Right about the same time, I heard the front door of our apartment clang shut—they used heavy aluminum doors on Okinawa because of the typhoons. I looked over to where Kate had been sleeping, and there was nothing more than an indentation in the mattress and our surly grey-and-black tabby cat, Baxter, curled up in a ball, nonplussed. I thought, “Oh man. Here we go.” I realized immediately that Kate was heading down to help. She has a deep-rooted urge to take action.
I slid open the glass door to our balcony, and, looking down five stories to the seawall, I saw a fairly good-sized Marine holding his girlfriend by the hair, and Kate in her pajamas—all five-foot-four of her—walking up to him and demanding that he let the woman go.
I'm thinking the worst. It's a physics problem of force equaling mass times acceleration: a drunk, one-hundred-seventy-five-pound Marine versus Kate. I hurriedly grabbed a pair of shorts and ran down the stairs. I was like a cartoon character corkscrewing down the stairwell as fast as I could. The adrenaline flowed and I planned my next moves with this guy in my head.
By the time I hit the seawall, Kate already had the guy at parade rest—feet spread wide, elbows out, hands together at the base of his back. She had his ID card in her hand, and she had him giving her the “yes ma'am, no ma'am” routine.
She locked him up simply by force of will.
We called the Camp Foster emergency number to get a hold of the military police. When we gave them the name of the Marine, they started acting strangely.
It turned out that he was an MP (military police officer), so it took a while to get anyone to come to the scene, but we kept pressing the issue until the MPs sent someone to pick him up. Then we called the officer of the day at the general's command post to make sure he was aware and that the incident would be officially noted in the duty log for the command to follow up on Monday morning. Why? Because you don't allow Marines to act like that. And you don't ignore someone screaming outside your door who needs help. In Kate's world, it's not even something she has to think about twice. She just springs into action.
Kate is great in a crisis—quick and coolheaded. A few years back, we witnessed a car accident. While my brain was trying to make sense of what I was seeing, she was already out of the car and halfway to the accident site. There's something about her brain that allows her to think faster than most people in such situations—multiple times, I've seen her launch into action many seconds before everyone else can even comprehend what's going on.
Here's another example: We were at Officer Candidates School on staff in 2004, and an officer candidate, a young woman, fell off the monkey bars on an obstacle course. She snapped both of her forearms backward. That would have been enough to make me lose my lunch, but Kate took charge and acted like it was no big deal. She calmly and coolly reassured the young candidate that she was going to be fine, grabbed the nearest corpsman (medic), and supervised the medevac. The EMTs stabilized the candidate and took her to the hospital. Unfortunately for her, she'd have to re-apply to OCS after she recovered from her injuries.
And there's this: In 2010, we bought a historic home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and a year or so later our neighbor started subletting rooms to people. Two brothers from down South rented from him, and they liked to get drunk and fight in the backyard at 2:30 in the morning, which really sucked. We kept calling the landlord and trying to get him to do something about the problem, but nothing changed. So, one night, at about 2:30 a.m., they're yelling, and then I hear the front door slam shut. All of a sudden, there's an altercation between Kate and these two drunk Billy Bobs.
Having Okinawa flashbacks, I'm thinking, “Damn, here we go again.” I grab the shorts, rush out of the house while figuring what to do next…. You already know the rest of this story.
I've been married to Kate since 1999, and I have known her since 1997. She's always been one to spring into action.
But she's also uber, Type-A organized. Each night, she lays out her clothes for work the next day. Her mind is very ordered—structured—and she's a clear communicator. Whether what's on her mind is good or bad, she'll let you know. She's got the moral courage to tell people the things that they don't want to hear, whether it's counseling an underperforming Marine or telling senior leadership she thinks they're wrong. That was her reputation in the Marine Corps: She's a straight shooter and a hard-charger. She was known as a “fixer,” in that commanders would assign her their Gordian Knot issues to solve, and she always left the units she led better than how she found them. That had served her well for eighteen years of her career, and then she ran into some bad leadership at Parris Island that took umbrage at a strong woman speaking her mind and trying to make things better.
For me, her laser-like focus hasn't always been comfortable, but it's always been
