Veterans’ Day 2022: League members who served
Kristin Burrell, left, and Betty Haynes today
By Laura Haight
In 1976 – the same year West Point accepted its first group of women into the Corps of Cadets – Betty Haynes quit her job teaching English to Louisiana high schoolers and signed up for a transitional program to bring college-educated women into the Army as commissioned officers.
Fifteen years later, fresh out of college and an ROTC program, Kristin Burrell arrived at Fort Bragg, NC, with her eyes on the skies and, despite the fact that there were few pilot roles open to women at the time, high hopes of becoming an Army pilot.
Betty and Kristin are just two veterans who are members of the League of Women Voters of Greenville County; and whose service we recognize on this Veterans Day.
Betty Haynes
On her first day in the Army, Betty describes herself and fellow civilian, newly commissioned officer newbies as “the rainbow troops” – all lined up off the bus in their colorful “city clothes and heels.” She began her military career as a “WAC from way back” (the Women’s Army Corps was disbanded and its members consolidated into the regular Army in 1977) and ended it 23 years later as a Lt. Colonel at the Army Materiel Command in Alexandria, VA.
In between, she commanded a company of Army Ordnance specialists and was among the first to be trained to maintain the new Stinger shoulder-fired missiles during a posting at Ft. Knox in 1979. At Ft. Knox, she met Chief Warrant Officer Hillard Haynes, also a LWV GC member and her husband of now-42 years. “It’s amazing what you can pick up in the Army,” she laughs. Other postings included the Pentagon, Germany, Italy, and Korea, where she was an Inspector General with the 8th Army.
While in Germany in 1981 during the Cold War, Betty rose to the rank of captain and commanded a support battery that had to be ready on a moment’s notice to move vehicles, supply vans, a five-ton trailer, and troops to their designated position. At that time in Germany, Betty remembers, “the Cold War was still very chilly.”
Although she was never deployed to a combat zone, both she and Hillard were in harm’s way on 9/11. Hillard was a civilian government employee in logistics, based at the Pentagon; Betty was a civilian contractors located at the Army Materiel Command in Alexandria. Hillard’s office had been located the section hit by Flight 77, but he had been moved so the area could be renovated. For Betty, dealing with potential need to manage troops and equipment to respond to the attack – the job of the Army Materiel Command – “I didn’t have time to process the fear that I felt.”
Eventually, Hillard and others from the Pentagon were evacuated and moved to Alexandria to set up temporary offices. Betty had no idea if he was safe “until he walked through the door of the operations center” – 4 ½ hours after the attack.
When she joined the Army, Betty saw it as a three-year tour, a way out of Kentwood, KY, and a chance to see the world. “I loved being in the Army,” she says, “and it surprised me that I stayed as long as I did.”
Those early years were challenging for a woman in command of mostly white, all male troops. But they were a learning experience that has stayed with her. “People are people. If you treat them with respect, you will earn their respect. If you look for the worst, you will find it. But if you approach a situation with the idea that I can learn from this, it works out.”
Kristin Burrell
The Army was no mystery to Kristin Burrell, who grew up as an “Army brat”, born in Germany and moving around military bases with her dad - an Army doctor - in both the US and abroad.
Even as a youngster, Kristin dreamed of flight. “I had a dream of becoming an astronaut; I just loved to fly,” she remembers. When it came time to decide on colleges, Kristin knew she would need a scholarship and that she wanted a military career. She chose Occidental College in LA, and attended on a three-year, full-ride ROTC scholarship. But Occidental didn’t have an ROTC program so she enrolled in University of Southern California and commuted there three days a week for ROTC.
As an ROTC cadet, Kristin spent a couple of weekends each semester at Camp Pendleton for training, and went to Airborne School one summer and trained as a paratrooper.
Kristin credits her parents with always being supportive of her dreams: “They never said something was out of reach.”
“It never once occurred to me that women didn’t belong in the military or that there was some job I couldn’t do,” she says but admits that life in the military was different. Upon graduating college in 1991, she was commissioned a 2nd Lt in the Army.
There she got an abrupt awakening to the “stereotypes society imposes on people” when she learned how limited flight opportunities were for women. Fighter jets - her dream - were out. Eventually she chose to be a medevac pilot with the Medical Service Corps.
After medical training, Kristin was posted at Ft. Rucker, AL, for flight school. A snafu with her medical records required her to repeat a flight physical, which resulted in her being “medically disqualified” for “allergies and headaches,” conditions she had never been diagnosed with and had no idea she had. Regardless, “that ended my dream.”
At Ft Bragg, NC, she served with a Medical Support Battalion as logistic officer and platoon leader – jobs that dovetailed well with her natural skill as a planner. While never in a combat zone, her unit was deployed for a month to Florida for support following Hurricane Andrew.
By 1993, Kristin had decided that she wanted to be a lawyer. At the same time, the Army had a draw down and offered a voluntary switch to the reserves. Kristin grabbed it. While stationed at Ft. Jackson in South Carolina, she attended law school at Emory University.
Her military career ended in June 1998 as medical logistics platoon leader, in charge of leadership, training, and combat readiness of 54 troops and warehouses of equipment at Ft. Gillem, GA.
Kristin’s post-Army career has been diverse and has included working at established law firms, starting her own law firm, and founding a company to manufacture and distribute a game that she invented while entertaining her own family. The self-described “adventurer” even put her military training to use when she and her family participated in a reality TV competition called Survivalists in 2020. Psst: They won.
Today, Kristin is taking a sabbatical, spending time with her family, and considering what’s next.
And, no, she’s never gotten that pilot’s license.
Thank you, Betty, Hillard, and Kristin – and all the other League members who have worn the uniform and defended our freedoms - for your service and sacrifice.
Betty and Hillard Haynes
Kristin Burrell getting ready to make a parachute jump.