Balancing act

SPARTA — For the past seven years, Linda Maloney, a retired naval aviator, and 70 other women collaborated on a special project—telling their individual stories as female military aviators and mothers. The culmination of this extensive process, a coffee-table book called Military Fly Moms,was published at the end of February.

One of these women, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Susan (Rank) Foy, grew up in Sparta and is currently a pilot flying special airlift missions in the C-32 (a modified 757) at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. She transports national leaders, including the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the first lady. The daughter of German immigrants, Foy inherited the flying bug from her grandfather and pursued her dream to become an Air Force pilot by attending the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

After graduation, she went on to attend pilot training in Texas, graduating fourth in her class, and then had assignments flying four different aircraft: the C-9A Nightingale, C-141B Starlifter, C-21A Learjet, and, currently, the C-32. She also completed a master’s degree at the Defense Intelligence College and a tour on the staff of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at the Pentagon. Foy’s diverse flying assignments have taken her to every corner of the world and she has landed on every continent, including Antarctica. Her husband, Scott, is also an Air Force officer and they currently live in Alexandria, Virginia, with their two young children.

Each woman in Military Fly Moms provided Maloney with her own story, including how she became a military aviator, her military aviation experiences, her entry into motherhood, and the balance she tried to maintain in both worlds. It is clear through the stories that not a single woman found the experience to be easy.

And yet, Military Fly Moms also contains a tender thread. In their stories, these superachieving, high-intensity, Type-A personality, goal-driven, perfectionist women who were never willing to back down from what they wanted because they were female, found that taking on the nearly-universal nurturing role of mother redefined them and their priorities. Having children focused their perspectives so as to provide the best possible role models that they could, whether teaching about public service, religious values, the importance of education, following one’s dream, or preparing to achieve one’s goals.