Serving your country

            It was a parade for General MacArthur that inspired her.  The flags, the salutes, the pride of being an American ready to get back to family and work in those years after WWII.  Nancy Eckmann, now Krubsack, was just a little girl, a tom boy, her 2 brothers called her, when she watched the grand parade in Milwaukee for a hero of the war, but it made her determined to do her part to serve her country.

            “If I wanted to be a general sometime,” she said in her quiet, neat home outside of Harrisville, “it had to be the Air Force.  They were the hardest to get in.  They had those nice blue uniforms.”

            After high school graduation in June of 1958, Nancy joined the Air Force in July and left for basic training in August.  That was over 50 years ago and things were different.  Women had been able to vote for fewer than 40 years and Rosie the Riveter, the heroine of WWII had left the workforce and gone back to hearth and home.   The young Air Force recruit was on the cusp of change for women in the military, but still caught up in the mixed feelings American society had for women in service.

            “My parents didn’t like the idea of me going in,” Krubsack said.  “The theory then was if war was declared and Joe goes, I’d do his job.  Now, Jane and Joe both go. There always was a bias against women in the military, but it’s getting better.”

            Basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas in temperatures over 100 degrees was as hard as the men’s for the 34 women training with the young Milwaukee woman.  Krubsack wanted mechanical work and ended up in a maintenance and supply group where she worked at head quarters at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington.

            The year was 1959 leading into 1960 and with no war going on, personnel on the base wondered why wounded men were coming off airplanes on stretchers.  On her rounds for her job, she’d watch as Marines, Air Force, and Army men with wounds of war were transported to Madigan Army Hospital.

            “Viet Nam, of course, was all under the table then,” she said.

            It wouldn’t be until 1961 that President Kennedy publicly committed troops to Viet Nam, but military advisors had been in the country since 1950, trying to prevent the fall of Viet Nam to the communist Viet Cong. 

            Krubsack served 3 years and then came home to Milwaukee.  She went on 4 to 5 job interviews a day, but women who were in the military were often discriminated against and not hired.  Finally, she got hired at Briggs and Stratton, but she wasn’t happy in civilian life.  When she heard they needed a woman recruiter in the city, she joined up again despite the still negative feelings toward women in the military.

“It was never so bad I thought of quitting,” she said.  “I loved the Air Force, I really did.”  But today we don’t realize how much different it was for women then.

            “People told women they’d have a reputation,” said Krubsack.  “You were told you were worth nothing and you were there only if they needed you to take over for men. You were called names and some guys on base would try to take advantage of you.”

            Women also didn’t share all the benefits and rights of military personnel.  For instance, when men returned to the work force after serving in the military, they got credit for their years of service and retained seniority.  Women had to start all over, getting no credit for service to their country.

            She looked past the negative and re-joined as a recruiter, a 22 year old woman working with “guys in their 30’s and 40’s.”  She had a knack for judging people and the male recruiters recognized it, calling upon her for her opinion of a possible recruit.  Training is expensive and recruiters didn’t want to sign up people who wouldn’t make the grade.  Krubsack offered invaluable insight, maybe women’s intuition, to her co-recruiters.

            It was during this stint in the Air Force that she met her husband, Paul Krubsack, who’d served in the Navy during the Korean War.  At first she was cool to his interest in her, but relented after he’d proposed to her 3 times.  She stayed in the Air Force until she became pregnant.  At that time you were forced to leave for pregnancy.  The couple raised 2 children together and shared a close, caring life, retiring to Marquette County on land they owned here.  Paul became Commander of Metz Mosher American Legion Post 244  in Westfield and Nancy is the Historian.  Paul recently died of cancer and Nancy is fighting her own battle with the disease.

            Life in the Air Force was always what that young Milwaukee girl wanted and she worked for it and got it at least for a few years.  She travelled extensively, taking advantage of every opportunity to hop on a flight and visit Canada, Hawaii, or Alaska, “wherever the plane went.”  Despite the catcalls, despite the second class citizenship at times, the US Air Force was where she wanted to be, serving her country.  Women like Krubsack and those who came before her, blazed the trail for others.  Nancy is thankful, too, for others who stood up for women.

            “Senator Proxmire,” she said.  “He stood up for women in the service.  People really miss him.”

            The Wisconsin Senator was a champion for equal rights of women and worked diligently on numerous bills insuring equality for pregnant women, ending discrimination for women in credit applications, and more.

            She repeated again, “I loved the Air Force.  You make yourself what you want to be. If you respect yourself, people can say what they want.  Be yourself, not what they want you to be.  If you want to be a good person, no one can force you to be otherwise.”

            Young women everywhere can learn something from that wisdom born of being strong and doing something you love, despite what others think and say.