeant intending to file a harassment complaint against her shop.

After being asked what had happened and why she wanted to file the complaint, she remembers being offered another option:

“Want to get out?”

Marty asked whether she would retain her benefits and receive an honorable discharge. She was told she would.

Young, exhausted, and wanting an escape from the situation, she agreed.

In 1995, Marty left the Air Force one month shy of three years of active service.

Only much later did she understand why the circumstances surrounding her departure continued to trouble her.

“I didn't realize how wrong it was for me to do that at the time,” she says. “I allowed him to sweep everything under the rug. I allowed him to treat me like I didn't matter in the long run, which is the opposite of what we are taught in the service, is to protect each other and to have each other's back.”

What hurt most was not simply that her military career ended earlier than she expected. It was the feeling that someone who should have had her back didn't.

“My superior didn't have my back, did not protect me,” she says. “So it damaged me a lot without me realizing it.”

For years, Marty wished she had fought harder for herself. With time, however, she came to recognize something else: she had been young, under tremendous stress, raising an infant, and dealing with circumstances she did not yet have the perspective to fully understand.

Her military journey had not ended the way she imagined it would. That did not erase the years she had served.

After leaving the Air Force, Marty focused on being a mother. She worked part-time jobs while helping her then-husband through school and later became a single mother who had to find a way to support herself and her children.

Those years brought challenges of their own. Marty describes living through an abusive marriage while also dealing with trauma and PTSD she did not yet understand. It took approximately eight years for her to leave that marriage and begin building a life on her own.

She had two sons to raise and a future to somehow construct.

“I never thought I'd be able to survive on my own or be able to raise kids on my own,” she says.

But she did.

Eventually, Marty bought a house, an accomplishment she remembers as one of the greatest personal successes of that period of her life. It represented more than homeownership. It was evidence that despite everything she had been through, she was capable of building something stable for herself and her children.

Yet one question continued to follow her.

Was she really a veteran?  

Finding Her Way Back

After moving to Middle Tennessee, Marty began looking for ways to connect with other veterans. During her first Veterans Day in the area, a former brewmaster at Asgard Brewery told her about a Monday morning veterans breakfast at Puckett's.

Marty decided to go.

She remembers walking into a room filled mostly with older male veterans and realizing she was one of the youngest people there.

Then something unexpected happened.

She felt at home.

“I walked out thinking, wow, I didn't realize I had been missing this all this time,” she says.

Nobody required Marty to prove herself. Nobody needed to compare service records. She didn't have to explain every detail of her military career.

“Everybody just got it.”

What Marty discovered was something she had been missing for years: camaraderie.

“I have your back because I know you have mine.”

She started attending every Monday.

For a long period of time, that breakfast became the only reason Marty left her house each week. She didn't want to disappoint the other veterans by failing to show up. At the time, she didn't recognize that she was experiencing what she describes as a severe PTSD shutdown.

The community was helping her before she fully understood how much she needed it.

Through that community, Marty met a fellow veteran who listened to what she was experiencing and encouraged her to revisit a disability claim. Years earlier, she had received a zero-percent rating. This time, someone helped her understand the system, work through the process, and navigate the appeals.

With support from fellow veterans, Marty continued through the claims and appeals process and ultimately received a 100% VA disability rating. She also became connected with therapy and additional support.

“I wouldn't have gotten my 100% disability had I not gotten connected to my veteran community,” she says.

That experience changed the way Marty understood veteran organizations. They weren't simply places where people gathered to tell old war stories. They could be lifelines, providing camaraderie, advocacy, information, access to services, and people willing to stand beside another veteran when navigating systems alone became overwhelming.

Marty eventually became deeply involved with Vet2Vet of Middle Tennessee, serving as Outreach Coordinator for more than four years. She helped grow membership and, alongside other members, strengthened the organization's annual banquet until it became an event that sells out well in advance.

She also helped create the Veterans Day Celebration in Columbia.

What began as a small gathering at Asgard Brewery with only a handful of vendors grew into a community event drawing thousands of people, with numerous vendors, music, and a Quilts of Valor ceremony.

Marty has since stepped away from running the event, something she describes as both difficult and rewarding.

“It's heartbreaking, but fantastic at the same time,” she says.

She had helped build something strong enough for someone else to take the reins and continue.

That, too, is a form of service.

Marty's experiences also led her toward another mission: helping women veterans find connection and recognition.

Through her involvement with Middle Tennessee Female Veteran Connect, she hoped to create stronger relationships among women who served. She soon discovered that many female veterans were reluctant to acknowledge their veteran status or hesitant to become involved in the larger veteran community.

Marty understands that hesitation because she once lived it herself.

She eventually realized she couldn't force anyone to participate, so she focused on the women who wanted connection, support, and a place to belong.

There is another challenge women veterans frequently encounter: being recognized as veterans in the first place.

During our conversation, the phrase “Walking Ghost Veterans” emerged to describe women who served their country but can sometimes move through civilian life with their military service unseen or unacknowledged. Marty immediately recognized the experience because she has lived it herself.

She remembers leaving a veterans breakfast with a group of male and female veterans. As they passed people holding a door for the group, the men wearing veteran caps were repeatedly thanked for their service.

Then Marty walked by.

Silence.

Another male veteran received a thank-you.

Then another woman veteran passed.

Silence again.

“We're all wearing veteran shirts,” Marty remembers.

The experience angered her, not because she needed personal recognition, but because it reflected something she had witnessed repeatedly: people simply didn't always recognize that the woman standing in front of them might also have served.

Marty decided to do something about it.

During parades, even when the women participate as part of a larger veteran organization, Marty has made a point of arranging a separate vehicle for female veterans. The purpose isn't to separate women from the larger veteran family. It is to make them visible within it.

The message is simple:

They are veterans, too.

Marty's advocacy, however, extends far beyond public recognition.

When a fellow female veteran was diagnosed with breast cancer and faced a double mastectomy, Marty immediately stepped in. Her friend did not have a large support network, and Marty wanted her to know that she would not walk through the experience alone.

She helped connect her with resources and offered information, guidance, acceptance, and friendship.

“My job is to support her with whether it's information, guidance, just love, acceptance, what have you,” Marty says.

Before the surgery, Marty gathered fellow veteran sisters together to surround their friend with laughter, positivity, and support.

It was another expression of the lesson Marty had learned through her own experiences.

Sometimes helping someone doesn't require fixing the problem.

Sometimes it means making sure they don't face it alone.

Marty's own healing came from several directions. Therapy played a role, but she also discovered something surprisingly powerful in creativity.

For a time, Marty made macramé. Focusing intensely on the knots and patterns gave her mind somewhere quiet to go.

“It would quiet my brain,” she says. “Everything was quiet and peaceful when I worked on it. It kept the darkness at bay.”

That creative outlet became part of a larger healing process and helped lead Marty toward other resources and connections that allowed her to move forward.

Outside the veteran community, Marty enjoys cooking, kayaking and, for a time, raising chickens. But one of her greatest passions today came from something she originally had no interest in doing.

Her husband brought her into their business, Kitchen Solvers of Spring Hill.

“I did not want to be a contractor. I did not want to be doing any of this stuff,” she says.

Then she discovered kitchen design.

Today, she and her husband create custom spaces planned down to the last square inch, work that draws on some of the same qualities Marty relied upon in the Air Force: precision, attention to detail, adaptability, and problem-solving.

The tools have changed.

Some of the skills have not.

Different experiences. Same team.

For Marty, that understanding ultimately leads to one final message.

Get involved.

She knows some veterans hesitate because they don't feel welcome. Others believe they haven't done enough to belong. Some assume veteran organizations are simply places where people sit around telling old war stories. And some are struggling so deeply that walking through the door feels impossible.

Marty understands because there was a time when walking through the door was difficult for her, too.

“The biggest thing that people can get out of there is that sense of camaraderie, protection, other people willing to fight for you, and the knowledge and access to services, discounts, events, everything that you didn't or may not know you have.”

Then she brings the message down to two words:

Show up.

“You don't have to do anything. Don't have to say anything,” Marty says. “Sometimes just showing up could be that difference for one person that you didn't even know needed that connection that day.”

For Marty, that isn't a slogan.

It is lived experience.

There was a time when a Monday morning veterans breakfast was the only reason she left her house.

Someone showed up for her.

A Marine veteran showed up with the words she needed to hear.

A group of veterans showed up and gave her somewhere to belong.

A fellow veteran showed up and helped her navigate a system she had struggled to navigate alone.

And somewhere along the way, Marty began doing the same for others.

She showed up for veterans searching for resources, for women who felt invisible, and for a sister facing cancer. She helped build a Veterans Day celebration and then stepped aside so someone else could carry it forward.

Marty once believed she had failed because her military career didn't end the way she had planned. Then another veteran reminded her of something she should never have forgotten:

“We couldn't do our job if you didn't do yours.”

She finally understood.

She belonged.

Her service was different from his. It didn't need to be the same.

It was part of the same mission.

Service doesn't always end when the uniform comes off. Sometimes it simply finds a new place to serve.

For Marty, it has meant helping veterans find resources, making sure women veterans are seen, and standing beside people who shouldn't have to face difficult days alone.

And sometimes service is even simpler than that.

Sometimes it is simply walking through the door.

Different experiences. Same team.

Keep showing up.