This story has been updated to correct Linda Aldrich's rank.
One of the first female missileers, retired Col. Linda Aldrich, was 30 when she decided to call a recruiter to ask about joining the Air Force.
He thought it was a prank call and then he told her: “Lady, it would take a four-star general before I would waste time talking to you,” she recalled.
So Aldrich went out and found a four-star general.
Her former boss at a car dealership in Abilene, Texas, happened to be friends with Gen. Robert “Dutch” Huyser, who called her up. The general told her she could either be a civilian or a missileer, and he wanted her to serve longer than four years.
As an English major, Aldrich didn’t know what the world of nuclear weapons would entail. But she excelled, serving almost 30 years in the Air Force. As a single parent following a divorce, it was the new direction as well as an education she would have never gotten in the civilian world.
“They gave me a career. They gave me a life,” she said.
Retired Col. Linda Aldrich was one of the first women to serve as a missileer.
Aldrich was one of two pioneering female missileers traveling on an Honor Flight to Washington this weekend to honor female veterans. Aldrich enlisted later than the World War II, Korean and Vietnam War-era veterans and so she traveled as a volunteer, but she experienced many similar issues as one of the first women in her field.
Missileers serve in pairs in underground capsules on 24-hour shifts. There was concern when women first started out as missileers about inappropriate relationships.
In the beginning, women could only pull shifts together, which posed several problems. For example, the rookies couldn’t learn from each other, she said. If one woman was sick, the whole shift would have to be covered by another team. The teams must be constantly ready to launch a missile if called on.
“I am very blessed, indeed, that I survived in the long term,” Aldrich said.
Her meticulous personality helped in her new career, but luck played a role, as well, because she was assigned to serve as an instructor and she was allowed to teach with an experienced male colleague that she could learn from.
One of the toughest parts about her career was the impact it had on her daughter, who heard some of the remarks at her junior high that when women integrated into the missileer crews they would break up marriages.
“People can be very mean when it’s a new situation,” she said.
Aldrich’s daughter ended up following her into the Air Force and is now a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
For women, the military is a calling that takes a good sense of humor, toughness and patriotism, Aldrich said.
“We will take care of the country just like the guys would,” she said.
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