Navy women see the world

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

"So there I was, 18 years old, surrounded by industrial gray, wearing overalls, steel-toed boots and a baseball hat, with the rank of electrician's mate in the U.S. Navy, all because I was going to show my friend and sister I could do this!"

That's how Amanda Hlawaty of Glacier View recalls one of the reasons she completed a four-year stint in the military fresh out of high school.

When Hlawaty joined up at 17, she was intending to participate in a program called "sister duty" whereby the Navy would assign family members and friends duty together. "Unfortunately," she said, "they chickened out, and I stayed."

Raised in Louisville, Hlawaty said she was drawn to the Navy because she'd always loved the ocean. After six weeks of boot camp in Orlando, Fla., and a further training as an electrician in Chicago, she graduated on Valentine's Day 1989 qualified to repair and recondition ship motors, turbines and generators. She was assigned to the USS Cape Cod, a destroyer tender serving the Pacific Fleet out of San Diego.

At the time, she said, women were not assigned to ships that might see combat duty, as they are today.

"I was homesick most of the time I was in the military," she said, "but I also had some interesting experiences like sea duty in the Asian Pacific, seven months at sea during Desert Storm, and humanitarian duty in the Philippines following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo." Hlawaty said they helped shovel ash in the Philippines and in a way it reminded her of Colorado snow when she saw it falling from the sky.

She said her experience getting along with many different kinds of people from all over the country in close ship's quarters was invaluable training in the long term and she made some good friends.

She lived on board the ship during her entire tour of duty on the tender, since it was too expensive to live anywhere else. There were 1,500 on board, including about 300 women, she said. She described her accommodation as bare bones, with six women sharing one small room with bunks stacked three deep on two sides.

"Besides our bunks," she said, "we had a locker--and that was it." She said theft was a problem, and anything of personal value had to be locked up.

While at sea, Hlawaty said the Navy brought in college faculty to offer classes, and she was able to complete a history course for college credit. "I would study on my bunk and in the small library on board," she said. "I hated the lounge where the television was because it was a smoking area, so for four years I didn't watch any television and tried to use that time elsewhere."

She said it was hard not to be tempted to waste time in the many bars surrounding every Navy port, because that's what friends did, and they stayed long into the night just to escape the ship's culture.

After her four years, Hlawaty said she considered re-enlisting for another four because the Navy offered a $10,000 signing bonus to those who did. Homesickness for the mountains and the chance to complete her college education under the GI bill won out, however.

Now 12 years on, Hlawaty said she was grateful for the experience, but glad she left when she did. "When I got to college and started studying for my nursing degree I was so focused," she said. "I had mentally grown up and I was done with all my fooling around."

Hlawaty, a nurse at Poudre Valley Hospital, has a 1-year-old son and is married to North Forty News outdoors columnist Stephen Hlawaty.