Career Decisions Face 1st Women in Service Academies

SACRAMENTO — On a historic summer day in 1976, amid both pomp and prejudice, 357 young women became the first females to enroll at the nation’s major military academies.

They attracted a lot of attention. Military brass hailed the small, hand-picked group as the “creme de la creme.” Jealous male classmates had their own names for the women. And the media seemed to chronicle their every pullup.

A flurry of changes hit the academies. The spring on the M-14 rifle was shortened, staff gynecologists were hired, fitness standards were modified, and men forfeited some locker rooms and latrines to women.

“We knew that some things were being done differently that year,” said Capt. Kathleen Conley, a member of the first class at the Air Force Academy. “We were aware of the uniqueness of us, and the price.”

Today the first women to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.; the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.; and the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., are in the spotlight again.

Having completed the five years of mandatory service they owed the military upon graduation, these women face a critical choice--whether to remain in the military or to leave it for civilian life.

The career decisions of women like Conley, Eleanor Griffin and Lt. Elizabeth Semcken--three 1980 graduates--will help indicate how successful, comfortable and accepted women are in the armed forces.

Statistics show that, so far, 19% to 26% of the women in the class of 1980 have decided to resign. Their male counterparts are resigning at about the same rates.

While both men and women are choosing to abandon service careers for civilian jobs, female officers face an extra quandary--how to fit motherhood into military life. Sometimes the two do not blend.

Speaking for female West Point graduates, recently retired Brig. Gen. Mildred Hedberg said, “Most are getting out because of motherhood.” Hedberg, formerly the adjutant general of the Army and chief of staff of West Point’s Corps of Cadets from 1979 to 1981, has interviewed most of the 62 women in the 1980 class since their graduation.

“There is a decision as to whether they can have all the balls in the air and be mother, wife and careerist,” Hedberg said. “It takes some kind of superwoman.”

“These girls have everything to go for them if they decide to stay in,” said Air Force Col. Bob Lambert, chief of the Air Force Academy Activities Group at the Pentagon. “There are a lot of them just burning up the field.”

One of them is Conley, a 27-year-old pilot at Norton Air Force Base near San Bernardino. Despite her highly mobile life style, “I really can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing,” she said.

Griffin and Semcken don’t share that feeling.

West Point alumna Griffin, 28, recently traded in her fatigues and boots for suits and pumps. She said she found Army life hectic and rootless, and so at the end of her five-year hitch, she accepted a job as communications specialist for General Telephone & Electronics in Rockville, Md.,

“When I first started out, I had a good chance of having a career as an officer,” she said. “I fit into the organization well and it seemed right to me, but I wasn’t happy in it.”

Semcken, the top female student in her class at Annapolis, chose seagoing service and was deployed twice on the Samuel Gompers, a destroyer tender. Each time, she was at sea for up to seven months.

The birth of her daughter, Rebecca, 18 months ago prompted her to resign her commission effective this May.

“It is not my hope to choose a career that has no extra hours,” said Semcken, 27. “What I am not willing to do is leave my daughter six months at a time.” There is a possibility that she may stay in the Navy to earn a master’s degree in oceanography, but if that does not work out she plans to find a civilian job.

Some of the women officers also said they are frustrated because they are not allowed to participate in combat. They feel it limits them. “It’s incongruous. If they get the training and the same pay, then they should have the same opportunities for combat,” said Hedberg.

The novelty of being “first” is dimming. Nine more co-ed classEs have enrolled since 1976, and about 425 women are expected to become freshmen in July.

But officials at the Pentagon insist that the first class remains unique. “They’re watched all the time and have set standards for following classes,” said Lambert, a former Air Force Academy instructor. “They’ll be under a microscope for their entire career.”

Cites ‘Pioneer Spirit’

“I think they were special for their pioneer spirit,” said Hedberg. “The women were willing to try something completely different--that’s what sets them apart.”

Capt. Kathy Conley certainly feels special. Catching sight of a C-141 taxiing down the flight line, her face brightens. Dressed in her military green flight suit and dark blue cap, she springs down the command post steps.

“That’s what I do!” she says. “I can’t believe it sometimes!”

Five years after her graduation from the Air Force Academy, Conley can’t imagine a career other than flying jets. She looks and feels at home in the cockpit of the big transport planes.

Conley is equally comfortable with what she calls her “very unpredictable life style” as a member of the “Blackjacks,” the 53rd Military Airlift Squadron at Norton.

As aircraft commander, Conley may be awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call confirming an overseas flight. As dawn approaches, she must brief her six-member crew, check the weather and write the flight plan.

‘Flying Is Easy Part’

“The actual flying is the easy part,” she said. “The real meat of it, the challenge, is interpersonal. It’s leadership.”

An average 10-day mission may mean flying to Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and Japan with supplies for U.S. troops. She flies twice a month, which means living out of hotels or co-ed bachelor officers’ quarters.

But Conley, whose father is a Naval Academy graduate and retired Air Force major general, grew used to the nomadic life as a child. She lived on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as in states in between.

“I was usually pretty much ready to go, to meet new friends, to see new parts of the country,” Conley said.

As a high school senior in Alexandria, Va., Conley considered attending UC Davis, to study engineering. But when she heard the Air Force Academy would admit women for the first time in 1976, she decided to sign up.

“I remember on my application using the word ‘challenge’ a lot, and I found one,” Conley said. “I would be challenged at UCD in engineering, but this I thought could make a difference to some women who hadn’t done it before. That pioneer spirit was typical of women in my class.”

Thrived Under Challenge

Despite the physical rigors, the jeers from some male cadets and the constant media attention that she and her 156 female classmates experienced, Conley thrived. A highlight was a foreign-exchange semester at Ecole De L’Air in France, where she first flew a plane and used a parachute.

“I could see I was changing,” she said. “I felt with all the trials and tribulations the horizon was just growing. I was doing so many things I thought I never would have done.”

On May 28, 1980, Conley, as the top-ranked female cadet, became the first woman to graduate from the 31-year-old academy.

After earning a master’s degree at Cornell and getting her pilot training, Conley joined the squadron at Norton.

Only seven of the 75 or so Blackjacks pilots are women, but Conley no longer feels novel or singled out as a woman the way she did at the academy.

“There’s no spotlight, not at this level. There just isn’t,” said Lt. Col. Robert German, Conley’s commander. “Maybe it’s because they’re doing a job that’s so laid out . . . If they can’t do the job, they won’t get the position.”

Optimistic About Future

German is optimistic about Conley’s future. “She could be a squad commander, a general, a chief of staff. She has the same things available to her as anyone else.”

But she sees some restrictions, especially the combat-exclusion rule. If the law changed, Conley said, she would be the first to sign up for combat missions.

“It would seem inconsistent for me to ask men to go out and defend me if I’m not willing to do it myself,” she said.

Conley’s devotion to the Air Force runs deep and in exchange for more specialized training, she has committed herself to the service until 1990.

“Sometimes I think it would be nice psychologically to not have the commitment,” she said, “but it wouldn’t be practical to run the Air Force that way.”

In 1975, Eleanor Griffin was a freshman at the University of Tennessee with lazy study habits and a waning interest in her physical education major.

At Thanksgiving break, her parents mentioned that West Point, an all-male preserve since its founding in 1802, would be opening its doors to women the following summer.

Knew It Would Be Tough

Griffin knew the prestigious school’s tough academics would force her to study diligently. And unlike a phys ed major, she would be guaranteed a job and a decent salary by the Army. Plus, she’d have an outlet for her patriotism.

“I felt like doing something for my country,” said Griffin, whose father also attended West Point. “I think people should give something back in some form of service to society.”

Griffin’s family had shuttled throughout the United States to Europe and back during her childhood, but the Army women she’d observed had held only one type of job--clerical.

“One reason I never wanted to go into the military was because I saw women working as clerks,” she said.

Griffin helped change that. After graduating in the top third of her class of 62 women and 912 men, she was assigned a three-year tour of duty in West Germany.

A combat communications specialist, Griffin supervised a platoon of 25 soldiers who provide radio contact between field units. Her other duties included managing $10 million worth of Army vehicles, furniture and field equipment for a 180-member company.

Job Stress Takes Toll

But the job stress, rootlessness and harsh outdoor working conditions Griffin experienced overseas added to her growing feeling that Army life was not for her.

“Going into the field all the time--a month at a time, three times a year. . . . It’s kind of the pits sleeping in tents, taking showers every three or four days,” camping in the snow and using portable toilets, she said.

During her five years of service, Griffin was transferred six times. “I was tired of moving,” she said. “You leave friends.”

And, Griffin longed to do one job well.

“To be a good leader in the military, you need to do a lot of things. And you don’t really learn anything that well,” she said. “That’s not what I wanted to do.”

Two months ago, Griffin left the service and became a communications engineer at General Telephone & Electronics. She now works eight-hour days in a carpeted, personal computer-filled office in Rockville, Md. Her job is to evaluate the Department of Defense’s intelligence communications systems.

Aided in Job Search

Her search last fall for a civilian job included an interview with Joseph Hebert, a senior vice president of Fox-Morris Personnel Consultants. The large, nationwide firm has a division that recruits junior military officers for corporate management positions.

The fact that, at age 23, Griffin oversaw a unit of 25 soldiers in Germany and a $10-million budget impressed Hebert.

“She had instant leadership thrust upon her,” he said. “Very few people at that age--I don’t know of any--have that (experience). They’re still trying to find themselves or can’t even get opportunities.”