STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Women veterans will be front and center during a panel discussion from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, at the Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood in Ketchum.
The discussion marks the American Women Veterans’ Inaugural Leaders’ Summit in Sun Valley.
The event is presented by American Women Veterans Foundation, a nonprofit organization that relocated its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Sun Valley in 2015.
Panelists include:
- U.S. Army Major Gen. Dee Ann McWilliams, who served 29 years in the U.S. Army, mobilizing 5,700 Reserve Soldiers to the Southwest Asia Sustainment Force while simultaneously demobilizing 8,000 Reservists from the first Gulf War. She is president of the board of directors for Women in Military Service for the American Memorial Foundation.
- Naomi Schware, who spent two year in the Israeli Military as a sniper. She found reintegrating into civilian life at home in Boulder Colo., difficult so she drove 11,000 miles of America before finishing her B.A. in International Affairs at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She and her canine companion Moose then climbed 38 of the 14,000-foot peaks of Colorado, which offered the landscape where she could find her center and purpose.
- Sgt. Kirstie Ennis, who served six years in the U.S. Marine Corps as a helicopter door gunner and airframes mechanic. Her helicopter went down in 2012 during her last deployment to Afghanistan and she sustained injuries that resulted in an above-the-knee amputation, as well as a traumatic brain injury, cervical and lumbar spine trauma, bilateral shoulder damage and full thickness facial trauma. An avid alpine climber, she was the first above-the-knee amputee to summit Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia.
- Amanda Burrill, who served as a rescue swimmer and combat systems officer during two U.S. Navy tours aboard the USS Dubuque. She suffered a traumatic brain injury while deployed with the U.S. Navy to Operation Enduring Freedom. She is undergoing rehabilitation for vision, balance, speech, motor skills and cognitive function following a second brain injury. But she’s not letting any grass grow under her feet, serving as a Travel and Cooking Channel host. She hasa Bachelor degree in archaeology from Boston University, a Masters in journalism from Columbia and a French culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu.
- Sgt. First Class Genevieve Chase, who served 14 years as a counterintelligence special agent with two deployments to Afghanistan assigned to the 10th Mountain Division and 101st Airborne Division. She was a driving force behind American Women Veterans and has advocated on behalf of all veterans at the Pentagon and before Congress. She currently is a drill sergeant candidate with Bravo Company out of Gowen Field in Boise.
More than 2.2 million women veterans live in the United States. They represent 15 percent of the modern-day military forces and the percentage is increasing.
But women have served on the front lines of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts only to return home, disappearing into the shadows forgotten and unacknowledged. American Women Veterans Foundation seeks to change that.
The panel discussion is free for military veterans. It’s $15 for those who purchase tickets in advance at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/not-every-gi-is-a-joe-meet-americas-women-veterans-tickets-37806928541
Tickets at the door are $20 for adults and $10 for children under 18.