Local female veterans join national campaign to highlight their roles
When Paula Orner drives to the grocery store, people assume the Navy license plate on her car is her husband’s. When Elaine Jergons went to the Veterans Affairs hospital, there were no gowns in her size. And when Patti Gerhauser tells people she served in the military, some ask her inappropriate questions like, “Have you been sexually assaulted?”
They, along with dozens of other female veterans, gathered in the Strip District on Friday to have their photos taken for the Western Pennsylvania portion of the “I Am Not Invisible” campaign organized by the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs and Adagio Health.
“We want people to see what a woman veteran looks like,” said Gene Russell, the photographer for the U.S. secretary of Veterans Affairs. “She looks like your mom, your sister, the woman down the street.”
The initial photo shoot was organized by the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. Russell joined the project after seeing those photographs in Washington, D.C. Since then, he’s gone to 29 cities across the U.S. and photographed over 850 women.
“Women don’t get the same recognition as men when they come home,” Mr. Russell said. “If we stand in a stadium and say, ‘Veterans, please stand,’ women might not stand because they don’t consider themselves veterans.”
A lot of women don’t selfidentify as veterans because many of them are self-conscious about serving in noncombat roles, Ms. Gerhauser, 32, of Mars, said during the photo shoot at the offices of the Veterans Leadership Program in the Strip District.
“Women have to work twice as hard to be seen as equals” while serving, Aryanna Berringer, 36, of Murrysville, said. She served from 2001 to 2005 as a member of the XVIII Airborne Corps.
Despite the discrimination she faced during her service, Ms. Berringer said, “It was still the best decision I ever made.”
“I found more support and camaraderie in the veterans service than in the military,” said Ms. Gerhauser, who is a women’s veterans program coordinator. Women in the military are also more likely to experience sexual assault. The Department of Defense reported 20,500 instances of “unwanted sexual contact” in the 2018 fiscal year, 13,000 of whom were female victims.
“The biggest thing is being in a man’s world,” Ms. Jergons, 39, of Midland, said. “And dealing with sexual assault is constant.”
Ms. Jergons and her sister, Nannette, were stationed together in the Coast Guard. Both of them struggled with post traumatic stress, depression and anxiety, but they found it impossible to address while they were serving.
“When you’re in the military, you don’t want to say certain things because you didn’t want to lose your job,” Nannette Jergons, 38, said. “And then you get home and it just builds.”
Ms. Orner, 36, of Homer City in Indiana County, served in the Navy during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Now, she is married and has two children and is a stay-at-home mom due to her non-combat-related post traumatic stress disorder.
The discrimination that a lot of women experience in the military continues when they come home, she said.
“We don’t get as much recognition as male veterans,” Ms. Orner said, noting that people usually assume her husband is the one who served. “All I can hope is that we speak up, and people start to realize the role we play.”
The local photos for “I Am Not Invisible” will be exhibited Nov. 6 at the Heinz History Center.