Anonymous
Major; U.S. Air Force (Retired)
I entered the Air Force in May 1963 and was assigned to the aviation cadet program. After 14 months of training, I graduated as a second lieutenant with navigator wings. Following some additional training, I was assigned as a navigator to a B-52 squadron.
My early career followed the norm of several weeklong nuclear alert tours per month, interspersed with four to six 12-hour training missions. Several times a year, we flew "Chrome Dome" missions, missions in which the B-52 was fully loaded with nuclear weapons. If the country went to war, our mission was to bomb the USSR. These flights were 24-hours long.
I was sent to Southeast Asia in 1969 to fly bombing missions over Vietnam. As with most B-52 crews, we flew out of Guam, Thailand and Okinawa. I flew two missions against Hanoi in December 1972 that some experts credit with driving the North Vietnamese to the conference table. I accumulated a total of 280 combat missions and earned 13 Air Medals and a Distinguished Flying Cross.
I was assigned to Castle Air Force Base in 1973 as a flight instructor. By 1976, I was the navigator in charge of rewriting the entire B-52 navigator and radar navigator academic flight training program. Eventually, I was given the job of writing training programs that were disseminated to the entire Strategic Air Command. My last job in the Air Force was to manage the development and implementation of the training program for the Offensive Avionics System, a major modification to the navigation station of the B-52. As part of this program, I managed the development of a simulator.
After 21 years of service, I retired from the Air Force in 1984.
It was then that I was able to seriously consider the implications of something that had been gnawing at me throughout my Air Force career: my conviction that I should have been born a woman rather than a man. After years of therapy, long talks with my loving and much loved wife, and further periods of introspection, I finally began hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in June 1999. Thus began the long journey toward living as the woman I knew I should be.
A year after I started HRT, I began living full-time as a woman. In August 2000, I legally changed my name from a male name to "Angela." And I completed my sex-reassignment surgery in January 2002.
I successfully changed my name with the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System in August 2000. I thought that would change my name with all government agencies. This did not occur. I had to change my name separately with CHAMPUS and with the Defense Financing and Accounting Service. While I never had a problem changing my name, I was told that if I ever tried to change my gender from male to female, then my wife of 36 years would lose all of her Air Force family member privileges.
The military doesn't want to allow marriages or any benefits from marriage to two lesbians. But that's not my situation. I served 21 years in the Air Force and lived 57 years as a man. During that time, we had 34 years of heterosexual marriage. It seems to me that the military authorities should be able to recognize that a marriage like mine is not negated simply because the military member changes his or her sex 15 years after retirement. I would like to be able to change my military records to reflect my actual gender, a woman. As it stands, I am living a lie.