Word: mcgrath
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mommy" is Commander Kathleen McGrath, who next week is expected to mark a historic first: she will be the first American woman ever to take a warship to sea. Back on land, women have already smashed through ceilings that once seemed to be made of unbreakable glass, from Silicon Valley to the State Department. But change has come more slowly to the hidebound military. Only 12 of the Navy's 220 admirals are women...
...McGrath will lead the Jarrett and its crew of 262 to the Middle East, where they will prowl the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf. Their mission: to hunt down ships smuggling Iraqi oil in violation of United Nations sanctions. It's a game of nautical cat and mouse, as U.S. spy satellites and surveillance planes pick out possible smugglers and relay their whereabouts to ships down below. The smugglers are beyond the U.N.'s reach as long as they stay in Iraqi and Iranian territorial waters. But there are a few swaths of water beyond the U.S.-recognized...
...long ago, McGrath's breakthrough would have seemed inconceivable. Women have served on support vessels since 1978, but it wasn't until 1994 that they were permitted, reluctantly, on warships. In 1991, Admiral Frank Kelso, then Chief of Naval Operations, told Congress bluntly that he didn't want women on warships at all, much less in command. "There is a delicate balance between equal opportunity for men and women," he cautioned the Senate Armed Services Committee, "and maintaining combat effectiveness of our forces...
...McGrath, 47, didn't grow up dreaming of making naval history. "I'm an accidental Navy officer," she says. "I joined on a whim." The eldest of six children, she spent her high school years at a U.S. base on Guam while her father--James McGrath, a 29-year Air Force veteran--flew B-52 bombing missions over North Vietnam. After graduating from Cal State-Sacramento with a degree in forestry, she spent six years with the U.S. Forestry Service. When she grew bored, her father suggested she give the military...
...McGrath's career at sea began with a visit to her dentist's office. She stopped off to check out an Air Force recruiting office in Merced, Calif. The recruiter was out to lunch, so she wandered into a nearby Navy office and signed up, lured by the promise of overseas adventure. She went on to officers' school in Newport, R.I., then landed in a Navy personnel office in Yokosuka, Japan. Once again, McGrath started daydreaming. "I was proofreading stuff that I really didn't understand," she says. "I wasn't doing what I had trained for--navigating, driving boats...