VETERan of the month San Diego - September 2021 By Amber Robinson
Jude Litzenberger U.S. Navy Veteran Retired If I had to choose one word to describe Navy veteran and this month’s Veteran of the Month, Jude Lirtzenberger, it would have to be “pioneer”. From helping to implement female integration onto all-male ships during her Navy service to creating a legal program for military and veterans, she doesn’t mind traversing unknown territory if it will help out a fellow service member. Litzenberger joined the Navy at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 as an enlisted sailor. After four years of service Jude planned to get out.. But a recruiter told her that general unrestricted line officers were being used to work with ships that were getting women for the first time. The Navy needed people to go and meet with these crews and explain to them what women could do and what new protocol would look like with women aboard. He assured her he could get her a slot in officer’s school. Litzenberger had recently earned her Master’s in Organizational Psychology and knew she definitely qualified for the mission. She saw it as an opportunity even though she said the sailors at that time were adamantly against women on ships. “They didn’t want women on their ships. It was a man’s Navy and they would face to face tell you that,” said Litzenberber. The rest of Litzenberger’s career rotated between managing training schools and communications commands. She retired in 1995 after 21 years of service to the U.S. Navy. Although she already had a Master’s degree, Litzenberger got out and signed up promptly for law school to study criminal law.
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WWW.SanDiegoVeteransMagazine.com / SEPTEMBER 2021
Originally leaning towards labor law, Litzenberger instead fell in love with the work that criminal defense lawyers did. Working with mostly public defenders throughout her law school career, she was able to learn just how important their work was. As Litzenberger entered the workforce after school she found a particular need for veteran representation. She worked through a solo practice representing military personnel and veterans, standing in on various military administrative boards, taking on court martials or veteran criminal cases. “If local soldiers, sailors or airmen got in trouble in town I would take on their cases,” said Litzenberger. In 2007 Litzenberger provided legal counsel with members of the Public Defense to veterans attending Stand Down. After the event she and several of her cohorts discussed the need to provide a legal “safety net” for post 9/11 veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She and several other veteran movers and shakers then worked to form what they called the Returning Veterans Legal Task Force. “We had about 60 different community members and other organizations that would meet once a month at Jimmy Carter’s Cafe to discuss how we could build that safety net,” said Litzenberger. She and those involved had seen first hand the issues Vietnam Veterans faced when returning home. “About 43 percent of people who went to Vietnam went to jail within 13 years of coming home,” said Litzenberger. “We wanted to avoid that. We just wanted to do it better.” She and the group worked for almost four years to create a type of veterans court which they eventually called the Veterans Treatment Review Calendar.
