Visiting family, officer talks of her life in the Air Force
Air Force Col. Janet Wolfenbarger has called many places home,
but over the holidays she joined her parents at their log abode
upon a hill in Paicines for a week of relaxation with her husband,
Craig, and daughter, Callie.
Wolfenbarger’s life has been one lived on the move as a career
military woman and the daughter of an Air Force pilot. She has been
selected to be a brigadier general, a one-star general, and will be
pinned during the spring if all goes according to plan.
Visiting family, officer talks of her life in the Air Force
Air Force Col. Janet Wolfenbarger has called many places home, but over the holidays she joined her parents at their log abode upon a hill in Paicines for a week of relaxation with her husband, Craig, and daughter, Callie.
Wolfenbarger’s life has been one lived on the move as a career military woman and the daughter of an Air Force pilot. She has been selected to be a brigadier general, a one-star general, and will be pinned during the spring if all goes according to plan.
“The Air Force nominates you and then the President sends the list to the Senate for approval,” she said. “They can only have a certain number of generals so I am waiting to be pinned.”
While Wolfenbarger’s military rank is impressive, she has had her share of challenges along the way, including a childhood filled with frequent moves.
“It was the only thing I knew until I got older and had friends who had lived in one place,” Wolfenbarger said. “It taught an independence. We got thrust into unfamiliar circumstances and had to make friends.”
The dark-eyed woman with short, light brown hair remembers attending sixth grade at Sunnyslope Elementary School in Hollister. After a short stint in the area her family moved to the Sacramento area and then landed in Dayton, Ohio, where she attended Beavercreek High School.
Though Wolfenbarger strived for excellence in her academics, bringing in straight A’s since her elementary school days, she hadn’t always considered a military career.
“One night at dinner I mentioned that they’d opened the [Air Force] Academy to women and she said, ‘Big deal,'” recalled her father, Eldon Libby, who served 21 years in the Air Force. “Then later she asked me to get some more information.”
To be accepted into the Academy, potential students need to be nominated, most often by a congressional sponsor. Wolfenbarger got her nomination and entered the Academy as a cadet in 1976, the first class to accept women.
“She slipped in by a hair because she was not eligible to fly,” Libby said.
Wolfenbarger has poor eyesight and entered as a small percentage of cadets who would not be eligible to fly or navigate aircraft.
“I always believed she could handle it, but that it would be tough,” her father said.
Wolfenbarger started out as one of 150 women who were inducted into the academy, about 10 percent of the entire class.
“It’s fair to say of the guys there, there was a subset that didn’t like women there,” she said. “They set out to make us miserable.”
During her tenure at the academy, the women enrolled and their superiors were under the constant gaze of the media.
“We were touted as pioneers,” she said. “It some ways it made it more difficult to leave than to gut it out.”
Wolfenbarger never thought about leaving the academy before she completed her engineering degree.
“We were put under stress, both physical and mental,” she said. “What it did for me is that I came out the other end knowing I could handle it. It gave me self confidence.”
Wolfenbarger’s opportunity to rise through the ranks of the military came after she completed a master’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when she entered program management for weapons systems. Through the years, she has managed as many as 300 people at a time while they worked to perfect aircrafts such as the F-22 fighter jet, the B-2 bomber and the C-17 transport aircraft.
During the last eight years of her career, Wolfenbarger has been managing her full-time job and motherhood, sometimes without the help of her husband who travels as an Air Force pilot.
“They try to keep spouses together,” Wolfenbarger said. “But it’s not always possible.”
While the B-2 project consumed her life in Dayton, Ohio, the Air Force restationed her husband to Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas, leaving Wolfenbarger to live as a single mom with 2-year-old Callie.
“Craig always said I had it harder then, but I say he had to miss all those things with Callie,” she said. “Most folks didn’t know how I did it.”
She enlisted a friend who could watch Callie when she needed to travel or work late.
“There was a daycare on the base, but if we picked the kids up late, they would charge us a dollar a minute after closing time,” she said with a laugh. “And if you did it too often you’d be asked to leave.”
She and her husband reunited when they were both stationed at the Pentagon where Wolfenbarger works at the Air Force Acquisition Center of Excellence, a department that oversees all the program management for weapons systems across the country.
Through the years, Wolfenbarger never felt being a woman held her back.
“Part of my experience at the academy and part of the challenge was to prove that not only could we survive, but we could excel,” she said. “We did demonstrate that. Men felt they would have to lower the standards and I am proud to say they didn’t change any standards.”
