Serving Before and After September 11th - Episode 20

Welcome to episode 20 of Women of the Military Podcast. Today’s guest is Cherron Brown Cherron has been a military spouse for 18 years and she is an Air Force veteran. She served in the Air Force for 3.5 years. she was an Information Manager. It was a split role of admin work and IT work. It allowed her to work with a variety of people from crew chiefs to supply personnel. She is still involved with the military as a Key Spouse for her husband's squadron and being a part of a few of the other groups on base. She also writes a blog to help military spouses understand and cope with military life called The Veteran Spouse. She joined the Air Force to travel the world, but ended up being assigned to her home state of California at Edwards AFB. It wasn’t what she was hoping for. She joined the Air Force in 2000 and we touched on the differences between the military before September 11th and after. She met her husband while serving on active duty and he deployed during the early stages of the war when communication wasn’t very easy. She never had a particular hard time as a female in the military. Often people underestimated her or didn’t expect much out of her because of her petite frame and being a female. She worked with a lot of crew chiefs who were a little rough around the edges, but she never had a problem getting her job done. She decided to leave the military when her first child was born. Being overseas as a dual military couple would mean that if they both deployed, they would have to fly their child back to the states to have them watched. It was also difficult with all the exercises and long days when they were both working. It made the most sense for their family to have one person stay in and the other be a stay at home parent and military spouse. When she left the military she jumped into the role of military spouse and mom. Since she didn’t know anyone other female military spouses who were veterans she didn’t talk about her experience and almost forgot about her time in the service. Mentioned in this episode Veteran Spouse Blog (under construction) Deployment Series