Ria An and Katie Pham are not yet seniors, never mind alumnae with years of professional experience, but the two juniors, in collaboration with Writing Initiatives Director John Morrell, helped lead a “Dinner & a Draft” session on Tuesday, February 24. 

These events typically feature a Loomis Chaffee graduate who works as a writer in some professional capacity. But on this evening the published authors were a pair of current students whose collaborative book project, Unspoken Valor: Voices of Our Women Veterans, was published last year. The book contains multiple stories of women veterans with Connecticut connections, including Lindsay Gabow ’12.  

Wrote Ria in the book, “I expected to hear mostly stories of hardship, trauma, and pain. And yes, those stories were there, layered with raw truth. But what surprised me was what stood alongside them. The laughter, the warmth. The sturdiness. Again and again, these women described their challenges not as burdens but as fuel.” 

Four of those women veterans were at the discussion on Tuesday night:  Gladys Silva-Perales, Rose Vigdal, Milgrid Guzman, and Jamie De Paola. When they were asked about telling their stories to Ria and Katie, there were common themes, including gratitude for the young writers’ interest and the opportunity to open up to sympathetic and empathetic ears. They also talked about the emotions of going back in time. 

Ms. De Paola served 24 years, four in active duty and 20 in the Marine Reserves. She did a stint in Desert Storm during the Gulf War. “I had to leave my husband and kids,” she said to the gathered students and faculty. “I came home different seven months later. My kids were different seven months later. My husband was different. Everything was different.” 

She grew up in a small town in Ohio. Her father and grandfather served, and she was determined to serve. “The day I learned there were women in the Marine Corps, I said I was going down to the recruiting office,” she said in an interview after the dinner. “I have always been proud of that moment. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I said, ‘I’m going to be a Marine.’ I was 19.” 

Ms. De Paolo said her service gave her “confidence, strength, perseverance, courage, all the things that I, as a woman in Ohio, didn’t know I had. I was going to grow up and marry a farm boy, and that was how life was. And there was so much more in the world for me. I had never left the state of Ohio until they flew me to Paris Island, S.C. [for training].” 

She met her husband three years later. They raised a family, and she stayed in the Reserves, juggling both worlds. 

Each of the veterans at the dinner talked about their military experiences. The event was about not only celebrating the book, but sharing gratitude for the veterans’ service.    

As Katie writes in the book, the work was her way of “listening, appreciating, and preserving women’s voices as someone who deeply values the cost of human conflict.”