“ I was fortunate to meet so many wonderful people in Hampton Hall prior to the pandemic, making this past year much easier than it might have been!”
memberSPOTLIGHT Kathryn Boudreaux
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fter frequently visiting Charleston during her son’s four years at The Citadel, Kathryn Boudreaux grew to love the Lowcountry and moved from the DC metro area to Bluffton in June 2019.
Born into a military family, she is well-traveled! Both parents were Naval officers during WWII. Her father was a career naval aviator and her mother was a Navy nurse, serving on the hospital ship USS Samaritan in the Pacific. Kathryn broke the family’s Naval tradition and served first in the Army as a Russian linguist, then later in Air Force as an Intelligence Officer for a total of 29 years of service! She lived overseas nearly 9 years (twice in Germany for five years, and 3 years in Russia at the US Embassy Moscow). She majored in French at university and had the opportunity to live in France for a year. Her strong 6 | Summer 2021
background in French led her to spend short periods of time at the US Embassies in Paris, France, Kinshasa, Zaire (now Congo), and Bujumbura, Burundi. Kathryn’s late husband, Bob, was also an Air Force officer, starting out as a C-130 Pilot and later working in nuclear non-proliferation, which took the couple to the US Embassy Moscow for 3 years. Bob and Kathryn were the result of “old-fashioned” matchmaking in May of 1985 at a promotion party at the Ft. Myer Officer’s Club near Washington, DC. One of the invited guests asked if he could bring a friend or two, and Kathryn replied “Yes, the more, the merrier!” Turns out, his hope was that she might like one of the two extra guys, and she did! She and Bob were married in October 1987. While living in Moscow, their son, Aaron, attended Russian “Detskiy Sad” (Pre-school and Kindergarten). He was the only American child in the school! Aaron is a 2016 graduate of The Citadel and has continued the Air Force tradition as an AC-130 Gunship pilot and is also the 3rd generation of military pilots. Kathryn recalls her most memorable experience in the Air Force back in 2004 when she was honored to serve as a French interpreter and liaison officer for a US
