In 2012, two months after Commanding General of the 98th Training Division Tammy Smith married her partner Tracy Hepner, she was offered a promotion to become Brigadier General.
The achievement was an unexpected coup for the Oakland, Ore.-native, who joined the U.S. Army Reserve in 1986 on a whim after reading an advertisement for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in a Future Farmers of America magazine.
The irony that a “boys magazine” had led her to this moment did not escape Brig. Gen. Smith, especially when she considered the implications of accepting the role.
Not only would she become a senior leader in the U.S. Army Reserve— at the time, a rare position for a woman—she would also have to make another choice. After nearly 30 years in the armed services, was she ready to come out publicly as gay to her peers?
“I was terrified,” Brig. Gen. Smith said Friday during a keynote address for the 14th annual George Washington University Women’s Leadership Conference at the Mount Vernon Campus. “If I chose to hide my life, what was I signaling as a leader to the rest of the members of the armed services who were gay and lesbian?”
“That’s how I knew it was the right thing—for me and Tracy—to come out and to be who we are authentically.”
Brig. Gen. Smith spoke candidly Friday morning to an audience of GW students, faculty and staff and GW and Mount Vernon College alumnae in West Hall. Her speech, recounting her path to embracing her identity and role as a leader, kicked off the conference on “Building Healthy Lives. ”
The event featured a panel discussion on work-life integration, an address from Pace Consulting CEO Paula Anderson, a resource fair and workshops on nutrition, financial wellness, movement and fitness and online health.
Mount Vernon Campus Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Rachelle Heller reflected on how the conference theme offered a modern perspective on age-old questions.
“We live in a radically different world than our parents—and certainly [Mount Vernon College founder] Elizabeth Somers—but really we are dealing with some of the same challenges, trying to build a healthy life by balancing and integrating a work life, a family life, a self life and a community life.”
Brig. Gen. Smith said for years she felt unbalanced because she was self-conditioned to compartmentalize her private and work life.
For example, while stationed on her first assignment in Panama, Brig. Gen. Smith would ignore her gay and lesbian friends when they passed one another on duty so as not arouse suspicion that they knew one another through the underground gay and lesbian community. Later, when Brig. Gen. Smith was dating Ms. Hepner, the two women would separate while shopping for groceries in Harris Teeter to avoid awkward introductions if a service member came over to say hello.
“People ask me why I did it and I always tell them, I love this uniform,” Brig. Gen. Smith said. “ I love this uniform and everything it stands for—the highest ideals of America.”
It wasn’t until a wider national discussion of the inequalities experienced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community deepened, that Brig. Gen. Smith began to feel that her personal life was interfering with her association with the armed services.
Mount Vernon Campus Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Rachelle Heller said that the conference was designed to share knowledge about creating a balanced, healthy life. (Logan Werlinger/GW Today)
In the mind 2000s, public advocacy mounted for same-sex marriage and equal access to benefits for same-sex partners. Most importantly for Brig. Gen. Smith, the call for a repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”— a policy prohibiting service members from opening discussing their sexuality—gained traction.
“My institution’s values weren’t aligned with my personal values and when I realized those values didn’t need to be incongruent, it caused this internal dissidence,” Brig. Gen. Smith said.
Brig. Gen. Smith believed that her only respite from her internal struggle was to retire from the Armed Services, so in 2009 she filed for retirement. Thanks to the slow-moving bureaucracy of the military, it took nearly a year for the retirement to be approved and by Feb. 2010, Congress called Admiral and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen to speak about repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“It was the first time in my life, someone currently serving and wearing the uniform said that I was ok just the way that I was."
- Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith, after hearing the testimony of Admiral and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen on "Don't ask, don't tell."
In his testimony, Adm. Mullen said, “No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me personally, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as an institution”
Watching the testimony on CSPAN, Brig. Gen. Smith was moved to cancel her retirement and continue to serve.
“It was the first time in my life, someone currently serving and wearing the uniform said that I was ok just the way that I was,” she said.
Two years later, Brig. Gen. Smith’s partner Ms. Hepner was by her side during her promotion ceremony. For the first time, her public life and private life were merged, Brig. Gen. Smith said. It was a defining moment of her professional and personal life.
She advised the audience to examine their own issues of authenticity so that they lead with their “full selves.”
“Whatever it is that you are going though that keeps you from being authentic, once you decide to let it go, there is a journey you must take between honesty and authenticity,” Brig. Gen. Smith said. “It starts with honesty.”