Seybert Show Segment
Janet Rose Seybert, Retired Major in the Air Force Representative for WIMSA at AARP Biennial Convention - Denver, Colorado 1996
Q: How did you get into the military? What drew you to that? A: Well I was working on a law degree and I was trying to get into the Air Force and I kept getting turned down because they didn't have a space available and the Marine corps put up a note in our law school that said they were looking for attorneys. I walked in and said, "Hi. I'm an attorney, almost." I still had a year of law school to go to and they grabbed me so quick that it wasn't funny. And when I went in on active duty, there were six attorneys, six women attorneys in that particular class and we almost doubled the number of women attorneys on active duty in the Marine Corps. There were seven on active duty and we, there were six of us so there were 13 after our plant.
Q: What kind of duties did you have? A: In the Marine Corps I was either a Defense Council defending accused military personnel or a trial council. In other words, I was the one who was trying the people who were accused of various crimes.
Q: Do you think that your treatment was any different because you were a female? A: To a certain extent, yes, but I won't comment on that.
Q: It didn't, did it prevent you from becoming a career person? Were you a career person? Did you.... A: Well actually what I did, I transferred from the Marine Corps, into the Air Force. I did an Inner Service Transfer. I spent six years in the Marine Corps and then transferred to the Air Force and retired from the Air Force. So in that respect, no, it didn't keep me from, but, had I tried to remain in the Marine Corps, yes, the, several people would have had me out of the military.
Q: So it, the whole idea of sex is still a problem within the military in terms of treatment. But that's not the problem right now. It's the fact that the history of the women in the military and what they've done has been not allowed to be heard by a lot of people. A: Well that's correct. Most people, I'm sure, in the back of their minds they know that there were women in the military but most of them don't even, don't care or don't know.
Q: Well don't they usually associate it with possibly nurses, you know, and that sort of thing? A: Yes, in fact, every time I tell people that I'm, when I was still in active duty, they'd say, "Oh, are you a nurse?" and I'd say, "No. I'm an attorney."
Q: Well I think that's what we need to tell the people is the diversity of jobs that women take on, you know, when they're in the service because that's changed too, right. A: Oh right. The early, there's only a couple of combat positions that women are not allowed to serve in at this point. Now, when I was going through the Marine Corps, one of our ladies wanted to go into demolitions and they wouldn't let her and that was still a restricted field so that there were only certain areas that we could get into at that point but most of the areas are open now. There's, like I said, there's still a few combat positions that are not open but I have a feeling they will be eventually.
Q: What do you feel about the new memorial that's going up? A: Oh I love it and it's about time. I've been, I was one of the original people to register at the memorial and I've been working seriously, I'm not one of the official field reps here in Colorado but I have been working on the memorial selling coins while we still had them, getting people registered and getting donations and helping with situations like this with the AARP convention.
Q: Now the coins are no longer available? They're sold out? A: They may still have some at National, at the headquarters in Washington but I don't know. I don't know whether there's any left or not. They officially went out of production the first of April of last year and we had, we being the memorial, bought, I don't know how many. We bought a number of them and what we were trying to do was get everybody to buy them from the memorial because we've gotten more money that way than if you bought it directly from the mint and then any of them that were left over at the end of April of last year were destroyed and what they do is they reuse the, the silver.
Q: Very interesting. What would you like to tell women or even men out there who have had wives or sisters, mothers possibly, who have served in the military who are hearing about this for the first time. A: Please get them to register or please register them if they are not living at this point. We're trying to get as many as possible of the women who have served in the military or who are currently serving in the military to register in the memorial.
Q: Any final words out there for people who feel that women in the military were only nurses? A: They're crazy.
Q: Could you give us a few anecdotes about your experience while in the military? A: Well as I indicated, I am, I think I indicated that I was an attorney in the military, a Judge Advocate. Sometimes they call us Jags, but that's actually the head person, the Judge Advocate General. So actually we're just Judge Advocates. While in my time in the Air Force, I introduced the, well, I don't know how, I don't know exactly how to say it, I got the military courts to allow videotaping of victims in child abuse cases because this then allowed them to testify, hopefully truthfully without having the person who abused them staring at them, blaring at them, and making them want to either recap their story or not tell it at all.
Q: So this would be a way of kind of humanizing the system in terms of the victim being allowed to testify as opposed to sitting there, right. A: Yes. Well it takes some of the fear factor away because, obviously, if you're sitting there and the abuser is your father, and the abuser has told you that if you tell, it's going to tear the family apart and you are going to be the, the one who tore the family apart, you're not as likely to tell the truth, you're not as likely to tell the story at all.
Q: You have another story regarding AIDS. A: Yes I worked on the first Aids case that we tried the person for passing on Aids to another military person and we tried to get the, the military justice system, the Judge Advocate General to allow us to try him for murder with a possibility of death as the sentence. Unfortunately they wouldn't go along with that.
Q: Were you like Perry Mason, did you win all your cases? A: No, I didn't win all of my cases but I did win quite a few. In fact, while I was Prosecutor at the Air Force Academy, if they found out that I was the one Prosecuting, they would resign rather than go through the hearing.
Q: So you had a reputation. A: Yes and just another, I'm being not modest at this point obviously. Lowry had a lot of Major's on base. I was known as The Major. They didn't even have to give me a last name.
Q: Well thank you for speaking with us today. A: Thank you.
