How I got here: Honolulu, Hawaii native, Sgt. Maj. Angela Maness

Courtesy Photo | Sgt. Maj. Angela Maness has broken new ground throughout her career by being the first woman Marine to serve in different capabilities and billets. However, she humbly emphasizes that gender doesn't matter, doing well and excelling as a Marine is what's important.  

DC, UNITED STATES

04.08.2014

Courtesy Story

Defense Media Activity - Marines

WASHINGTON - Early on in her career, Sgt. Maj. Angela Maness was told she couldn’t carry the symbols of her unit and country because she was female. Maness, a young but mature lance corporal at the time, stood fast in her convictions and appealed.

Today she is the senior enlisted leader at the “Oldest Post of the Corps,” and having developed a strict attention to all that is prescribed by custom, she is now responsible for safeguarding the Battle Colors of the Marine Corps.

Here we borrow fragments of Sgt. Maj. Angela Maness’ 26 years of service, with challenges and sacrifices both professional and personal, from enduring “her father’s Marine Corps” to losing two loved ones to cancer.

I graduated recruit training in a skirt. We weren’t issued slacks.
Dad had already retired by the time I joined in 1987. He showed up at the emblem ceremony and gave me his eagle, globe, and anchor.
I was 24 years old and married to a Marine when I went to boot camp.

I had already been out on embassy duty with my husband; he was a Marine at the time. I was the dependent wife out there with two kids and a gunnery sergeant husband. When my husband came to boot camp on family day, he shows up and he’s in uniform and my senior drill instructor was like “Excuse me, who are you?”

Imagine 1988, Lance Cpl. Maness checks into the command, married to a gunnery sergeant. What do you think everybody thought about me?

I was a lance corporal in H&S Battalion, in charge of another lance corporal and a PFC. I was older than them. I felt like their mom almost.

Keep doing that. Keep going above your pay grade to learn what the next step is going to be about … If you’re not fighting and being competitive in your job, you’re going to be asked to leave.
“I want to try out for the ceremonial platoon, Gunny.” He’s sitting at his desk smoking a cigarette. He took a drag off of it, blew the smoke in my face and said to me, “Maness, you’re female. You’re never going to be on my color guard.”

At different levels, every Marine is a problem solver.

So Lance Cpl. Maness goes back to the gunny the very next day. “Gunny, how come I can’t be on this color guard? Because I’m female? Is that right?” And he said hell yeah; get out of my office. “Aye aye, Gunnery Sergeant.” So I went out of his office, right upstairs, asked my staff NCO to help me with an appeal.

The institution cannot be strong at the top if we don’t have a strong foundation at the bottom.

When that time comes and you finally have the honor of training another Marine, don’t waste one minute of your time. Embrace the opportunity while contemplating that every Marine you train is someone’s son, daughter, nephew, niece or grandchild …. take care of them as if they were your own.

Having an active duty spouse is never as you would expect. Those are sacrifices that you make. It’s just the way it is. If you come in with the expectation of not having a lot, and not being able to move together, you get a lot more done that way.

Remember what happened back in 1990, we had Kuwait. So the war breaks out. Both of us are active duty. What do we do with the kids? We were both on the manning doc to leave at the same time. He was with an infantry unit and I was with 2nd Maintenance Battalion. He was told he had to go. I was told I was going to stay back.

Heart and soul went into training recruits, and not a lot of that went into my family. So we had our separation and we got the divorce right after that.

That special duty assignment, times two,allowed me to be successful. The combat deployments as a sergeant major, that helped me as well.

To have a more even balance of life … you need to have a yin with a yang. It completes the full circle when you have a partner to share with.

[My second fiance] had cancer and they found out a year after we had been engaged and it was so aggressive. Our baby was born, and five months later her dad passed.

I instantly became a single parent. So, I called Mom again. She came out to Hawaii, helped me raise my daughter.

I’m in this uniform; I have my sword with me and it’s the end of the ceremony, and I’m the new sergeant major of Combat Logistics Battalion 3, and then my dad comes up … He takes his lei and he takes it off of him and he puts it on me. And of course everybody there got a picture of it. I was very proud – very proud to stand there with Dad.

It was a tough six months, the last six months. But I was glad I was there … that whole six months of him going through chemo. He would tell me every day, and everyone in the chemo room knew that I was a Marine and that he was too. “I want to introduce you to my daughter.” He was a proud dad.

It would have been nice to sit down with a female sergeant major early in my career and for her to give me a road map.

He was stationed at Haditha Dam and I happened to be in Fallujah … I come off the Osprey, there’s my son.

I’d like to think that someday I’ll have the honor of working for a general and maybe inspire a young Marine to come take my place one day.

When I retire, I hope somebody says, “I remember Maness. She inspired me to do this.” That would be like payday for me.
Sgt. Maj. Angela Maness lists the top four achievements that helped shape her career.

On-the-job training, deployments, special duty assignment and promotion board experience are the top four achievements that helped me get to where I am today. Those have been the events in my life that define my choices and my lifestyle. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t change a thing … the good, the bad and all of the challenges — they have made me a better Marine. I would add that without the full support of my family, I would not be here today. They are my foundation of strength, my rock, my one focus of effort.

• Date Taken: 04.08.2014
• Date Posted: 04.15.2014 13:22
• Story ID: 126040
• Location: DC, US
• Hometown: HONOLULU, HI, US