Kamilah Kashanie (KK): This week, we’re gonna hear stories about the military, but we’re going to focus on one branch you don’t really hear about that often: the US Coast Guard, which has been around for more than 200 years. If you don’t know, and I didn’t, the Coast Guard protects the US shorelines. But they didn’t allow Black women to join until 1944.
Jeanine Menze (JM): There was one woman in particular, Dr. Olivia Hooker, who was a Black woman, and said, well, you know, if other women can join, I want to join also.
KK: So Dr. Hooker was the first to join. And she actually recorded a StoryCorps interview before she died in 2018. She was 103 years old.
Olivia Hooker (OH): One thing I’ve learned is that it’s a good thing to follow an order. But there are times when it makes sense not to follow an order.
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KK: Dr. Hooker was part of the first class of Black women to join. There were five of them. Decades later, another group of five women changed history, again.
JM: I feel like we mirror that in some capacity and they paved the way for us to be the Fab Five.
KK: It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. I’m Kamilah Kashanie.
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KK: So, most of the jobs in the Coast Guard involve being on a boat, or around water. But there’s also an elite group of pilots, about 800 of them. And not a single one of them was a Black woman…until Commander Jeanine Menze became a pilot in 2005.
Eventually, four more Black women became pilots, and they called themselves the “Fab Five”.
Jeanine’s passion for flying came way before she entered the service. At StoryCorps, she remembered growing up in Jamaica, where her family lived on a flight path.
JM: I just remember looking up and always seeing the airplanes fly over. That always made me feel in awe. And whenever we had family coming to visit us, I was excited about going to the airplane, and not necessarily like caring about who was coming to visit.
When I started thinking about what I wanted to do when I was in high school, I kept on remembering those feelings I had. So I went to my guidance counselor and I started talking to her about what I was interested in. And she said, ’I know the perfect job for you…you are going to be a flight attendant.’
And I said, ’OK’ and I was super excited. But at the time I was the vice president of the French club. And I loved leadership, so I went back to the guidance counselor and I said, “OK, well, whatever I do in my career, I feel like it should be somebody in charge. So tell me about this airplane and who’s in charge”. And then she said, ’Well, I guess that would be the captain. You’d have to be a pilot’. And I said, ’Well, perfect. That’s what I want to be’.
KK: When Jeanine finished high school, she went to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which is the place to be, if you’re interested in anything related to aviation. Her first day there, she walked into the auditorium ready to sign up for aeronautical science — the major that you’re assigned to if you’re going to fly.
JM: It was a really, really long line and it wrapped almost around the auditorium. And it was all majority white males. And I panicked. I didn’t see anyone that looks like me in any of these lines. And I thought ‘what am I doing?’ [laughs] This is such a crazy, wild idea that I’m going to fly airplanes. So I joined the computer science line.
There were some females in that line. And that’s what I did for my first year. Needless to say, that’s not where I was supposed to be, so I didn’t enjoy it. Summer came around and there was a very small airport that was down the street from my house. At one point I thought, ‘let me just go over there and see. Am I really meant to do this?’
And I did the introductory flight lesson, in the air. Like, at the controls of a Cessna 172. And I’m in the sky and I’m looking down at people, at cars, at roads. And, I don’t know, I just thought that was incredible. It felt freeing. And every time I thought about it, I got excited. Every time I got excited, I just got motivated. And find myself back at the airport. And there was an actual female flight instructor there. So I saw myself, and I was hooked.
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KK: Eventually, Jeanine became a pilot for the U.S. Coast guard. But again, she was faced with a familiar feeling.
JM: It was so long that I’d been in the Coast Guard already being the only Black female. I wanted a partner. I wanted somebody else there.
KK: After a short break, Jeanine sits down with her mentee — the second Black woman to become a pilot for the US Coast Guard. Stay with us.
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KK: Welcome back. Unlike Commander Menze, Lieutenant Commander La’Shanda Holmes didn’t fall in love with flying as a child. But she could relate to Jeanine’s feelings of loneliness.
La’Shanda grew up in North Carolina. Her mom died when she was young, and by the time she was a teenager, she was put in the foster care system with her brother. She eventually ended up in a group home.
La’Shanda Holmes (LH): I felt like I was a good kid, but around nine o’clock at night, we’d all have to be in our rooms. There’s alarms on the doors and it really felt more like a jail. I was too embarrassed and ashamed really to even talk to my friends about it.
And one night I was crying. Snotty nose. And I just stopped and I said out loud, ‘You’re crying every night. You’re saying the same things to yourself, to god, in this dark, empty room. And it’s not working. Nobody can hear you. You’ve got to figure it out yourself’.
So I got up and cleaned my face up. Got a pencil and paper out of my bookbag. Sat back down and said, ’OK, what does life look like for you?’ So I was thinking, ’I want a big house’. OK, So what do you need for that? You need to make, you know, a certain amount of money. Well, maybe I’ll be a doctor or lawyer. I got to go to college. I got to keep my grades up. And so I wrote it all down and I said, “Well, the first things I can do now are go to school and try to find a job.”
And I started to feel a little piece of hope. If I just stuck to the plan. And then, I was at a career fair and across from me was a Coast Guard booth. I was coming up on the point where I was going to age out of the foster care system. So I was going to lose the health care that I had. So I said, well, ’sign me up’.
KK: La’Shanda finished her degree and then became an officer in the military. One day, a lieutenant asked her what job she wanted.
LH: I said, yeah, I’m going to be a cutterman, a ship driver. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done. He said, ‘Well, have you ever thought about flying?’ I said, No, don’t you have to be real smart for that? And he said, ‘No, you’ve been working hard. I’ve seen your work. Have you heard of Jeanine Menze? She’s the first and only Black woman flying in the Coast Guard.’ And my mouth was on the floor. You know, I never even met a pilot, ever. I wanted to see if you had like a real cape on.
JM: When I immediately saw you, I said, she’s my partner. [laughs] We’re going to conquer this together.
LH: I just was hanging on your every word. And I thought, ‘She looks like me. She’s got lips like me, and she’s flying the biggest aircraft we have in the Coast Guard.’
JM: I’m curious what you remember about when I took you flying for the first time.
LH: I was a little scared, because when you look in a cockpit — all the switches and the buttons and levers — it’s overwhelming.
JM: I remember your face looked like sheer terror. [Laughs] And once you were at the controls for a little bit, you started to relax. And you had the biggest smile on your face. It was just beautiful for me to see. So, fast forward two years and you are on stage, about to graduate from flight school. I could not contain my emotion.
LH: We walk up, and we were just looking at each other, holding hands.
JM: I wanted to make some sort of gesture to say that we’re all gonna be there for each other — all the other black and brown girls that were gonna be coming up behind us. And immediately I thought the best way to do that was, you are going to have my wings.
LH: And as you are putting the wings on my chest, I felt like I was Wonder Woman. I was so proud. I was proud to be a woman. I was proud to be Black. I was proud to know you.
JM: I wanted you to get there as much as you wanted to get there because I wanted you with me.
LH: You’ve changed my mind about what’s possible. So, I felt I owed it to you and I owed it to myself.
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KK: That was Coast Guard pilots Commander Jeanine Menze and Lieutenant Commander La’Shanda Holmes.
Since La’Shanda’s graduation from flight school, there’s now 6 Black female pilots in the Coast Guard, with more waiting in the wings.
That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. It was produced by Eleanor Vassili and edited by Jasmyn Morris. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd, who also composed our theme song. Our fact-checker is Natsumi Ajisaka. Special thanks to Laila Oweda, Mia Warren, and Kerrie Hillman.
To see what music we used in the episode, go to StoryCorps – dot – org, where you can also check out original artwork created by Lyne Lucien.
For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.
Photo: From the original caption for the extra photo: Olivia Hooker (in front) and fellow SPAR Aileen Anita Cooks, pause on the ladder of the dry-land ship ‘U.S.S. Neversail’ during their ‘boot’ training at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Station, Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, NY, 1945.
