thedrifter
09-30-07, 08:12 AM
Former Marine shapes up USO in state
Martha Quillin, Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE - The three chevron stripes she wore as a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant didn't come with Judy Pitchford to her civilian job running the USO in North Carolina. In the Marines, when she told people what to do, they did it.
Since she took over the USO, she has had to learn other ways to persuade people to work to improve the lives of service members and their families.
"You can't talk to them like they're your troops," who got yanked out of bed in their underwear when they were too hung over to work. But if Pitchford left her rank behind, she took with her from the military its way of building leaders.
"You become a leader when they tell you to go do something, without telling you how to do it," she says.
Friends, family and co-workers say that management style has allowed Pitchford to rebuild the United Service Organization in the state from one dilapidated center in Jacksonville to three centers that serve thousands each month with a handful of paid staff and more than 600 volunteers. She is working on re-establishing a center in Fayetteville, where the nation's first USO was built in 1941.
"Everybody listens to Judy," says Patsy Schneider, a friend in a similar line of work, as recreation director for Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps base in Jacksonville. "You know, her passion really comes out. It's just like a little aura she has going on: 'I love service members and my whole life is about taking care of them.'
"I have never really seen her have to tell anybody to do anything. They gravitate to her and say, 'What do you need?' "
Last week, she needed to take care of some last-minute details for the USO's major annual fundraiser, the Salute to Freedom, a black-tie gala held last night at the Capital City Club in Raleigh. The event, which starts at $150 a plate, gives USO supporters a chance to mingle and to honor the achievements of one member from each branch of the service.
Pitchford wore a white Grecian-style gown for the occasion, indulging what she calls the "girlie" tendencies that almost kept her out of the Marine Corps.
"I'd thought I'd be a fashion designer or a stewardess," Pitchford says, recalling the aspirations of a young Mary Judith Hoernig growing up in Lansing, Ill.
One of seven children, she graduated from high school in 1978 at age 17 and took off for Chicago, 30 miles away, where she got a clerical job with a brokerage firm. By age 19, she decided she needed to get further out into the world, and with two older brothers already in the Marines, the Corps seemed the way to go.
"My brothers said, 'You don't belong in the Marines,' " Pitchford says.
She went to Parris Island for training. The second day, she sat on her bunk crying, saying, "My brothers were right. I don't belong here." Then it was too late.
She stuck it out. A former cheerleader and sometime gymnast, she gradually became a runner, military style. The first time she ran a mile and a half without stopping, she knew she could make it four years.
In 1980, when she enlisted, women in the Marine Corps were told their role was to "free a man to fight" by doing the administrative work of war. After Parris Island, Pitchford was sent to Camp Lejeune, where she and other "women Marines" were trained in etiquette and the application of makeup. At combat engineers' school, she also learned how to manage logistics and supplies for heavy equipment units.
'To be a grunt'
After four years at Lejeune, she went to Camp Pendleton, Calif.
"That's where I learned to be a Marine," Pitchford says proudly, "how to hike mountains, how to shoot machine guns. That's where I learned to be a grunt."
She had several other posts, including two at Okinawa, Japan, before returning to Lejeune in 1996. Along the way, she married, divorced and married again, to Shannon Pitchford, a Marine and the father of her two sons and two daughters. And she became the kind of gunnery sergeant whose troops still call, years later, to share their successes.
Abby, Pitchford's eldest daughter, followed her parents into the Marines and is now stationed at Camp Pendleton. As a child, Abby says, she couldn't understand why her mom was always too busy for school picnics and roller-skating field trips, or why the Pitchford kids had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to be dropped off at a baby sitter's so Mom could get to P.T.
With five years of service behind her, she sees it now, she says.
"As a female Marine, I absolutely idolize my mother," Abby says. "I don't think she'll ever grasp the concept that I would not be where I am today, I wouldn't have the respect as a female Marine today, I wouldn't have the opportunities I do today, without female Marines like her."
Pitchford, who served only in peacetime, says Abby has done more already than she did in 20 years. She confesses to some jealousy that Abby has served two tours in Iraq and will return in January.
Retiring after 20 years of service, Pitchford took a job with the local chamber of commerce as coordinator of military affairs and special events. The relationships she built in that job were critical to her success in the next one, taking over the operations of the Jacksonville USO.
The USO's heyday
The center, built on the bank of the New River in 1942, is the oldest surviving USO built with federal money. It dates from the origins of the United Service Organization, a federation of six civilian charities that aided Allied Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I. USO history says that on the eve of America's entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the same six agencies to unite and provide recreation for the troops and boost morale.
USO centers went up around the world and throughout the U.S. where troops were based or traveled. At the height of the war, with 12 million people in the armed forces, the USO had 3,035 centers where service members could rest while in transit, and single members could dance with local girls who arrived by the bus-load on weekend nights. The USO also sponsored tours by entertainers such as Bob Hope.
Many centers closed after the war. When Pitchford joined the USO in 2002, all that was left of the organization in North Carolina was the beat-up building in Jacksonville and $40,000 in debt.
"Look. I need some help," Pitchford would say when she called people around town. In 2004, Raleigh-Durham International Airport donated space for a USO center upstairs in Terminal A. Now 2,000 men and women each year have a place to drop their gear, get a free meal and, if necessary, spend the night waiting for a plane to their next post.
Four dozen service members come through Wednesday morning from California with just enough time to change into their uniforms and catch their ride out.
The USO at Charlotte's Douglas International Airport, which opened last year, serves 5,000 a month. The three centers are self-supporting and operate on less than $900,000 a year.
The director of the center at RDU, Tom Byrne, who spent 22 years in the Air Force, likes his boss's forthright style and her clarity of vision for the USO.
"She hires us," Byrne says of the many veterans who work or volunteer for the USO, "because we'll tell you your dog's ugly."
Pitchford says today's USO serves two vital functions: as a safe haven for service members, and as a way for civilians to support those in uniform, whether it is giving time to stuff "Iraq Packs" of goodies for departing soldiers, or writing a check for comfortable linens at the wounded-warrior barracks.
"The mission isn't going away," she says. "The military isn't going away."
martha.quillin@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8989
Ellie
Martha Quillin, Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE - The three chevron stripes she wore as a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant didn't come with Judy Pitchford to her civilian job running the USO in North Carolina. In the Marines, when she told people what to do, they did it.
Since she took over the USO, she has had to learn other ways to persuade people to work to improve the lives of service members and their families.
"You can't talk to them like they're your troops," who got yanked out of bed in their underwear when they were too hung over to work. But if Pitchford left her rank behind, she took with her from the military its way of building leaders.
"You become a leader when they tell you to go do something, without telling you how to do it," she says.
Friends, family and co-workers say that management style has allowed Pitchford to rebuild the United Service Organization in the state from one dilapidated center in Jacksonville to three centers that serve thousands each month with a handful of paid staff and more than 600 volunteers. She is working on re-establishing a center in Fayetteville, where the nation's first USO was built in 1941.
"Everybody listens to Judy," says Patsy Schneider, a friend in a similar line of work, as recreation director for Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps base in Jacksonville. "You know, her passion really comes out. It's just like a little aura she has going on: 'I love service members and my whole life is about taking care of them.'
"I have never really seen her have to tell anybody to do anything. They gravitate to her and say, 'What do you need?' "
Last week, she needed to take care of some last-minute details for the USO's major annual fundraiser, the Salute to Freedom, a black-tie gala held last night at the Capital City Club in Raleigh. The event, which starts at $150 a plate, gives USO supporters a chance to mingle and to honor the achievements of one member from each branch of the service.
Pitchford wore a white Grecian-style gown for the occasion, indulging what she calls the "girlie" tendencies that almost kept her out of the Marine Corps.
"I'd thought I'd be a fashion designer or a stewardess," Pitchford says, recalling the aspirations of a young Mary Judith Hoernig growing up in Lansing, Ill.
One of seven children, she graduated from high school in 1978 at age 17 and took off for Chicago, 30 miles away, where she got a clerical job with a brokerage firm. By age 19, she decided she needed to get further out into the world, and with two older brothers already in the Marines, the Corps seemed the way to go.
"My brothers said, 'You don't belong in the Marines,' " Pitchford says.
She went to Parris Island for training. The second day, she sat on her bunk crying, saying, "My brothers were right. I don't belong here." Then it was too late.
She stuck it out. A former cheerleader and sometime gymnast, she gradually became a runner, military style. The first time she ran a mile and a half without stopping, she knew she could make it four years.
In 1980, when she enlisted, women in the Marine Corps were told their role was to "free a man to fight" by doing the administrative work of war. After Parris Island, Pitchford was sent to Camp Lejeune, where she and other "women Marines" were trained in etiquette and the application of makeup. At combat engineers' school, she also learned how to manage logistics and supplies for heavy equipment units.
'To be a grunt'
After four years at Lejeune, she went to Camp Pendleton, Calif.
"That's where I learned to be a Marine," Pitchford says proudly, "how to hike mountains, how to shoot machine guns. That's where I learned to be a grunt."
She had several other posts, including two at Okinawa, Japan, before returning to Lejeune in 1996. Along the way, she married, divorced and married again, to Shannon Pitchford, a Marine and the father of her two sons and two daughters. And she became the kind of gunnery sergeant whose troops still call, years later, to share their successes.
Abby, Pitchford's eldest daughter, followed her parents into the Marines and is now stationed at Camp Pendleton. As a child, Abby says, she couldn't understand why her mom was always too busy for school picnics and roller-skating field trips, or why the Pitchford kids had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to be dropped off at a baby sitter's so Mom could get to P.T.
With five years of service behind her, she sees it now, she says.
"As a female Marine, I absolutely idolize my mother," Abby says. "I don't think she'll ever grasp the concept that I would not be where I am today, I wouldn't have the respect as a female Marine today, I wouldn't have the opportunities I do today, without female Marines like her."
Pitchford, who served only in peacetime, says Abby has done more already than she did in 20 years. She confesses to some jealousy that Abby has served two tours in Iraq and will return in January.
Retiring after 20 years of service, Pitchford took a job with the local chamber of commerce as coordinator of military affairs and special events. The relationships she built in that job were critical to her success in the next one, taking over the operations of the Jacksonville USO.
The USO's heyday
The center, built on the bank of the New River in 1942, is the oldest surviving USO built with federal money. It dates from the origins of the United Service Organization, a federation of six civilian charities that aided Allied Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I. USO history says that on the eve of America's entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the same six agencies to unite and provide recreation for the troops and boost morale.
USO centers went up around the world and throughout the U.S. where troops were based or traveled. At the height of the war, with 12 million people in the armed forces, the USO had 3,035 centers where service members could rest while in transit, and single members could dance with local girls who arrived by the bus-load on weekend nights. The USO also sponsored tours by entertainers such as Bob Hope.
Many centers closed after the war. When Pitchford joined the USO in 2002, all that was left of the organization in North Carolina was the beat-up building in Jacksonville and $40,000 in debt.
"Look. I need some help," Pitchford would say when she called people around town. In 2004, Raleigh-Durham International Airport donated space for a USO center upstairs in Terminal A. Now 2,000 men and women each year have a place to drop their gear, get a free meal and, if necessary, spend the night waiting for a plane to their next post.
Four dozen service members come through Wednesday morning from California with just enough time to change into their uniforms and catch their ride out.
The USO at Charlotte's Douglas International Airport, which opened last year, serves 5,000 a month. The three centers are self-supporting and operate on less than $900,000 a year.
The director of the center at RDU, Tom Byrne, who spent 22 years in the Air Force, likes his boss's forthright style and her clarity of vision for the USO.
"She hires us," Byrne says of the many veterans who work or volunteer for the USO, "because we'll tell you your dog's ugly."
Pitchford says today's USO serves two vital functions: as a safe haven for service members, and as a way for civilians to support those in uniform, whether it is giving time to stuff "Iraq Packs" of goodies for departing soldiers, or writing a check for comfortable linens at the wounded-warrior barracks.
"The mission isn't going away," she says. "The military isn't going away."
martha.quillin@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8989
Ellie