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Trailblazer comes to end of 35-year career

To understand just how much the role of women has changed in the Air Force, talk with the service’s senior female officer.

Lt. Gen. Terry Gabreski is officially retiring Jan. 1 but will say her goodbyes Friday to airmen at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, where she has served as vice commander of Air Materiel Command.

In her 35-year career, Gabreski has seen women take on nearly every career field.

Gabreski’s first assignment as a second lieutenant and maintenance officer came in 1974 with the 3242nd Avionics Maintenance Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Back then, female maintenance officers were rare. Today, 16 percent of the 1,384 aircraft maintenance officers are women but only 6 percent of the 55,262 enlisted aircraft maintainers are women.

“When I reported for duty, it was a surprise to my squadron commander,” Gabreski recalled. “He was expecting a man and assumed I was his new admin officer.”

And on the shop floor, the enlisted maintainers were all men.

Dealing with airmen who have been repairing planes for years is often a challenge for a second lieutenant. In the mid-1970s, being a female second lieutenant made the task of gaining their confidence that much tougher.

“It didn’t occur to me that I should be intimidated, and I wasn’t,” Gabreski said.

Gabreski was an Air Force brat. Her dad was Brig. Gen. Alonzo Walter, both a fighter and a test pilot. Her mother, Doris Walter, was a second lieutenant who had to leave the service since she was pregnant with Gabreski.

Going into the Air Force, though, wasn’t the career Gabreski planned in 1973 when she graduated from Louisiana State University with a bachelor’s degree in history.

“I was going to go to law school,” Gabreski said in a telephone interview from her office at Wright-Patterson. “My dad said, ‘Where are you going to get the money for law school?’ ”

The answer was the Air Force. Gabreski earned a commission through Officer Training School and was assigned to maintenance.

“I had no idea what that was,” she recalled.

Gabreski said she expected to work in intelligence, public affairs or administration. Flying planes was out of the question. Women couldn’t serve as pilots until 1976.

At first, Gabreski thought she would leave maintenance once she had the money for law school. But at Eglin, she discovered she enjoyed the teamwork of repairing planes and serving as an officer.

By 1975, Gabreski was looking for a new assignment. She heard the Air Force Academy needed female officers to help guide the initial cadre of female cadets through their freshman year.

Gabreski landed the assignment of “air training officer.”

“We were literally guinea pigs,” Gabreski said.

With Air Force officials uncertain if women could handle the stress of the academy, the air training officers were put through the regimen planned for the 157 female cadets arriving in the summer of 1976.

Decades later, Gabreski’s pride hasn’t diminished over what the air training officers and the Class of 1980 proved.

“I was the first woman to earn [parachute] jump wings with five jumps,” she recalled.

By the end of 1977, Gabreski’s career was back on a traditional career path. She served as commander of three maintenance squadrons and had two staff tours in the Pentagon.

Gabreski applied to be a pilot three times — and three times the Air Force turned her down because of her height. At 5 feet, Gabreski wasn’t tall enough to safely fly the T-38 Talon training jet.

“I knew the instructor was trying to tell me something when he had ‘Short People’ playing inside the plane,” Gabreski said, referring to 1977 hit by singer and songwriter Randy Newman.

In 1989, she married then-Lt. Col. Donald Gabreski, an Air Force pilot and son of World War II and Korean War ace retired Col. Stanley “Gabby” Gabreski.

Gabreski earned promotion to colonel in 1992 and command of a logistics group in 1994. As a colonel she gave birth to two sons, now ages 14 and 16.

Promotion to brigadier general came in March 1999 as Gabreski oversaw logistics for U.S. Air Forces in Europe during the air campaign over Kosovo.

In 2005, Gabreski was named vice commander of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson, and pinned on lieutenant general stars, making her the second Air Force woman to achieve the rank. Now-retired Lt. Gen. Leslie Kenne, who also started as a maintenance officer, was the first, in 1999.

Gabreski’s retirement leaves Maj. Gen. Polly Peyer, commander of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Ga., as the service’s senior female officer.

At Air Force gatherings, Gabreski attracts other female airmen, asking to have their picture taken with or talk with her. But she doesn’t focus on mentoring only women.

“As a lieutenant general,” Gabreski said, “I hope men and women ask for advice.”

Related reading: Air Force’s most senior woman to retire