Serving at the Pentagon on September 11th - Episode 39

Linda Mitchell served in the Air Force for 10 years beginning her service in June of 1995. She served on active duty and had assignments at the Pentagon on September 11th, was on watch when the space shuttle disintegrated reentering the earth’s atmosphere, she helped serve 42 heads of state during the NATO 50th Anniversary Summit in DC and she also had severe preeclampsia with her first child that she gave birth to while her husband was deployed to Afghanistan. These are just a few of the highlights from her career. Linda’s father served in the military and inspired her to join. She grew up as a military brat and got to see the world through her father’s career. While going to college she decided to join the Reserve Officer Training Corps Program so she could see the world. Her first assignment was at Edwards AFB where she was a section commander and then an executive officer for the Mission Support Group. While at Edwards she found out her career field was going away and would need to be retrained. She ended up becoming a Comm officer. She had a follow-on assignment to Nellis AFB, but had gotten married and had was able to get a join spouse assignment with her new husband at Maxwell AFB. This was the first time she had to put her career in the back seat for their relationship and ultimately led to her getting out of the military earlier than she planned. After Maxwell she went to Bolling AFB and then to the Pentagon. She was at the Pentagon on September 11th. At the time of the attack they didn’t have a communication system to execute a mass evacuation and it was interesting to hear how people found out about the crash and how there was no clear plan to get people out of the building. September 11th had a huge impact on how Linda’s career moved forward. She was supposed to complete a program and it never happened. Her next assignment led to the end of her career. She had been warned about her next supervisor, but had an optimistic attitude that it would be okay and they would be able to work together, but in the end it led to the end of her military career.