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A fit brunette who longs for a decent stateside haircut, Lieutenant Colonel Joanne MacGregor – the civilian – looks like any other young, once high school cheerleader, athletic soccer mom with a to-do list a mile long. Nothing about her personality gives away the gravity of her career, or hints at a life that is utterly atypical for a 30-something, Illinois-born-and-raised wife of a tractor salesman and mother-of-two young boys who long for a puppy. She is freshly back home from Iraq, expecting to be stateside for a good while, and her stories of war and how she got there are delivered with a confidence and calm that is remarkable. And it all began because her parents needed her to help pay for college tuition.
“I am the youngest of eight,” she says. “So my parents offered to pay for my college room and board, if I paid tuition.” Enter her older brother, who’d been in the ROTC as a way to pay for his college career. (He, however, did not end up enlisting.) “I saw the ROTC as a way to get my degree. I didn’t expect to become enthralled with the life. But I did.” MacGregor soon became interested in aviation. “When I saw the helicopters, I really wanted to learn to fly. And after my first ride in one, I was convinced.” From there, MacGregor went to flight school, living on base for almost a year, learning in the classroom and in 150 hours in the air. About 10% of her classmates were women.
MacGregor joined the National Guard where she would serve two weeks a year and one weekend a month helping communities in need. She flew helicopters during the Hurricane Katrina debacle, and went to New Orleans Day Four after the levees had broken. “It was utter chaos; people in trouble, animals wandering the streets starving and homeless,” she remembers. “We were rescuing people from their homes who were in a complete state of panic and fear. I’ll never forget how shocking it was to see something so catastrophic happening in my own country.”
She didn’t expect one day to be flying helicopters in a war zone. “We had learned so much as a country from our experiences in Vietnam,” she says. “Like everyone, I really had no idea we’d find ourselves immersed in another war.”
MacGregor moved to Austin with her husband and began a family while they both worked for Caterpillar, a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, continuing to do her duty with the National Guard. Then she got a phone call. She was due in Iraq, and would lead a battalion of helicopters.
Instead of feeling fearful, or resentful that she would have to leave her small children and husband and go off to live and fight in a strange country, MacGregor felt grateful. “I felt it was my turn. I wanted to go there, I wanted the opportunity to use all the knowledge I had gained in school and over the years.” So, in August of 2008, she left behind a 13-month-old and a three-year-old and went to Iraq to command an aviation battalion of over 500 soldiers. One of her aircraft crashed, and she lost the crew. “It was devastating. But I had to be strong for all the other pilots in my battalion.” She admits that in flight school they don’t teach you about loss or morbidity, the way medical schools do. “We were taught not to be fearful. I just don’t think about it,” MacGregor admits. “I know my job is dangerous. It’s what I do,” she says calmly, yet still sadly. “I knew all that crew personally.” But she had to lead the rest of the battalion through the remainder of their critical mission.
Now home with her family, MacGregor says leaving them was difficult, but she compares it to wars past, with an appreciation for communications technology today. “We have email and Skype, where we can see our families at home, talk to them in an immediate way. I even read to the kids in my older son’s classrooms via Skype, so I could be a part of their story time like the other mothers and fathers.” She realizes how difficult it must have been in other wartimes where people had to wait weeks for letters to arrive from home. She also says that support from communities around the country has been incredible. “You can’t imagine how wonderful people have been to us – how supportive. We get care packages constantly, and it’s so uplifting. It really makes a huge difference.”
This summer, MacGregor will be able to be a little like those soccer moms she so resembles, though she’ll be on call most of the time, and she’ll have an office at Camp Mabry to report to soon. “Thank goodness I have such a helpful husband and neighbors,” she says. “So many people don’t have the support system at home that I have. I know that, and I’m so thankful.” MacGregor doesn’t have a negative thing to say about anything – not even living in a war zone surrounded by danger and often, unthinkable loss.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Living overseas on an Army base:
1. Thank goodness there were other women I worked with that I could occasionally talk to about pedicures or how much I missed getting the occasional facial.
2. The haircuts I got on the base were only $7. Believe me, it shows.
3. There was a chaplain on the base who was super intuitive and seemed to always know when I needed him, even before I’d call.ç