Full Lives

One morning in February, KPIX-TV meteorologist Jessica Burch warned her San Francisco viewing audience to watch out for strong winds along the coast. That afternoon, Jessica Burch flew a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter into those same gusts as a first lieutenant in the California Army National Guard.

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“It was so crazy dealing with such strong crosswinds. I was looking out my side window while flying forward,” Burch recalls. “Was it turbulent? Absolutely. Was it fun? Absolutely.

“There was a purpose,” continues the 25-year-old pilot, about a year out of Army flight school. “It was important for training. I needed to get those hours in. And it was safe. We wouldn’t do anything that’s not safe.”

It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that Burch will forecast bad weather that she and other California Guardsmen must endure. It comes with the territory. As do military professionals with more than one profession.

That’s the story for most Guard officers and noncommissioned officers. They are traditional Mobilization Day Guardsmen. They must meet the same requirements as their active-duty counterparts. Yet they serve only part time, at least in theory. Meanwhile, they have the responsibilities of full-time civilian jobs. Many also have families.

All of this can be a serious balancing act. The equilibrium grows harder as they advance in both their military and civilian careers, gaining new responsibilities in each, and their families grow. More frequent mobilizations in recent years have only added to the strain.

The demands become too numerous for some, but many find a way to maintain the balance — whether it’s for the added income and benefits, the change of pace, the adventure, the comradery or a fierce commitment to serve their communities and country. For one reason or several, they’re always ready because they always want to be there.

I'd rather be doing this and be burned out than not be doing it and wishing that I was.

—Jessica Burch, a meteorologist and first lieutenant in the California Army National Guard

Maryland Brig. Gen. Janeen Birckhead is one of them.

Birckhead has worked full time for the civilian side of the federal government for some three decades, now as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration at Department of the Interior. She has two part-time Guard positions — commander of the Maryland Army Guard and deputy commandant for reserve affairs at the U.S. Army War College. She is also married and has a son and a daughter in college.

She says people outside the Guard often marvel at her array of responsibilities. Active-component members don’t understand how Guardsmen can meet their many military requirements while holding down civilian jobs. And civilians have difficulty comprehending the commitment Guard service requires, she explains.

“I get that all the time when I’m at the War College,” Birckhead says. What? You have another job? How does that work and how do you fit it in? Her response: “It’s what we do.”

But she is about to shed some of her many responsibilities for one real big one. In June, she is scheduled to take over as the adjutant general of Maryland.

“I don’t think the average person understands what all we do,” says South Carolina Army Guard Lt. Col. Brandon Pitcher. He has been a teacher and school administrator for more than three decades. He retired in 2000 as a middle school principal but soon returned to the classroom as a teacher.

Pitcher has been an infantryman for 28 years. Along the way, the deputy commander of the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade has deployed to Kuwait and Afghanistan and mobilized for Operation Noble Eagle, a homeland security mission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, he’s preparing to attend the Army War College.

He also has a wife and three kids. Pitcher, too, is often asked how and why he has made it all work. “You do it because you want to,” he says. “I’ve been doing it and managing it for so long it’s become second nature. You have to prioritize things and do the best you can in all of them. Somehow, it happens.”

Some who do it worry that they make it look too easy, that defense leaders don’t fully appreciate what it takes to make it happen.

“My concern is that the Guard is extremely good at balancing our civilian careers and Guard responsibilities and our families,” says South Carolina Army Guard Col. Byron Williams. “And that senior military leaders may think we can handle even more. I do think that it becomes more challenging for M-Day personnel as the responsibilities and the optempo increases.”

Williams is the deputy commander of the U.S. Army Training Center and Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Among other duties, he oversees a Future Soldier Preparatory Course that helps recruits with fitness and academic challenges meet Army standards to enter basic training.

When not in uniform, he manages more than $100 million in client assets as a vice president and financial advisor for Morgan Stanley, a financial services company. He’s been with the firm for 25 years. His military career, mostly in the Army Guard, spans 34 years.

You do it because you want to.

—Brandon Pitcher, a science teacher and lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina Army National Guard

KRISTIAN JAMES is not the real name of another California Guardsman. It’s his pen name as the author of three illustrated children’s books. His real name is Kristian Hanson, and he has two other jobs — he is a civilian cybersecurity manager for a global aerospace firm and a captain and 163rd Force Support Squadron commander in the Air Guard’s 163rd Attack Wing. He also has a wife and young daughter.

His Guard career has been busy and varied — 17 years of climbing the enlisted ladder to become a master sergeant; working as a federal technician; and four years as an officer since receiving a direct commission in 2019.

He deployed for nine months in 2006-07 to Camp Bucca in Iraq as a Security Forces member of Arizona’s 161st Air Refueling Wing. He spent much of that time as a correctional officer in a detainee camp.

“That was kind of an eye-opening experience to see just how much we weren’t liked,” he recalls. “Kids threw rocks at me. Kids spat at me. Wives swore at me. The moment I realized I was in a war was actually in January 2007, because I was taking a test to make staff sergeant and I heard .50-caliber fire outside the tent.”

Hanson says he began writing children’s books to deal with the stress of his deployment. “I had PTSD, I just didn’t know it,” he explains, “and writing was kind of my escape to get things out of my head and be creative.”

Life is different, but no less challenging, as an officer back in California. He led two teams of Guard soldiers and airmen who picked up the victims of COVID-19 casualties and took them to the coroner’s office in Los Angeles County.

Texas Army Guard Capt. Nadine Wiley De Moura works both sides of the military public affairs street. She’s the commander of the 21-member 100th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment in Austin, the state capital, and the full-time civilian public affairs chief for the Air Force’s 688th Cyberspace Wing at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, about 100 miles away. The telephone, emails and other technology shorten that distance considerably.

Still, Wiley De Moura is spread thin. She’s a single mom with a six-year-old son. By her measure, the cyber wing of about 3,300 airmen and civilians secures and protects a global network with about 17 squadrons spread from Hawaii to Germany. Currently, members of her MPAD are mobilized on state active duty for Operation Lone Star, Texas’ border security mission.

Her Guard career also includes an 11-month deployment to Kosovo supporting Oregon’s 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team in 2020. It started with her ROTC commission from Temple University in Philadelphia. Delaware, where Wiley De Moura’s mother was a Guard officer, and Massachusetts, where she was doing graduate work at Harvard University, have been other Guard homes.

It’s not only people in command or supervisory positions who live double lives. Dan Robertson did so during his six years in the Massachusetts Air Guard’s 102nd Security Forces Squadron at Joint Base Cape Cod while cutting his civilian teeth in the insurance business until 2020.

Robertson experienced the range of missions that Guardsmen perform. He went to Lawrence, Massachusetts, following deadly gas explosions in September 2018. Soon afterwards, he traveled to Puerto Rico, which had been devastated by Hurricane Maria. He deployed to Qatar for nine months in 2019.

Back at home, Robertson put in the extra time necessary to remain trained and qualified with a variety of weapons and to respond to active-shooter and other Security Forces situations. “It turned into more than one weekend a month and two weeks of the year because we had to train so much more than other people,” he says.

We've got to make this work. We've got to continue the mission.

—Nadine Wiley De Moura, a public affairs chief and captain in the Texas Army National Guard

BURCH, THE WEATHER FORECASTER, is living a life that’s not quite as glamorous as it might seem. She gets up at 2:30 a.m. most weekday mornings and begins work at 3:30 a.m., preparing the KPIX-TV weather reports and graphics and getting her hair and makeup done before going on the air at 5 a.m. sharp. She estimates she is on camera 50 times before her shift ends at 12:30 p.m.

When she needs to log some flight time, it’s a two-hour drive northeast to Sacramento for a two-hour training mission, a two-hour drive back home, taking care of her of her dog and other domestic duties, going to bed and getting up again before dawn the next morning.

Weekends can also get gobbled up for additional Guard time because pilots must fly and train as much as those on active duty. Training with hoists and suspended water buckets to assist the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as CAL FIRE, crews fighting wildfires is part of her routine. There’s not much flying during regular weekend drills, she explains, because her soldiers require her attention.

Is she crazy? Burch insists she is not. “That’s my life right now. And it’s hard. I’m burned out,” she says. “But I would rather be doing this and be burned out than not be doing it and wishing that I was.”

“The best day of my life was finding out that the Army National Guard was an option, which allowed me to become a medevac pilot,” Burch adds. “Because the National Guard is a part-time service component, I could still pursue my other career passion as a broadcast meteorologist.”

Juggling dual careers and a family requires three overriding things, these people say: (1) Personal motivation and discipline; (2) The assistance of full-time Guardsmen; and (3) Family and employer support.

“I like to say you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at the same time,” says Birckhead, who talks about juggling two types of balls — glass and rubber. “Those things that are glass balls have to be kept in the air. Rubber balls that can bounce, I have to let some of them bounce.

“Once I internalize that, it gives me the ability to step back and look at how I prioritize what I want to have done, what needs to get done in life now or in the next year,” she says. “I try to have a plan and continue to change the plan as things happen, particularly things that are way out of my control. You don’t control everything.

“But I certainly don’t want to let glass balls drop because my soldiers depend on me. My family depends on me. So, I’m going to demonstrate my resiliency, and put people first, for them.”

Adds Williams, the financial manager: “I would say the responsibilities are certainly the same [as for active-duty people in comparable positions], but the challenges could be more.” Among them is “the fact you’re not in the office on a daily basis. You have to have extremely competent full-time people. As a leader you can’t show up at your monthly drills and not know what the hell is going on. You have to stay connected throughout the month.”

Wiley De Moura must ensure that her Texas public affairs soldiers check the same boxes as active-duty troops — weapons qualification, the Army Combat Fitness Test and soldier and public affairs mission-essential tasks, as well as doing the actual work. “We have to be ready to go, especially as Guardsmen, at any time,” she says

It helps greatly that her traditional soldiers have a wide array of experience — media and marketing backgrounds and noncommission officer seasoning — with “a passion for telling the stories of our service members,” Wiley De Moura says.

But she readily acknowledges she would be lost without her full-time readiness NCO, Sgt. 1st Class Bethany Anderson. They talk frequently. “She watches out for my back. She looks in the regs. She does all kinds of things … and takes care of things during the week and prepares us for drills so that we can be successful.”

Wiley De Moura also leans heavily on her father, among others, to help care for her son.

“If you don’t have that supportive civilian company, if you have someone constantly in your ear with a little negativity, it’s not going to work,” Williams says. “And I think you have to have a supportive spouse or significant other to support you through the extremely busy schedule.”

You have to have a supportive spouse or significant other to support you through the extremely busy schedule.

—Byron Williams, a financial advisor and colonel in the South Carolina Army National Guard

IT’S ALSO IMPORTANT for Guard colleagues to understand that people like Williams need to miss an occasional weekend drill because of a civilian job requirement.

And mentors. “Whether it’s NCOs or senior officers, I have learned so much from so many who have made themselves available, who have the wisdom and know the lessons learned from their service,” he observes. Sometimes just being able to vent to another soldier is a big help “when the cup gets overfilled.”

He has also done some mentoring. He persuaded Pitcher, who claims he was perfectly content driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles as an enlisted soldier, “that the Army needs you in other capacities.” Pitcher got the message, went through South Carolina’s Palmetto Military Academy and earned his commission in 1998.

When necessary, Wiley De Moura mentors with some tough love. She empathizes with others who are balancing two jobs and families as she is. She stresses mental health and encourages people to seek counseling if they need it. But she’s also a commander, and missions must be accomplished.

“Hey, I’m doing it,” she says. “I know it’s tough, but we’ve got to keep moving. We’ve got to make this work. We’ve got to continue the mission.”

At the end of the day, what satisfaction do Guardsmen derive from sometimes burning the candle at both ends, hoping the flames don’t burn out in the middle? They offer a variety of explanations which all amount to one thing — service.

Williams: “I like serving. I like wearing the uniform. Some people volunteer at the Heart Association, the American Cancer Society or whatever their nonprofit is. There was a period when I was doing a lot of nonprofit work also. But as my responsibilities increased, I had to let go of some of those nonprofits. My No. 1 focus as far as service was my duty as a National Guard officer.”

Pitcher: “My satisfaction comes from serving my country. That was my original wish because my father was a Marine reservist during Vietnam and my grandfather served in the Navy during World War II.”

Robertson: “I valued my [Security Forces] training, and I value it to this day. It taught me how to experience different types of people from different facets of life. That translates to my job currently. I was able to get my master’s degree in emergency management because of my service. The military gave me so much more than four years of college ever gave me.”

Burch: “Aviation has taught me a lot of lessons that I contribute to everything that I do during my everyday life. I’m a lot more patient. I’m a lot more thorough. And I think that makes me a good meteorologist too because I think of the impacts that weather is going to have on my local area.

“And I do care genuinely about the local people, and I do care about their safety. I have to prepare people. I have to be that protector for people.”

Bob Haskell is a retired Maine Army National Guard master sergeant and a freelance journalist in Falmouth, Mass. He can be contacted via magazine@ngaus.org.