By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
When Judith Schooner graduated from high school in 1960, her friends went to college or got married. She joined the Army.
Schooner was sent to Fort Ritchie in Maryland, where she trained for the WAC – Women’s Army Corps.
“That’s always what I wanted to be,” she said.
As Schooner and her fellow WACs waited to start their service, four of them pooled their money together to get a taxi and a hotel in Washington, D.C.
“In the Army it’s always ‘hurry up and wait,’” she said. “We went to D.C. to see what we could see.”
Years later, Schooner wished she could go back to the nation’s capital and visit all the monuments to the military. But six decades later, and a resident of Wood Haven Health Care, she thought her chance had passed.
“At 82, there wasn’t much left on my bucket list,” but Washington, D.C., she said.
But then it was suggested to Schooner that she apply to Wood Haven’s Dare to Dream program. Started in 2019, the program has made dreams come true for residents who wanted a butterfly tattoo, a cat, a computer for playing games, a visit by a country singer, and the renewal of wedding vows on a couple’s anniversary.
A nurse helped Schooner fill out her “dream” application, and she was selected.
“I got picked. I was in shock,” she said.
With her younger sister, Sandy White, serving as her companion, Schooner headed to Washington, D.C., with Honor Flight in September.
“Bless her heart – she pushed me all over the place,” she said of her sister.
Schooner took in all the military monuments. She once viewed a piece of the women’s service memorial when it was on tour. But in its entirety, it was even more moving.
And the World War II memorial, “that is so big and impressive,” she said.
The Korean War memorial looked so realistic. “It looked like they were standing in a field.”
And at the Vietnam Wall, her sister etched over names of people she knew who lost their lives.
But it was the military memorabilia exhibits that took Schooner back to her WAC days.
“When I saw the uniform I used to wear, my heart just stopped,” she said.
As a WAC, Schooner was trained as a communications specialist, at the time when the U.S. had just begun sending military advisers to Vietnam.
“We had a room full of machines. We would take a message from one machine, read it, and send it where it needed to go,” she said.
Schooner met her husband at Fort Ritchie, and in under two years she became pregnant. That ended her official career in the Army.
“They did not approve of pregnant women those days,” she said.
Of course, since her husband was in the Army, by extension so was Schooner.
“I was still in the Army,” she said with a smile.
I can’t say enough about Army wives. They are phenomenal,” she added.
Schooner and her husband later divorced.
She still remembers the tough reception from some members of the public when she left the service.
“When I got out of the Army, they didn’t welcome anybody back,” Schooner said.
And women veterans often went unrecognized for their service, she said. That never sat well with Schooner.
“There were women fighting in the Revolutionary War,” she said. “Who says a woman can’t be as patriotic as a man.”
Schooner also feels that veterans in general are forgotten today. She remembers classic movies that honored the service of veterans. They just don’t make them like that anymore, she said.
“Veterans don’t get enough credit,” she said.
But the Honor Flight trip and reception when the veterans returned to Toledo Express Airport was how it should be.
“That was awesome. I felt I was really blessed,” she said. “They treated veterans with all the respect you could want.”
