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Star struck

Aside from the fact that I celebrate my birthday on Independence Day, this time of year always brings appreciation for the many good things about our country.

Not that I have on my rose-colored glasses. I’ve taught history and am aware of our issues as a nation. I’ve also lived overseas for a third of my life, yet never want to call anywhere else home.

My reason for this is the great people I’ve run across who call themselves Americans. Recently, one such person, Lt. Gen. Ann Dunwoody, was nominated by the president for promotion to four-star general, the first woman in the history of the U.S. military to be nominated to hold that rank. She is currently deputy commander and chief of staff of Army Materiel Command.

I could say it’s about time, since the Army’s gender integration from the Women’s Army Corps is now three decades old. But more than anything, I felt a sense of connection to the news because I’ve followed Dunwoody’s career since first meeting her.

Dunwoody, a New York native, received a commission after graduating from the State University of New York in 1975, a year before women were admitted into West Point as cadets. That’s my alma mater, and a place she could attend today.

Since then, she has commanded at every level. Dunwoody served in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division. Her great-grandfather, grandfather, father, brother, sister, niece and husband all served in uniform.

But that is a matter of record. With only 11 four-star Army generals allowed on active duty by law, attaining the rank is tantamount to being selected for the Supreme Court, with the president nominating and the Senate confirming. Yes, there were several Army female three-star generals who are qualified, but Dunwoody has been on Pentagon short lists for decades.

I learned of this in the mid-1980s. I was a brand new Army captain stationed in Germany. Dunwoody was a senior captain months away from promotion to major. She was also my assignment officer, responsible for the strategic human resources of several hundred captains.

I had just finished a tough year. While preparing to be reassigned stateside, I was convinced that my career was over. I called then-Capt. Dunwoody in Washington, D.C., to discuss assignment options and hear her grim assessment of my potential.

She never let on what a slug she must have thought I was, or how bleak my future looked compared to her fast track. Instead, she did her job: In our conversation, she laid out the facts of my brief career, reviewed my evaluations and told me exactly what I needed to do to straighten everything out.

She concluded that phone call on a positive note: “We’ll get you a company command, you’ll show your real talents, and then it’s off to the races.”

The next and last time I saw Ann was just a few months later at Fort Lee, Va., where she had posted me. She was making the rounds and closing the loop on all her charges before moving on to bigger and better things. She had been promoted to major, so I dropped the “Ann” and called her “ma’am.”

As I sat down with her, Dunwoody reviewed her strategy for my career renaissance, then went personal. She chatted with me about my tour in Germany, my family (my wife had just given birth) and a bevy of other topics that she had deduced from my measly career file.

But that folder lay on the table between us, closed. I was impressed by how much she had learned about me before meeting; I was but one of more than a hundred officers she was advising that week. Her preparation might have come across as mechanical had her chatting not been so affable. It was a performance that commanded both respect and admiration.

So when reading the report of her impending promotion in June, I couldn’t help but send a silent salute her way.

First female four-star general. That’s real history.

Good for her. And she was right — it has been a rewarding career.