“I always felt I was a good fit for the army.”
Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Sawyer, 48, was reflecting on her career since joining the United States Army as a second lieutenant in 1986, fresh out of City College of the City University of New York (CCNY).
Back then, armed with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, the former student of Barbados’ Foundation School entered the military with her eyes set simply on becoming the best possible nurse. But on Friday the Barbadian is to be officially elevated to a rank she didn’t even dream of attaining.
That’s when the woman who grew up in Marley Vale, St Philip, will become a full United States Army Colonel. Interestingly, during the promotion ceremony at the Dwight David Eisenhower Medical Centre, Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, her father, Rupert Millar, a Brooklyn resident, will pin a colonel’s epaulette on a shoulder of her uniform while her mother, Vida Millar, who lives in Mangrove in St Philip, will do the honours on the other.
“This is something I really want my parents to be a part of. They have contributed so much to the position I have reached, with the training and the upbringing they provided,” Colonel Sawyer told the Sunday Sun. “I was brought up in a strict household and was taught the value of hard work and discipline. That has been very useful in the army. You know, it has been an amazing journey for me.”
Substitute “incredible” for “amazing”, and you would get the full measure of where she has reached since leaving Barbados at age 12.
Promotion
But should she be promoted again, a long shot by any calculation, she would become a one-star brigadier general.
“That’s the next rank. But to be frank, it’s not something I expect because becoming a one-star brigadier general is almost impossible in the army nurse corps,” she explained. “That person usually rises to a two-star major general and is the chief of the nurse corps. Becoming a colonel is quite hard as it is.”
Colonel Sawyer, who came to the United States in 1974, entered a Brooklyn high school that mixes academics with classes designed to prepare students for a career in health care services. On graduation, she immediately became a student at City College.
“I always wanted to be a health care professional and when I graduated from CCNY as a registered nurse, I immediately joined the army,” she recalled.
“In the years that followed I was promoted to first lieutenant, captain, major and then lieutenant colonel. Now, I am a full colonel in the nurse corps. I didn’t expect to be promoted to a colonel.
“I was quite happy to retire as a lieutenant colonel but the army felt it should give me this new rank and responsibility.”
Along the way, the critical care nurse has worked at various army hospitals and medical centres in Texas, Washington, South Korea, and the Defence Department’s highly-specialized burn unit in Germany, to which injured soldiers are rushed from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan for treatment.
She was also deployed in Kuwait in 2003 and Iraq in 2008 where she was the head nurse for the army’s intensive care unit in Baghdad but ended up directing the continuing education programme there.
Master’s degree
But that’s not all.
A dozen years ago the Barbadian returned to the classroom and gained a Master of Science degree in nursing from the University of Texas’ Medical Branch at Galveston in 1998.
Today, she is the chief of education and training at Eisenhower Hospital in Georgia, responsible for continuing education for all medical personnel – doctors, nurses, medics, licensed practical nurses and other military personnel.
“We in the army take care of our own. I get a lot of satisfaction doing this job. I no longer go on wards as a nurse but I am in education,” she said.
From Georgia, her next assignment will be at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas where she is to be the chief nurse or director of nursing at the Munson Community Hospital, an outpatient facility.
Army career
Colonel Sawyer praised the army for the way it looks after its military personnel, adding a “career in the army is good because it allows us to expand our horizons.
It provides the training, opportunity, discipline and the inspiration to move ahead”.
The Barbadian has a long list of people rooting for her, including grandmother Lilian Parris in Barbados, brother Gilfoyle Mason and sister Marva Miller-Wiliams, both in Brooklyn.
“We are all very proud of her,” said her father.
The colonel admits she has made significant strides.
“I accept that I have come a long way. But I didn’t do all of this on my own. I have had someone guiding my path, looking out for me,” she said, referring to God. “I have to give Him praise.”
She worships regularly at a Baptist Church in Georgia but enjoys services at St Catherine’s in Barbados.
“I feel very fortunate.
I came from a family of very hard workers with a strong work ethic and always striving to do better,” she said.
“All I am doing is carrying on that tradition.”
