Women Marines Association Beaufort chapter kick off anniversary of women in Corps with 5K run, luncheon
Published Tuesday February 21 2006
By LORI YOUNT
The Beaufort Gazette
The very few, the very proud, the female Marines.

Among the 3,000 veteran, retired and active-duty Marines who belong to the Women Marines Association nationally, about 10 in Beaufort are trying to expand the camaraderie only Marine women can experience in the location where almost all begin -- Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.

"When you come to Beaufort, you cry because it's so isolated," said Chris Wildenthaler, who graduated from boot camp in 1974 and has volunteered for almost 20 years at Parris Island. Now, "it's a comfort to work on base."

Beaufort's chapter, the Phyllis Alexander Chapter, is rallying attention by putting itself out there with a 5K run and an anniversary luncheon, as well as awarding scholarships. And the women of its executive board are as diverse as the female Marines themselves.

"We're different from other women's groups," said retired Gunnery Sgt. Rosa Robertson, the group's treasurer. "We get along, work well together and work with each others' personalities and still reach our goals."

The chapter was established in 2002, and

the members requested its name be changed

to the "Phyllis Alexander" chapter after the

well-known retired gunnery sergeant on Parris Island who died in September 2002. The members called Alexander an international liaison for the 4th Battalion, the only unit of women who were enlisted Marine recruits in the world, and an example by her dedication to the base's museum.

"She was our Martin Luther King for the women at Beaufort," Robertson said.

During the weekend of Feb. 11 and 12, the chapter celebrated 63 years since the Marine Corps Women Reservists was established with its first 5K run and an annual luncheon.

About 40 people attended the luncheon, and the chapter received five new members, Robertson said.

"It was everything we hoped and expected," she said. "We got to see a lot of leaders we never met before."

Having a Women Marines Association is important to support current and future female Marines. The group has a pen pal system with women currently going through basic training on Parris Island.

"You come into the military at 17 or 19 years old when you become a Marine," said Robertson, who graduated boot camp in 1980 without knowing English. "You feel all these people are strangers. You feel you're lonely. We all have been there. We're asking, 'How can we mentor you?'"

The women also try to support those who came before them, said secretary Maria Knox, who was one of Robertson's recruits in 1988 when she was a drill instructor on Parris Island. Knox mentioned a 90-year-old Orangeburg woman whom they kept company before her recent death.

"No one could understand how important her stories were," Bonnie Thompson said.

It's hard for those outside the Marine Corps to understand its value system, Thompson said, who now owns her own business after years of being discouraged in other civilian jobs after she left the Corps in 1991.

And the value system also consumes their personal lives since all the executive officers married fellow Marines.

"Yes, the Marine Corps issued me a husband and three kids," Robertson said jokingly.

Whether they stumbled into the Marine Corps or ran to it, these women said it was difficult for their families to accept at first.

Vice President Linda Priest joined the Corps on a whim after receiving a letter invitation to a summer camp in what she called "Quan-TEE-co," Va. She and her childhood friend, retired Lt. Gen. Carol Mutter, who achieved the highest rankings of any woman Marine, thought it'd be an adventure, though Priest's father looked down on it.

Priest entered officer candidate school at Quantico in 1966, and she went on to be stationed in Germany and eventually became the commanding officer of the company Wildenthaler was assigned to when she was a recruit. When her father visited her in Germany, Priest said his attitude changed some because he asked her if she was aiming to stay with the Corps long enough to reach retirement. But she didn't, leaving in 1975 to be a full-time mother.

Wildenthaler said she wanted to be a Marine since she was a child looking up to her adopted uncle, who was in the Corps for 34 years, because of the pride and prestige.

She said she was discouraged by family and friends -- no other girl in her class was going into the military, much less the Marines -- but she stuck with it, and every time she hears the Marine Corps hymn it still sends chills up and down her spine, she said.

"Once a Marine, always a Marine," Wildenthaler said. "I still have a desire to put the uniform on."

However they entered the Corps, female Marines have their own struggles to which only they can relate, and that's why it's necessary to stick together, Knox said.

"When on active duty, you're not competing with yourself but competing with male Marines," she said. "You lose a little of that femininity trying to assimilate. We tend lose sight of the bigger picture. We're all doing this together. Now we can step away and provide the extra support."

Ellie