She’s Truly One Of The Few

Mamie English is a sucker for a uniform and is willing to become G.I. Jane to wear one.

She accelerated her graduation from Coeur d’Alene’s Project CDA (Creating Dropout Alternatives) to join the U.S. Navy (fabulous uniform!) and she’s heading today to Camp Pendleton, Calif., for two years with the U.S. Marines.

“I’ll wear the Marine uniform, which I really like,” Mamie says. “But I’ll still be in the Navy.”

Mamie’s reasons for joining the military sound flippant, but the outcome is what counts. So far, so good.

Traditional school with its large classes, dogmatic teachers and layers of bureaucracy didn’t appeal to her. She piled up absences until her parents and teachers let her move to Project CDA, an alternative school.

At Project, Mamie crammed three years of classes into two. Last July, at 18, she signed on with the Navy and traded her long auburn hair for a military bob. Only two programs were open. She could train as a hospital corpsman or a helicopter mechanic - after boot camp.

Boot camp in Illinois meant pushups and running in place, marching, marching and marching. Mamie laughed in the dining hall once and paid with nearly an hour of intense calisthenics.

“I’d tell the girls who’d cry to think about how funny it all was,” she says. “It was just a weird dream.”

The day after boot camp graduation, Mamie began hospital corps training. The Navy packed two years of college work into 14 weeks. Mamie’s classes started at 6:30 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. Then, she was required to study for at least two hours.

She took 14 tests in 12 weeks, on physiology, musculature, the skeleton, medicines and their abbreviations and side effects. She’d never felt such pressure.

“I called my mom crying. It was haunting me,” Mamie says.

Only 39 of 59 men and women in the class passed. Of the eight female graduates, only Mamie chose to train in the field with the Marines, who have no hospital corpsmen of their own.

“The corpsmen with the Marines are the ones with all the ribbons. I want ribbons,” she says. She earned a ribbon in boot camp for target shooting.

In the next five weeks, she’ll learn to throw grenades and crawl on her belly through the grass. She’ll learn to survive in combat, then she’ll stick with the Marines as a corpsman until December 1999.

“I’m a little scared, but I’m excited,” she says. “I hope I get to go to jump school and dive school. I think this is the best way to be a Marine, for a girl anyway.”

Cory English worries about her daughter, but not as much as if she was in college in a high-crime city. “It’s what she wants to do, and who wouldn’t want their kids to get what they want?” she says.

Out with the old

Few things are more satisfying after Christmas than packing old items into bags and boxes and giving them away to your favorite non-profit thrift store.

Goodwill employs disabled people, St. Vincent de Paul’s the homeless. The Women’s Center shelters battered women and children. The Post Falls Senior Center helps older people. Hospice of North Idaho cares for the terminally ill. Children’s Village shelters children whose families are in turmoil.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: Cut in Spokane edition

What’s the best treasure you’ve found at a Panhandle thrift store? Provide details to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; FAX to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.