The timing was right when she decided to fly
By William H. McMichael
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE - It was
the summer before her senior year
at the University of Texas at
Austin, and officer candidate
Cathy De La Garza was headed to
an air base in Florida to spend
two weeks "shadowing" an active
duty officer. The idea was to get
a taste of the real Air Force
before she graduated.
The officer was an F-15 pilot.
And De La Garza had always wanted
to fly.
"I got a couple of rides when I was down there," she said,
"and that just brainwashed me."
De La Garza knew what she wanted to do. And the timing was
right. That spring, the Pentagon had begun allowing women to
compete to fly combat aircraft.
Today, De La Garza is one of only seven woman F-15 pilots in
the Air Force. For the past two years, she has flown the
F-15C, a powerful air-to-air combat version of the jet, for
the 71st Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base. It's a
tour of duty that has included two deployments to the
Persian Gulf region and roughly 50 flights over the "no-fly"
zone in southern Iraq. Now a captain, she also recently
earned an upgrade to "2-ship flight lead"; that means she
can lead another jet out on a combat mission.
Yet this combat pilot's idea of a great time is hanging
around the house with husband Jack, curling up to read a
good biography or walking her two Dalmatians in the park.
"It pushes me to do a lot of things I wouldn't do normally,"
De La Garza said during a recent interview at Langley. "It
just forces me to use all my skill, everything they taught
me. It just puts me out there."
Perhaps De La Garza, an even-tempered sort, simply has a
comfort zone that balances home life and the demanding,
dynamic nature of military flight duty. Like others in the
military, she tires of being away from home so much -- "You
learn how to deal with it," she said -- but she also loves
her job.
"It's never mundane," she said. "The environment's always
changing. You've got 15 million things you've got to do.
You're almost overloaded -- but that's what they teach us to
handle."
She's aware that others still view her as a curiosity --
including, upon first meeting, the wives of her male
squadron mates, even though she's married. She's also fully
versed in the short history of women in combat jets,
including the controversy that swirled around the first
women combat pilots in the Navy. She insists she hasn't been
granted special favors or considerations during her
five-year career.
"I think I've been treated fairly and allowed to succeed or
fail like everybody else," she said. "I was not given
preferential treatment. I can tell you that."
It's easy to assume that women who fly combat jets must be
overachieving hard-chargers -- women aggressive enough to
hold their own in a testosterone-rich environment. De La
Garza, a woman of medium height and build who enjoys lifting
weights at home with Jack, seems plenty self-assured, but in
a soft-voiced, girl-next-door, affable sort of way. She's
confident, but not cocky.
"If there's any need to overachieve, it's probably something
personal," she said. "But I would say that's more of a
characteristic of anybody in this line of work. It's very
competitive. It's just not a career field where you can be
lazy."
Or thin-skinned. It begins early in a military pilot's
career. During training, for instance, nearly all student
pilots earn themselves a call sign that is less than
flattering. De La Garza's was "Chocks." That was awarded at
the outset of her very first F-15 ride, when she tried to
taxi the jet forward on the ground while its wheels were
still chocked, earning guffaws from her instructor in the
back seat.
At squadron headquarters, where mistakes invite merciless
ragging by fellow pilots, De La Garza said she gives as good
as she gets. Early on in her career, she said, "I pretty
much took the 'big girl' approach -- where if I was
ultra-sensitive about issues, then I wouldn't be in this
line of work."
At the 71st, De La Garza is known as "Spyce." She won't
reveal the name's origin other than to say it was conferred
by her fellow pilots after her first six months in the
squadron, when she earned her F-15 combat qualification and
was "initiated" -- nothing lewd or crude, she assures --
into the squadron.
The banter flows today. But it took awhile. "People are
tentative at first, just because of the environment that we
live in today, with sexual harassment cases," she said. "I
think people are cautious of what they say, how they act,
until they get to know you personally."
For De La Garza, that wall began to crumble during her first
deployment to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia -- an
austere environment where every day has a mind-numbing
sameness.
"You become good friends," she says. "There's a lot of
camaraderie, because there's nowhere to go." Those
relationships, she says, are important.
"You know you have to rely on these people when you go to
combat," she says.
As for their wives, she said, "You get to know 'em. I'm as
good friends with them, in some cases, as I am with their
husbands." But she understands the concerns, she said.
"People are, in general, a little leery of change," De La
Garza said, "until they get to know you."
De La Garza grew up in Austin, the daughter of a Japanese
mom and Irish dad, the latter a retired Air Force chief
master sergeant. Her two older brothers were pilots; one
flew C-130s for the Air Force, the other Army helicopters.
"I kind of looked up to them, I guess," she said. In
addition, a brother-in-law flew F-14s for the Navy. By the
time she got to high school, she'd decided she wanted to
fly, too.
So did other women, and they have. But change is coming
slowly. Women make up less than 1 percent of the Air Force's
fighter pilots, and De La Garza is the only woman fighter
pilot in 1st Fighter Wing, the unit that commands the 71st.
Asked if she foresees a day when just as many women as men
are flying combat jets, De La Garza said it will depend on
the level of interest. If she were to ask a room full of
young women what they want to do in life, she said, "I don't
think too many women would say, 'I want to fly jets.'"
Ultimately, the attempt to integrate women into combat roles
"may fail miserably," De La Garza said. "Who knows? We
haven't had the history to make that decision. But I think
everybody should have the opportunity" to fill such roles,
she said. De La Garza hopes she's one woman who is breaking
down barriers to those opportunities.
"The more they encounter me, or other women that do this, I
think it's just not going to be as big a deal as it started
out to be."
Many thanks to William H. McMichael and the editors of the Newport News Daily Press for granting permission to reprint this excellent article that appeared on March 15th 1999. Photos by Adrin Snider/Daily Press.
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