Author: Ranee McCollum with family in May 2007. (Photo courtesy of author)
By Ranee McCollum Gary got the call on a Friday. He’d had two days’ notice that something might be up with his assignment. He got off the phone and explained the situation. I said, “They want you to do what? Where? WHEN? And what the heck is a Predator?” I’d been a military spouse for 18 years at that point, so getting yanked around like that wasn’t new, but the late notice and the sheer scope of the change was disconcerting. The packers were scheduled to arrive Monday to move us to Maxwell AFB for Air War College and a break from what I naively assumed was a fairly duty-heavy assignment with the Marines and the MV-22 at Marine Corps Air Station New River, Jacksonville, NC. We had already rented a house in Montgomery. We had already forwarded the mail. The movers showed up on Monday anyway. I think they had Gary’s new orders before he did. It started to sink in. Gary would be a squadron commander. This made me... the wife of a squadron commander. Oh, dear. Gary had been a weapons systems www.aircommando.org
officer in a fighter squadron, an instructor in a training squadron, chief pilot in an MC-130 squadron, had a year at school with the Army, and six years in the Osprey with the Marines. Over the years I had attended innumerable squadron coffees, squadron parties, and squadron whatever-was-there-to-attend. Less often, I went to the occasional basewide Officer’s Wives’ Club meeting (I think it was still the OWC at that point, but honestly, I paid little attention. I was one of those wives who showed up for Crystal Bingo and not much else.) I had tried my best to stay out of any position of real responsibility. I was generally fully supportive of Gary’s career, and (with a little notice) I actually liked moving around and the military way of life, but I had no desire to be in charge of anything. Worse, I’d had a taste of being “the first lady” as someone wittily put it, and I wasn’t that great at it (yes, they said that, too). For the previous three years, Gary had been the detachment commander for the little contingent of Air Force within the larger Marine V-22 test team, first at Naval Air Station Patuxent River and then at Marine Corps Air Station New River.
The Air Force had seen fit to send us to the AFSOC Squadron Commanders’ Course, but at some point, I think I just blocked it all out. It was just a detachment, after all, is what I told myself, very small, with experienced military wives, and they didn’t need me to write a newsletter or hold their hands. The guys weren’t even flying for most of the time. After two years at NAS Patuxent River, we moved back to MCAS New River, and the larger Marine Corps spouse network took over. The Marines have an emphasis on serious spouse involvement, and thanks to them I went to my first Key Spouse course, not entirely of my own volition. I still couldn’t have told you who Gary’s group commander was, let alone his wife’s name. The 3rd Special Operations Squadron (SOS), Las Vegas, NV, would be geographically separated from the 16th Operations Group, Hurlburt AFB, FL. The significance of this distance did not impact my thinking at first, because between Command and General Staff College at Ft Leavenworth and six years of being stationed on Navy/Marine bases
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