In early November Blackburn College hosted a Veteran’s Day convocation with keynote speaker, Lieutenant Colonel Debra M. Doolittle. Doolittle is currently on active-duty in the army and has been in the military for 26 years. Blackburn President Dr. John Comerford opened the convocation saying, “It takes a strong, dedicated military to protect our country, and protect our values.”
Doolittle was recommended by Blackburn alumna Barbara Oakes, class of 1969 and subsequently invited to speak at the convocation by Senior Director of Development Nate Rush. Doolittle’s speech included details about her experience as a woman in the military. Women were held to different restrictions than men, and some men just did not believe women should be in the military at all. After the convocation, she revealed that her experience in the military never brought her too many struggles. “I might have had the occasional gruff male that believed that females shouldn’t be in the military,” she admitted, “but that was just personality and nothing I couldn’t handle.” Other than that she had great leaders and was treated fairly.
Doolittle rose in rank to lieutenant colonel and led her own command of troops. In her speech at Clegg Chapel in Hudson Hall, she revealed to the full audience that when she was commanding troops while working with the Marines in 2007, they had very strict policies on females in combat. Doolittle managed to help stop that segregation and allowed her female troops to do the same jobs as the men in her command. Doolittle explained, “I did the same things the men did. I was a soldier first, and a female second.” In response to Doolittle’s empowering story for women, freshman art major Sacha GrayBeal said, “I like that she’s going in the right direction for women.”
Doolittle emphasized the importance of having a mentor and being a mentor. She later revealed that although she had many mentors in the military, the one that stood out was her previous Battalion Commander. He is now a retired colonel, but she still talks to him to this day. She said that she would talk to him about her career in the military and even issues outside of the military, having somebody to look up to was very influential.
Another memory she recalled was volunteering for airborne school. She remembered, “Jumping out of a plane is something I’ve always wanted to do when I started the military. It was sort of a personal goal that I accomplished.”
Her biggest personal struggle was finding personal connections with people. “I have friends all around the world,” she explained, but she didn’t actually feel a personal connection with anybody until she met her husband online. After maintaining a long-distance relationship for a year, he proposed to her. “He decided he would follow me,” she said.
Doolittle plans to retire in the next three years but that is not slowing her down from starting school next fall to prepare for her second career. She wants to study radiation therapy because she’s always been interested in the nursing field. Just as she said in her speech, “I’ve done everything I wanted to accomplish and I’m not done yet.”