All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today Marine Retired,
Gunny Sarge and Twyla Rochelle Cawthon.
Welcome to VeteransRadio.
Thank you so much. I'm a Marine veteran. That's fine. Thank you.
Well, there are always Marines, right? It never really ends.
And you actually have a tremendous legacy of service, post-active duty in the Marine Corps,
you're a retired educator, you're very active with the American Legion,
you're very active with Girl State, you're an active member of the East Coast Marine Corps
Drill Instructors Association, and you're a Steelers fan.
So we could talk about all of those things.
Oh, that's cool.
But what we're going to talk about is your relationship with the National Association
of Black Military Women.
You're the chaplain for the Brooklyn, New York Division of the National Association
of Black Military Women.
But before we get into that, how did a nice kid like you from Ohio and Pennsylvania area,
I think, end up in the Marine Corps?
Well, I had a finish on my credits for school, and all the colleges that were trying to reach
out to me were colleges that were out of the state.
My father has one child on his earth, me, and he wasn't going to let me leave all the state.
And I was a student that was active in school, and I had held a host event every year at
the school, where we had different people coming in and talking about careers.
And I was actually friends with the Marine recruiter downtown.
Now the Marine recruiter had no idea that I was going to come down there.
I actually went to the Army recruiter, but he wasn't talking right.
So I ended up joining the Marines when my recruiter was Jesse Ferrison III, one of
the best recruiters ever, because he didn't lie.
Well, it's really surprising how many people I talked to who had good recruiters, and remember
their name and stayed with them the whole time, stayed connected.
Now, how long did you serve in the Marine Corps, Gunny Sergeant?
A few months of 12 years.
I went in in 1979, and I got out in 1991.
And as I said, you've had a really impressive career post-service.
Give us a little thumbnail, maybe flesh in some of the things I mentioned that you want
to highlight.
Let's see.
I was a, as you mentioned, I'm a retired educator.
I was former police officer.
I'm a decorate police officer in Akron, had two life-saving missions that I actually received
accommodation for.
Let's see.
I belong to the American Legion.
I am the past department commander in Washington, D.C.
I am the national chaplain, which is the sky pilot for the 24, which is the American Legion
Women's Honorary Society.
The first graduate of the National American Legion College from the District of Columbia
I belong to AmVetts, DAV, Women's Veterans Alliance, Micro Point Marines, National Association
of Black Military, Women, of course, but National Black Veterans, NetVetts, and just a host of
a, I can't even name all the different things I belong to, and I actually put time in them.
It's not just the name on the rolls for them, but yes, we do a whole lot of advocacy for
homeless veterans.
I deal with trying to sculpt out pieces of executive orders or to try to get a focus
on military sexual trauma and PTSD, and not just that for the veteran, but some therapy
services for the veteran's family members who are also disaffected, because that's the
population that people are ignoring the children that live up in these households.
These households, so it's just a whole lot of things, homelessness with veterans, homelessness
with women veterans is on the rise.
In fact, we're the largest population of homeless women on the street are women veterans.
They can't take their children in the shelters with them.
They can't take their, oftentimes they can't take their spouses, their spouses were not
veterans as well.
It's just a whole lot of things.
So this is a whole lot that we're dealing with and we just try to do piece by piece.
And that's the Association of Black Military Women.
That's really what it is.
It's focusing about trying to make veterans whole.
Well, it's such an important organization because there is an increase in women in the
military, thus an increase in women veterans.
There's certainly a high percentage of African Americans make up the military forces today.
I think it's something like 19% of the troops and women make up about 16% of the troops,
but there's a disparity in the number of officers, black officers.
I think it's 9% as compared to 19% of the troops.
So there's still a whole lot of work to do and you've probably seen that progression
since you joined up in 1979, but talk about some of the work that still needs to be done
and that the National Association of Black Military Women are working on.
Need to increase the input of qualified young black men and young black women to join the
military and join officer ranks as well because where you might have numbers coming in on
the listed side, officer ranks start getting thin after they are 03s.
And by the time you come to the field grade or general grade, you can count them on one
hand.
And I thought that I would see an increase in the Marine Corps as far as overall officer
improvement of minorities period.
And there's an increase, the largest increase for Hispanics, but blacks and Asians, the
numbers went down.
And some of this is just getting enough folks in the funnel, but then as they go up in years
at, you know, as you say, you stayed till 12 years, those next eight or so are the ones
where you've got to get the right kind of assignments and you got to know the right
people.
It is a numbers game, but there's clearly also a bias that exists in life in general,
but also in the military, isn't there?
It's true.
As a matter of fact, the officers that were black that I served with, and one of them was
actually Arthur Ash's brother, Johnny Ash, who was a captain at Camp Lejeune who couldn't
seem to get past captain and ended up getting out of the Marine Corps as a captain along
with Captain Larry Ray Sims.
And I'm calling these persons out by name because these are phenomenal black men who
had excellent quality degrees from upper echelon schools and high scores, but they could not
seem to get past that wall.
And there was a study that was out some years ago where black officers were interviewed
and were asked about black Marine officers.
And they said that the biggest thing is that I'm asked to be twice as good or three times
as better as my peer.
And I'm also asked that I have to assembly, I have to acclimate, I have to make all the
adjustments in life in order to even be considered.
And so that was tough.
And for me, being where I worked in every place I was assigned, even though I was enlisted,
we as enlisted people were able to help the black officers better than they could actually
help us.
You know.
And, you know, this is a problem that exists in the country as people don't necessarily
appreciate the work and the quality of individuals.
But let me go back to a comment you made about enough qualified young black men and women
entering the service.
And I, you know, I ask a lot of folks this question because we have a current recruiting
crisis in all of those services, maybe Marines a little less.
But otherwise, we're kind of falling short of our manpower goals.
And are we doing enough to encourage qualified young black men and women to see the opportunities
that exist in a military service?
No, we're not.
And that's because there's a lot of factors.
One corporate America offers higher salaries and better opportunities in a lot of ways.
You have a lot of people who might have family members that were service members and they
see their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who try to apply for their disability
cases have to go through all types of red tape only to be denied year after year after
year.
And so they're kind of chagrin as to wow, so you give this time of your life and this
part of your life to the military.
This is how they do you.
And that's just across the board as well, because that's not only just the experience
of black civilian men and women, but everyone.
And then the climate of this country, the question is, what does it mean to be patriotic?
We're in a, and we have been, I'll say, for the past, I'm going to say probably about
14 years in a great divide as far as loyalty and patriotism to this country and what that
really means because there's so much of divide between the political factions, extreme ideologies
on both sides, the biases that we see in media reporting and the overall prison of pipeline
system that's taken our young people at an early age and no correction in sight.
When you can't get qualified urban, and I was taught in the urban community, and I was
thinking about how many students I actually taught that by the time they got out of high
school within the next year were eligible to have even considered applying for the military.
And the numbers are low and short, some because they couldn't have passed the test or passed
the number so low, others because they wouldn't have passed the psychological because they
are traumatized.
They're not trauma services for the communities when, and when tragedies occur.
How do you think a child feels if in the summertime someone gets shot on my sidewalk in my house
or in my area in my house or in the sidewalk in my neighborhood not to walk back and forth
this same sidewalk in the fall to school?
And I have to deal with that thinking, am I going to get shot going to school or am I
going to get a straight bullet going to school or just any number of things.
I'm at home in the house and the straight bullet comes in the house and hits and kills
one of the persons in their household.
There isn't any trauma therapy for these people and this is where we're recruiting supposedly
the next generation of service members and this just not happened.
Yeah, it really is.
There are a lot of factors as to why the recruiting goals are missed and those are certainly some
of them.
But you pose the question and this is certainly an American Legion statement coming out of
you I think when you asked what does it mean to be patriotic because that's sort of at
the core of it all.
Do you owe something to the country?
Does the country owe something to you?
What do you view as, what's your answer, Twila, to the question of what does it mean to be
patriotic?
For me, it's loyalty to this country even if I don't agree with all the policies that
are in place.
I've seen enough places in the world to know that this is the country that I want to live
in.
I was born here, I live here, I like to travel outside of here but this is where, this is
it for me.
I've seen other systems and other places.
I think that we have not progressed as far as we should have with certain groups of people
in this country.
And that makes it hard when you're trying to translate this idea of patriotism to other
people but I think that it starts in your household.
You have to come from a household where people actually have a view of this country that
in spite of, we still got to work, we still got to, and the historical context of the
people who laid the groundwork for us before.
I stay on the shoulders of the women from the 688.
I stay on these women's shoulders.
That's an incredible story and veteran radio listeners, if you don't know about the 688,
I've got a podcast interview on that, go search it.
It's an incredible story from World War II.
Yes, indeed.
And the fact that if these women had not sacrificed in spite of how long would it have taken for
black women to being able to serve this country in any branch.
But my father was a veteran and all of my father's male siblings served in some capacity
in law and then were in the Army.
And so it was for me something I grew up with.
I grew up with it and it was in the household.
It was in my community.
But of course now coming through an era where you see these Vietnam service members, it
was a conflicted time, but I also had relatives that served in World War II.
And I will listen to the banter between the two groups.
To be a patriot means that you're not here to harm your community or harm the members
in your community in any form or fashion or those in society.
To be a patriot means you need to be a law abiding citizen, law abiding.
Law abiding.
To be a patriot, you need to be productive whatever your intelligences allow you to
do whatever your physical capabilities allow you to do to be a contributor to the success
in your household, in your neighborhood, in your community.
To me, that's patriotism, being patriotic because I'm not here to say that I agree with
everything in our government.
And there are times that one party says something and I'm just cringing and I'm really just
clicked out in different directions and opposite side as well.
I don't think any party left or right, A, B, C, or D has all the answers.
But I do make my point to stay involved with seeing what issues are at hand.
And although I can't do the correction at maybe at the national level, what can we do
at our local levels?
And that's where I think the mark is being missed.
People don't understand the importance of local government.
Yeah, Gunny, I think you're right.
It starts in the home and local communities.
If your local community doesn't recognize and support military service, as you say,
being law abiding, then it's unlikely that the community is going to be supportive of
military service.
You went from being in the Marines, career in policing, career in education.
Did you get the opportunity to use the GI Bill to get some of your education?
Unfortunately, and this is where information doesn't get passed well.
When I joined, they had stopped the GI Bill and they had this program called the VEEK
program.
Oh yeah, that was a horrible one.
Pretty much so because I could not benefit from it, although if you paid the amount,
what happened was that when I went to college, I was fortunate enough to get a lot of scholarships.
I got all kinds of scholarships for academics.
I got tons of scholarships.
I got a scholarship for broadcasting.
I had all kinds of scholarships because when they used my education benefit, what they
did was they sent me a $114 check a month.
And I was not able to access the other benefits that they had put in, although I found out
afterwards that I should have been able to cross over to, I think, with a monk, a G.I.
Bill.
It was, yeah.
That was next.
Minecumry was next, yep.
They did not tell us.
Some of the units did not tell you.
They did not know.
And my chagrin is that the VA does not allow you to go back and grandfather the people
who did not get the word.
We didn't get the information.
That's really why it's important that the work that the VSOs do, such as the American
Legion's VFW, DAV, because it's a complex set of benefits that veterans have.
And it changes over time.
And what didn't work at one point might work later on.
And you need somebody who knows what they're talking about to help guide you.
And the other thing I find is, when you tell an 18-year-old or a 24-year-old kid what
his benefits are, they're not even hearing you.
So it's really important when it's time to really look at these things to go back.
And that's why your work with the American Legion and some of the other groups you've
mentioned is so important.
And I suspect you feel the same way.
I do feel the same way.
I just wish that we would see more productive turnaround for claims because they're swamped.
They are swamped.
And they're swamped for any number of reasons.
I wish that when a person says that I have been sexually assaulted that they don't have
to go through so many people to tell the story over and over again.
I've had women and men whom have been traumatized.
And then afterwards they get triggered by telling this person who's typing this stuff
out of listening.
And then I have to go, well, I don't have to, but I go to the hospital and I visit them
or I take them there or talk them down so that they don't go back in that deep place.
I wish that we had more physical access locations for some of these veteran service organizations
to have physical structures.
I think that if we had communities that really were focused more on veterans affairs and
dealing with veterans organizations, national black military women and American Legion,
we have tenants that we actually do community work.
But to try to purchase buildings and maintain buildings is hard.
So that means that we're all stressed out trying to come together for common cause
and common goals.
And where we do, the idea is that you have all these vacant buildings in these locations
where we're now proper organizations and there's a whole lot of benefit a community would
have by allowing organizations to have these structures, let us rehab them and use them
so that it would be purposeful for the entire community.
And one of the things that can be done with an association like the National Association
of Black Military Women or any of the VSOs we've been mentioning is that you have a
voice in those associations that's much more powerful than the individual's voice because
it's a collective voice and it's heard more in Washington or the state capitals and what
have you.
The Association of Black Military Women is recently lending its voice to the issue of
the makeup of the US military academies, both West Point and Annapolis.
Trying to make sure that appropriate measuring is being done of getting candidates into the
service into the academies and that race should remain a factor of some sort in admissions.
Do you want to talk a little bit about the National Association of Black Military Women's
voice on that issue?
Certainly.
When you talk about the makeup of the military, our United States armed forces should be a
microcosm of our society.
And if our society is made up of 13% of one group, then the military should be 13% of
that same group, at least to hit that mark.
And when you have students that want to go to Harvard or University of Michigan or University
of Akron, you sign papers, you pay the tuition, you go to school, you get your grades and
you get your diploma.
That's what I'm talking about.
I do something, you do something in return.
Even the military, when you go to these military academies, it's a little different.
And this is why the race must be, because the mission of the students who attend military
academy goes beyond the walls of academia.
The persons who sign up to say that I'm going to go to military academy are saying I'm also
signing up to give X number of years of my life in service.
When we look at the numbers of persons who serve, we notice that there's a difference.
I can speak heartily to this when you find at least one face that looks familiar to you
versus being in a whole base and none.
I know that when I was in, General Peterson was a gentleman that I worked for.
He was the first black general in Marine Corps, first one.
With General Peterson, I met up with him at Quantico and every person who was attached
to Quantico as a general knows that they're the base commander.
That was their twilight tour.
And as great as he was, he knew that he was never getting promoted beyond that and his
chances of ever becoming the commandant of the Marine Corps were ditched.
246 years, the Marine Corps never had a black person as a commandant of the Marine Corps
at all or the assistant commandant.
This is 2024 now.
That's just unrealistic to think about.
But even now, you only have one person that could ever be there.
That was the gentleman who was a Marine that was promoted two years ago.
The military academies must factor in because their obligation is to ensure that the military
looks like society and that the military must function in a way that a student coming
out of Harvard doesn't have to deal with, a student coming out of Michigan doesn't have
to deal with.
If I go inside of a Wal-Mart or Walgreens and every pharmacist is Caucasian or Indian or
whatever, it's not going to affect me when we're in next because they're giving me medicine.
I'm going home.
I'm leaving out.
But in the military, I'm having to have a sense of comfort about the person dealing
with my life and my hands.
And you don't want to have people in places where they don't see that they can ascribe
to be that level.
The military academies assignment is different.
Their mission is different.
The focus is different.
And therefore, you must at least know who you're getting coming in.
I know that it's not the main issue.
I know that it's not the overall arching issue.
But it must be considered because the military is not the civilian society.
No, it has an obligation to protect the entire country.
That's right.
That's absolute.
However it's made up.
And one of the things the National Association of Black Military Women is doing is supporting
some federal lawsuits that are calling for clarity on this issue of affirmative action
at the service academies.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out because it has big social political issues
related to it.
And it kind of goes back to this whole issue of having the right representation and qualified
young black men and women wanting to participate in military service, in public service, like
you've done, Gunny, in the Marine Corps, in law enforcement as an educator.
We've been talking to Twyla Rochelle Cawthon 12 years in the Marine Corps.
And we're talking to her as a representative of the National Association of Black Military
Women.
We really appreciate the time you've given us today.
And I think there's a lot of wisdom in what you've told us.
How you're able, through the organizations, to spread that around to the community and
maybe encourage some other kids out there, if you will, to at least take a hard look
at military service and look what might be in it for them, right?
Absolutely.
Because if you are looking for a place where you can get to learn a great skill that you
can use outside of the military, here you are.
If you're looking to try to advance yourself education-wise, you can do what the school
I was in, in the Marine Corps, what the school I was at, what the school was, I mean, and
what the programs that they have, I remember one class I paid 86 cents for because I was
an E85 and it was called the Patricia Assistance Program.
But yeah, it's if you're looking to get out of, even out of your impoverished home, or
and that wasn't my case, or you just want to just go and see something different, or
like I remember out when I was at Kappa June, there were car carrying members of the KKK
in my barracks.
And they used to have rallies down in off of Marine Boulevard.
And this was in 1980 at Kappa June.
One month there was a rally and it was a last minute call.
They were rounding up all the Marines.
We were told, hey, you got to get off off out town, and you know, Liberty was secured.
The person who made the bus driver open up, because I was a boot, I mean, I was young,
I didn't know what was going on, you know, what was going on with people looking.
This guy ran to the front of the bus.
It was a car coming on a trailer at bus, and he swung that thing open that opens the door,
and he reached out to grab my hand, and I'm running and I grab him, and I find out afterwards,
because he lived in my barracks, and that was why he reached out for me.
He was a member of the KKK, car carrying member.
We talked at lunch one day over at the chow hall, and he told me, you know, that he wasn't,
I said, I don't even know, I was thinking of him for just helping me out.
He said, well, I couldn't see you out there getting hurt.
So he looked beyond his own personal views, and I found out later on, the reason why he
had belonged to it, because his house is the culture of his family, and he had never known
anyone that was black, but he, by the time his listening was up, had renounced all of
that because he said, I see we're all together, and we're the same.
And that's what the military also does, because you get in the military, and I'll care what
branch, everybody is, we're all one, we're in this together, we're going to sink or swim
together, and some people need that so that they can be mature when they lead the service
and be productive citizens who have high levels of patriotism.
Yeah, as you say, it gets you outside of the culture, maybe a bad culture that you grew
up in, if you got overseas duty, you got to see the rest of the world and realize, as
you said earlier, part of patriotism is realizing that this is the country you want to live
in.
It's a lot worse in a lot of other places in the world.
And you kind of have to, you know, you see that when you do the military overseas assignments
and go, oh man, home don't look so bad now.
Right, too, even when your states are some of the places that you are stationed in, and
stateside, when you leave that city, if you're in one city where the base is located, you
drive 15 miles outside of that city.
I remember in 1980, there were places outside of Jacksonville, North Carolina that still
had outhouses.
I'm stunned, I said, outhouses, not too far from the base.
Yeah.
Well, Twyla, we really appreciate you taking a little time with us today on Veterans Radio
to talk about some of your experiences and views and the role that the National Association
of Black Military Women are playing in the larger discussions going on about military
service.
Thank you for this opportunity.
I really appreciate it.
It was my honor.
Thank you.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fossone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans, and you can reach us at
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.
That's veteransradio.org.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
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They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-6934800.
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