Air Force Academy
The wide-eyed girl who came to the academy four years ago from a small town in Florida cleaned her dorm room one final time last week.
Jenny Guilford filled four garbage bags with schoolwork – papers and projects she had poured her soul into – and pitched them into a trash bin.
“It’s weird because I worked so hard on some of that stuff.”
Guilford, 22, graduates Wednesday along with about 990 other cadets in the class of 2007. The Denver Post featured her in a series of stories during her freshman year. She joined the academy after a sexual-assault scandal that broke in February 2003.
Since then, much about the girl from Blountstown, Fla., with its 2,500 residents and two stoplights, has changed.
No one has seen the transformation more clearly than her mother, Janice Watson.
“A girl who was a little bit timid and shy, though very intelligent, has come out,” Watson said. “She has a level of confidence, and there isn’t any situation I wouldn’t put her in and not feel completely comfortable that she could handle it.”
Like all cadets’, Guilford’s freshman days began by walking at attention in her government-issued blue bathrobe to the shower. She had to pick up trash in the hallways and tidy the bathroom before class.
By the time she reached her senior year, Guilford had risen to the rank of vice wing commander – the second- highest-ranking cadet in the 4,400-student school. She settled on legal studies as her major and has been named the outstanding legal studies major at the academy.
“She won the award in essence for her total package – her academic abilities, her military abilities and how she’s done athletically and character-wise,” said Col. Paul Pirog, head of the law department at the Air Force Academy. “She’s a pleasant lady as well, a super cadet and a very good role model for others.”
And she knows a bit about her future.
“I want to be a JAG (judge advocate general) really bad,” she said.
Fiancé an academy grad
Before that happens, she will marry Brandon Liabenow, a 2006 academy graduate, in a June 30 ceremony in Tallahassee, Fla.
“I got moved into a new squadron my sophomore year, Squadron 24. He was a junior, and we became friends. We dated for two years, and we got engaged in Florida, on the beach, after he graduated.”
The couple will be stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. Guilford will work in personnel and is required to spend two years in the Air Force before the government will pay for law school. Her fiancé is in pilot training.
“I’m just ready to get out there and make an impact on people’s lives and really contribute to the war,” Guilford said. “I just feel like we’re in such a bubble here. We’re not contributing to the war effort. ”
She believes American troops should continue to fight the war in Iraq.
“I think it needs more time; it’s too soon to pull out.”
During the fall semester when she served as vice wing commander, Guilford got about four hours of sleep a night. Her job was to supervise the 25-person wing staff and to oversee 4,400 cadets.
“When problems would come up in the wing, if formations weren’t disciplined, or if a squadron didn’t show up for parade practice, we were responsible for fixing that problem,” she said.
She often would brief Brig. Gen. Susan Desjardins on the health and welfare of the cadet wing.
“I’m probably 100 percent more outspoken and confident now. Standing up in front of a room full of majors and colonels and briefing a general, as a cadet, it can be nerve-racking, but it’s great experience. I don’t feel scared at all if I have to get up in a room full of people and talk and give a PowerPoint briefing.”
She also attended conferences about sexual assault and underage drinking.
“I was there with all of these other academies, and (the Air Force is) light-years ahead of them as far as our climate and the way we treat people of opposite races and gender. We’re just very aware that there are some things you can’t say in a professional environment.”
On campus, Guilford said, she never felt ostracized by male peers or experienced sexual harassment.
“The boys that I hang out with in my squadron, they treat me as they would treat their sister,” she said. “They’re extremely respectful. I’ve been told, ‘I’m proud to serve with you. I don’t have any hard feelings against you because you are a woman.”‘
Embracing the military life
Perhaps the biggest surprise for her, as she leaves the academy, is how she has come to embrace the military life and mission.
“Everyone in the military holds up their hand and says, ‘I’ll lay down my life for this country.’ That’s a bond that I don’t think the civilian workforce has, and I want that.”
After she tosses her white hat into the air Wednesday, she and her family will drive to Texas and begin to set up her new home. Then, it will be on to Florida, for a walk down the aisle. After four years of being told what to do – how to sit, march and eat – she is ready for privacy.
“I’m ready to have my own house and to make my own decisions,” she said.
Is she sad to leave the academy?
“No. I’ve got my afterburners on.”
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
