By Susan M. Sipprelle
Englewood, NJ, USA
[Soldier On: Life After Deployment, my
documentary about three post-9/11 female veterans, is currently being shown on
public television. Screenings followed by panel discussions about topics
related to women veterans are also being held around the country. Adria Horn,
profiled below, moderated at the March 1 screening in Rockland, Maine hosted by
the Knox Museum. Horn is State Director for the Maine Bureau of Veterans’
Services. Please check your local listings and the Soldier On Facebook page for more information.]
“You
can be in the service for one day, or you will be in the service for 35 years,
and you all start at zero to become a veteran,” said Major Adria Horn, a West
Point
graduate, who deployed five times in her 14-year career. She currently
serves as a U.S. Army Reservist and the State Director for the Maine Bureau of
Veterans’ Services.
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| Susan M. Sipprelle |
After
graduating from West Point in June 2001,
Horn commissioned into the military police corps. By August,
she was training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. One month
later, 9/11 happened.
In
the prior West Point class, there was one person going to Bosnia and that was a
big deal, Horn recalled. “Everything changed for us,” Horn said about her
class.
In
January 2002, she deployed to Washington, D.C. as part of Operation Noble
Eagle, the domestic force protection mission sent to protect the U.S. locations
that had been attacked on 9/11. In March 2003, she deployed to Iraq, where her
company provided VIP security for organization and humanitarian assistance
during the Iraq invasion. She returned from Iraq in 2004,
but by December 2005, she was deployed again – this time to Afghanistan for another
year.
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| Major Adria Horn |
“Good
Lord, it was just nonstop,” Horn said. “When I was in Afghanistan, I actually
thought to myself, I’m going to break. I literally remember thinking, I am
going to break. I want to start a family; I want to see my husband. [Horn
married a former service member in October
2005]. I knew I needed a break and I didn’t want to be military police
anymore.”
Horn
applied to become a psychological operations officer, was accepted and then
underwent training before she was deployed for her last two missions, the most
dangerous and important of her military career: In 2008, she deployed
with in support of the Joint Special
Operations Task Force in the Philippines and, in 2010, she was
part of a special operations team
in Indonesia, which
included being in charge of a scheduled
visit by President Obama to the Indonesia national
cemetery. [Ultimately,
this visit was
canceled, due to the Affordable
Care Act vote.]
After
Horn left active duty in 2011, she
took a year off. She was mentally,
emotionally and physically spent. “I had been deployed five times in eight
years, and I was exhausted, angry, frustrated – you name it,” Horn wrote in an
email.
She
moved to Maine with her husband, got an MBA, had a baby and began applying for
jobs. Not one employer responded. She did not get a single return phone call –
a shocking outcome for a West Point graduate with a stellar military career.
“It
was a lesson in humility, for sure,” Horn wrote –
a lesson she hopes helps other understand that the
military-civilian transition favors no
one.
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| Adria and Juliette |
Horn’s
experience is not uncommon; many veterans struggle with the transition back to
civilian employment. Employers often harbor negative stereotypes about the
mental health of veterans, do not understand their skills and worry that
veterans will deploy again, leaving them short-staffed.
In
fact, a small minority of veterans, only about seven percent, experience
long-term, persistent post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Additionally,
military values such as discipline, leadership and problem solving are all
skills that civilian employers say they want in employees. Lastly, most
veterans have ended their military career when they begin job hunting in the
civilian sector.
The
most recent labor reports showed significant progress for post-9/11
veterans. Their unemployment rate
dropped to 5.1 percent in 2016 from 5.8 percent in 2015, the lowest rate of
unemployment for this group since September 2001. Also, the overall
unemployment rate among male veterans (4.2 percent) and female (5.0 percent)
veterans in 2016 was not statistically different for the fourth consecutive
year.
Despite
these positive trends, the country’s newest generation of veterans continue to
experience a higher jobless rate than veterans of all eras whose unemployment
rate was 4.3 percent in 2016.
After
the dearth of responses to her job applications, Horn reassessed. She guessed
that she looked intimidating on paper and that she had to figure out how to
tell her story better. She also wondered if her resume was being seen by the
right people – individuals who were looking to hire rather than only the human
resources department.
Still
jobless, she applied for an internship in the office of Senator Susan Collins
of Maine. A staffer called and said, “We don’t often get applications for
internships that look like yours.”
She
interned for three months before she was offered a full-time position in
Senator Collins’s office. Eventually, she became the State Director for the
Maine Bureau of Veterans’ Services, a job she has now held for two years.
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| Adria Horn - State Director of Maine BVS |
Early
in her new role as State Director, a veteran service officer position opened in
Maine. Horn blasted the job notice out widely, hoping for a large number of
applicants. When the applications were received, human resources divided them
into keep and discard piles. Horn asked to review all applications with human
resources; she wanted to consider the applications that had been rejected.
“I
would have flip-flopped the piles,” Horn said.
Based
on that experience, Horn spoke to the Governor and was able to initiate a
change in the state of Maine. Legislation was passed that requires every Maine
veteran who applies for a state job and who possesses the minimal job
requirements to receive an interview.
“I
feel very, very blessed that I’ve had these all experiences,” Horn said about
her life, “because I have a sign in my house that says – Bloom where you’re planted – and it’s so true.”
As
State Director of Veterans’ Services, she has found that others often look at
her as an authority on all female veterans. What she has learned is that she
should not squander these opportunities. She educates herself on every issue
that could possibly affect women veterans, and she recommends other women
veterans as resources when she is not knowledgeable on the subject in question.
“It’s
still uncomfortable at times personally,” Horn wrote, “but when I can connect
to someone else and take myself out of the mix, I feel like I’ve empowered a
veteran who also has a voice and not just dominated a field with my voice.”
Women
currently account for over 15 percent of active-duty service members and almost
10 percent of the veteran population in the United States. Female veterans are
the fastest growing segment of the veteran population. Nevertheless,
three-quarters of female service members feel the public fails to recognize or
value their service. Horn’s
approach to her work is targeted directly at correcting the misperceptions
about the role of women in the U.S. military and their expanding place in its
veteran community.
Link:
_______________________________________
Susan
M. Sipprelle is a documentary filmmaker and founder of Tree of Life
Productions, producer of the award-winning documentary Set for Life and
the online project Over 50 and Out of Work. Her most recent
documentary is Soldier On: Life After Deployment.