Irene Trowell-Harris remembers vividly the day she found out she would become a general officer, the first black woman in the history of the National Guard to do so. As a Colonel assigned to Bolling Air Force Base, she was astonished as she received the news.
“I was in shock,” Trowell-Harris tells ConnectingVets. “I thought Colonel was probably going to be the top rank for me.”
But during a promotion ceremony in the Pentagon in 1987, she pinned on her first star. She would later end her illustrious 38-year career with two on her shoulders. It was a long cry from the cotton fields in Aiken, South Carolina where Trowell-Harris first become enamored with airplanes.
“One day I saw an airplane through the cotton field, and I said to my 10 brothers and sisters, ‘one day I’m going to teach and work on an airplane,” she says.
A decade after being stunned by the flying contraption, she had completed both nursing and flight school and earned her flight nurse wings.
Somewhat of an admitted perfectionist, she became fascinated equally with the physics of crewed flight and the human body. Despite coming from a “very low-income” family, she earned a Bachelor’s degree from Jersey City College, a Masters’ from Yale University, and a Doctorate from Columbia University
Her Air Force career began April 1963 when she was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the New York Air National Guard.
Eager to serve her country, she volunteered to go to Vietnam where nurses were needed but she was told they didn’t want to send women. “I said, I’m a flight nurse,” she adds. “I’m willing to go anytime.” They never sent her. That wasn’t her only taste with discrimination.
Another such occasion happened when she was a Captain and had just completed a training flight when the entire crew decided to grab some food. She recalls the restaurant’s management telling the team they would not serve a black person. The crew decided to eat elsewhere.
“I didn’t let that stop me,” says Trowell-Harris. “I was determined to serve my county as a flight nurse.”
She loved to fly and took every assignment and opportunity afforded to her. So much, in fact, that she racked up the most flight hours of any nurse in her unit. To her, just getting by wasn’t an option; she desperately wanted to excel and to continue learning. Her assignments took her all over the world. From Alaska to all over Europe, but her favorite flights were flying patients from Germany to the United States.
She retired from the Air National Guard in 2001 as a Maj. Gen, but she wasn’t done serving her country. From 2001 to 2013 she served as director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Center for Women Veterans.
Trowell-Harris has a lot of firsts in her career. She was the first woman and nurse to command a medical clinic, the first black woman in the history of the National Guard to become a general officer. She is also the first to have a mentoring award named after her, as well as a Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., Chapter named in her honor.
Today, at 79 years of age, she continues to advise and mentor both service members and civilians on a host of topics.
“The biggest thing I’m still doing is mentoring others—men and woman—whether it be at a University, in the National Guard, or someone on active duty,” says Trowell-Harris. “I had fabulous mentors If I hadn't had had them, I would not have been able to progress to the point where I am.”