Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 19, 1995 TAG: 9508210032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK KREWATCH POTOMAC NEWS
DATELINE: QUANTICO (AP) LENGTH: Medium
She's too professional to roll her eyes, but she'd like to. Sgt. Maj. Sylvia D. Walters - the senior enlisted woman in all the armed services - has answered the question too many times.
Why, in 1966, did the 19-year-old daughter of a Baptist minister join the Marine Corps, a man's organization that wouldn't even let a woman touch a rifle?
There's no mystery, she said. She was patriotic, she was curious, she wasn't interested in college, and it looked like more fun than working for a textile factory in Andalusia, Ala.
Her parents worried, but it turned out there was no need to, she said.
``Back in those years, it was little-understood why a woman would want to pursue that particular vocation,'' she said. ``I think they thought they were sending their daughter into some unknown, horrible world.''
At times frustrating, she said, and at times unknown, it never was horrible. Only five other women in the active Marine Corps have achieved the rank of sergeant major, and she recruited one of those.
Walters was honored Friday at the Corps' weekly parade at the Washington barracks.
Walters started out as an electronics technician at Quantico, and her career has crisscrossed the country. She's been a senior drill instructor at Parris Island in South Carolina and a platoon sergeant at Officer Candidates' School in Quantico. Now stationed in El Toro, Calif., she's the top enlisted person, male or female, in all the Corps' West Coast air bases.
She doesn't consider herself an activist for women in the Corps, but whether by luck or hard work, she said her success stands as an example of what a woman in the Marine Corps can accomplish, given the opportunity.
At Marine Corps headquarters in Arlington Thursday for the annual Sergeant Majors Symposium, Walters took time out to talk about a career that has spanned four decades.
She looks like the consummate Marine. She's of medium height and slim build, and she carries herself ramrod-straight. She looks you straight in the eye through large-lensed glasses that sit below a head of neatly bobbed gray hair. Her face is sharp, her manner matter-of-fact as she reflects upon the enhanced role of women in the Corps - the barriers they have overcome and the ones they will not.
``Women have definitely been placed in positions that we never thought we'd see them in 10 years ago,'' Walters said. The days of being relegated to secretarial assignments are gone, she said, as is separate training for the sexes. The Office of the Director of Women Marines was disbanded in 1977 and, since then, training has been integrated, at least above the platoon level.
But the change has not been cataclysmic. Women, except for pilots, still are not allowed in combat, and Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the Marine Corps' new commandant, this week said he intends to keep it that way. But women can now qualify to carry a rifle or pistol, or, just as important to Walters, they can wear a ceremonial sword.
``It was a fight all the way with those little things,'' she said. ``It means the world to us."
Despite Krulak's statement on combat, he did indicate change would continue. For starters, he said he will even up physical fitness tests - women will start to run the same three miles as men, rather than only a mile and a half.
Regardless of the military's increasing use of technology that relies as much on brainpower as physical strength, Walters said Marines always will be measured by their physical prowess. Giving women the chance to prove themselves on an even playing field is integral to morale, she said.
It all comes back to the bigger issue of getting rid of limits and special treatment, Walters said. She's not a proponent of putting women on the front lines, she said, but she's an opponent of restricting people from performing jobs that their capabilities allow.
For better or worse, she said, some things won't change, and keeping women out of combat is one of them.
``You've got to accept that it's a man's organization,'' she said.
by CNB