Deserted Air Force Wife Tells Pentagon to Go Fly a Kite

When he decided to trash the marriage after nearly 20 years, he traveled light. He went into the bathroom and tok his wife’s razor. Nothing else. He left his clothes behind, not to mention his wife and four children. She got a telephone call from him sometime later from Nebraska, asking her to send him his overcoat. It was left to Gladys Ketterl, then 48, to explain to the kids that Dad had, shall we say, another agenda.

That was 28 years ago, and you’d think the story would have pretty much run its course by now. Gladys Ketterl is now 76 and living in an Anaheim condo. She never remarried. The kids, who were 16, 14, 13 and 12 when Daddy had to fly, are now adults.

But Dad was a career Air Force man, and that provides the backdrop for what’s now happening to Gladys Ketterl.

As recently as a couple of years ago, about 75 Orange County women met somewhat regularly to discuss their common plight of being career military wives who were left in middle age or later by their husbands, most of whom remarried. The group has quit meeting, but a core of about 20 still stay in touch.

What separates these women--most of whom are in their 50s, 60s or 70s--from other abandoned women relates to the peculiar nature of the military. Because of the traditions of their particular generation of women and amplified by the itinerant nature of the career military life, those wives often didn’t develop careers of their own.

So, in the unfortunate cases when the marriages foundered, many found themselves on their own with no career track. The benefits they had been sharing with their husbands now were going to their ex’s new wife.

That’s what Gladys discovered 28 years ago when the Air Force learned she wasn’t an Air Force wife any more. She was required to surrender her ID card, which entitled her to a host of medical benefits and other perks of military life.

We now fast-forward to 1986.

Gladys reapplied for the ID card, citing early ‘80s legislation that opened a small door for ex-wives of career military men. If she could show that she had been married for 20 years and that her ex-husband had 20 years of service, she could regain her ID card.

In 1986, she got a card. This June, it was renewed. Shortly thereafter, however, Gladys received a letter from the Air Force, saying she didn’t qualify for the ID card because records showed that the marriage lasted only 19 years, 9 months, and that her husband’s career only lasted 16 1/2 years--both figures falling short of the 20/20 rule.

The marriage data, provided years ago by her ex-husband, is wrong, Gladys says. She has Nevada court papers showing that the divorce was finalized after the 20-year mark. But even if that hurdle gets cleared, the Air Force still cites her husband’s length of service of only 16 years and 5 months, at which point he was medically retired for a vascular condition.

However, since he’s been given full medical retirement benefits “as if he was in 20 years,” Gladys says, his shortened term shouldn’t be held against her.

For now, the Air Force is demanding that Gladys surrender her card.

This, of course, is tripe.

The indisputable facts are that Gladys was married to her husband for the entire length of his military career. That he abandoned her and the children after 19 years or that he was medically discharged after 16 1/2 years with full benefits shouldn’t be held against her.

Gladys has told the Pentagon just that.

“I told them I’d go to Leavenworth prison, but I won’t give the card up,” she said.

In Gladys Ketterl’s case, this isn’t a time for technicalities. It’s a simple matter of fairness.

At its core, it’s a question of how the government treats the women who sacrificed right alongside their military husbands. If we reward the career military man, what about the military wife at his side, rearing his children and uprooting their lives year after year?

Cara Lou Wifler, who headed the local chapter of Ex-Partners of Servicemen/Women for Equality (EX-POSE), said, “The difference between Gladdie (Ketterl) and other women her age is that she still has some fight left in her. I’ve met women who it (divorce after many years) impacted so severely that they never recovered. It’s almost like being stripped of everything. After you’ve played this role where you stay home and take care of the kids and do the things expected of you, the thing that grinds on all of these women is that these men can go remarry multiple times and the military bestows all the benefits on the new wife, no questions asked.”

The Pentagon could make a discretionary judgment and let her keep the card, but Gladys isn’t counting on it just yet.

“People don’t know the nasty things the military does,” she says. “As long as my ex-husband was being given all those years of creditable service, I never got five cents. They never gave me or my children anything. When I ask them for help now, they’re turning me down.”