Can A Gay Woman Serve Her Country? Margarethe Cammermeyer Thinks So; She’s Fighting For A Change In Military Regulations

Friends and neighbors in the town of Maple Valley, 20 miles southeast of Seattle, thought Margarethe (Greta) and Harvey Hawken were the ideal couple. They were a handsome and commanding pair, especially when in uniform - he, at 6 feet 6, in his state trooper outfit, she, at 6 feet, in her Army dress blues with medals, including the bronze star for service in Vietnam. They presided over a made-for-sitcom family - four healthy sons, a five-bedroom home they built themselves and a table laden with food and wine that was home-grown and homemade.

Then one afternoon in the winter of 1980, Greta was driving home from the Army Reserves when she steered her car toward a telephone pole. But she was able to pull back and keep the car on the road until she got home. She was terrified by her suicidal act, which brought to the surface years of inner turmoil over increasing confusion about her sexuality.

With the help of a therapist, she was able to leave her husband after 15 years of marriage. He got custody of the children. She got visitation rights. On one occasion, as she brought the boys home, Hawken started yelling, “You dyke, faggot, queer,” and kept up the barrage until their sons joined in. This scene was then repeated every time Greta dropped off her sons. She would drive away in tears wondering how she would ever find a new life for herself.

She began by reclaiming her maiden name - Cammermeyer - and then went on to become a decorated colonel and chief nurse of the Washington National Guard, earned her doctorate in nursing science from the University of Washington, found her life partner, confirmed her sexual orientation and welcomed the return of her sons to her home.

But on June 11, 1992, after 26 years of service, she was discharged from the Army for uttering four words: “I am a lesbian.”

Cammermeyer has chronicled her journey from shy, young Norwegian immigrant to distinguished Army nurse and now equal rights activist in her book “Serving in Silence” (Viking, $22.95). An NBC-TV movie of her story, produced by Barbra Streisand, will air Monday and will star Glenn Close. The movie has already drawn the ire of a New York-based group called the Family Defense Council, which is protesting a scene in which Close and another woman kiss.

Disputing policy

“I’m not filled with hate, and I don’t blame the military,” Cammermeyer said over lunch at the Drake Hotel in Manhattan, the first stop on her book tour. “It’s not the military that’s wrong. It’s the policy. I hope I can be the agent of change on the gay rights issue. If I was caught up in all sorts of negative emotions, I wouldn’t be able to get the work done that needs to be done.”

The question of Cammermeyer’s sexual orientation came up when she was seeking a top-secret clearance to attend the War College in spring 1989. She needed to take courses there to help achieve her career goal: to become a general and chief nurse of the entire National Guard.

Cammermeyer said she decided to fight her discharge publicly because of the irrational fears surrounding gays in general and in the military specifically. Last summer a federal judge ordered her reinstatement. That decision is under appeal.

“I hope I can help break the stereotypes about gay people,” said Cammermeyer.

Difficult times

Cammermeyer was born in Oslo in 1942 and remembers the Allied soldiers liberating her native city. After her father was offered a position at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, their family immigrated in 1950.

“Those were difficult times,” she writes. “I was the firstborn” - she has three brothers - “I was cut off from childhood by our immigration. I had to pave the way for my brothers because our parents didn’t know anything about American society.”She excelled in athletics and was president of the girls’ athletic association in high school and played semiprofessional fast-pitch softball on the Arcade Pontiac team for three years.

Cammermeyer hoped to become a doctor but was put on academic probation after her first semester at the University of Maryland, where she took a double course load, spent a great deal of time in pubs and grew increasingly depressed. Her friends called her the “smiling melancholic.”

“Looking back, I never felt whole,” said Cammermeyer. “But I had 100 reasons why I felt like an outsider, why I felt so alienated. I had male buddies but not boyfriends. I didn’t like making out with boys. I was repelled by it, but thought maybe I’d get used to it. I did know that I would never get married.”

But marry she did. After lowering her academic sights, she signed up for the Army student nurse program at the university and became a member of the Army in summer 1961. She was stationed in Nuremberg, Germany, when she met her future husband.

“After going with Harvey for six months, I couldn’t think of a reason why not to marry him,” said Cammermeyer. “We had a lot in common, everyone thought we made a great-looking couple, and it just seemed like the thing to do. But I was very naive.

“The physical part of our relationship was never enjoyable for me and it became increasingly difficult. But so many things were going on outside our bedroom. In the beginning, we were on active duty, we were in Vietnam, then busy building our home and taking care of a growing family. I was pregnant a lot of the time. Looking back, there was really such a small amount of time that we spent being sexually active. We also did a lot of drinking.”

But after her suicide attempt, Cammermeyer knew she could no longer ignore her needs, whatever they might turn out to be.

“I needed to become an autonomous person,” said Cammermeyer, who took a job as a civilian with a veterans hospital in San Francisco. She continued to see her kids for long weekends and during the summer, and she gave up drinking.

In 1985, she was awarded the first Nurse of the Year award from the Veterans Administration, was named Bay Area Federal Employee of the Year for the Greater San Francisco Area, Woman of the Year by the Women’s Veterans Association and, in the military, the highly coveted Surgeon General’s “A” Proficiency Designator. That same year, she was appointed chief nurse for the Washington State National Guard.

The following year, Cammermeyer moved back to Seattle, bought a three-bedroom bungalow and began work in a veterans hospital in Tacoma. She was promoted to colonel in 1987 and met Diane, who is now her partner, that summer.

Meeting Diane

When Cammermeyer was introduced to Diane (whose last name does not appear in Cammermeyer’s book) over the Fourth of July weekend, she had not yet put a label on her sexuality. But she had become increasingly aware there was an emptiness in her life.

“When I first met Diane, I remember talking and talking with her on the beach as you might a stranger on an airplane,” said Cammermeyer. “She lived in California, so I thought I’d never see her again and spilled my guts out to her.”

But she saw Diane again over the Labor Day weekend, and the friendship grew.

“My relationship with Diane evolved out of mutual caring, trust, respect and enjoyment of being together,” said Cammermeyer. “It just felt right, and that rightness made me realize I am a lesbian. Acknowledging that gave me the last connecting piece to the puzzle that is my identity.”

Cammermeyer said she was fearful that her children would turn their backs on her, that her patients would no longer want her to care for them and that she would be ostracized in her community.

None of these things happened. “Once I found out who I was,” she

said, “my circle of friends grew, and I became increasingly interested in social issues. Also, after my discharge, I truly gained my freedom. I learned that my identity was not tied to a uniform.

“I believe my journey has been a spiritual journey. I believe in finding meaning in the worse adversity. This is what has helped me get from one point to another and what shows me what I’m supposed to do next.”

Reinstatement

Last summer Cammermeyer was reinstated, and when she arrived back on base she received a standing ovation from her reserve unit.

At present, her case is in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. There, according to her co-counsel, Mary Newcombe, the appeal will be resolved in her favor. She bases this conclusion on the Keith Meinhold case, which was resolved last August. He was reinstated in the military, and his case, which was also in the 9th Circuit Court, will probably control the outcome of Cammermeyer’s case, says Newcombe.

“Then it is up to the government as to whether they want to pursue discharging her under the new policy,” said Newcombe, referring to the don’t-ask, don’t-tell regulation. “But I doubt they’ll do that because they were the ones who outed Greta in the first place by asking her about her sexual orientation.”

She is still working at the veterans hospital in Tacoma and plans to retire from both the military and the hospital in two years, after 30 years of service. She and Diane are building a house on an island in Puget Sound. “What is so different about my life now is that I’m open enough to try anything. I know something is going to happen after I retire,” said Cammermeyer. “And that something just might be in politics.”