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When Roma Amundson told her brother 31 years ago that she had joined the Nebraska National Guard, his response summarized things nicely.
“You did what?” he said.
Amundson is still shocking them.
Amundson, 59, is about to become the first female general in the Nebraska National Guard's 117-year history. She will bust through yet another camouflage glass ceiling when she receives a star on each shoulder at a ceremony Saturday morning.
And she'll accept her new title — assistant adjutant general of the Nebraska Army National Guard — knowing she's earned the respect of men who were initially skeptical that she, or any other woman, could do a guardsman's work.
“It's been a little bit of a struggle,” she said Wednesday. “A good struggle.”
Amundson joined the Guard in January 1979, spurred by what she saw as the country's poor treatment of Vietnam War veterans. She figured she would serve three years, maybe four.
In the ensuing decades, she has established herself as a successful real estate agent in an around Walton, Neb. She has married a guardsman and raised two children who are now adults.
And she's steadily risen through the National Guard ranks, cementing a reputation as a no-nonsense officer who ably led units and then entire commands.
“This isn't a job to her,” says LaVonne Rosenthal, the Guard's equal employment manager and diversity initiatives coordinator, who has known Amundson for 15 years. “It's part of who she is.”
It hasn't always been easy, Amundson said, especially when she first commanded a unit in the early 1980s.
Some of the men in the unit griped about their new leader. Some openly doubted her ability.
“I'll be blunt — they didn't like the fact that a skirt commanded them,” Amundson said.
The problem worsened during annual training in 1983, when the unit misplaced equipment and forgot key details about how to lay telephone lines and establish a communications center.
Amundson responded by pulling the guardsmen out of the training exercises and marching them back to the barracks. For the next two days they practiced nonstop, even when members of other units were relaxing.
At the conclusion of training exercises that summer, Amundson's unit won an award from the commanding general.
“By the end of that, we had an amazing esprit de corps,” she says. “That's when the tide turned.”
Since then she has traveled to El Salvador and Nicaragua with the Guard, participating in projects that built hospitals, schools and roads. She has gone to Alaska, where the Guard blew up a mountain and built a road so Native Americans living on a small island could reach work in minutes instead of hours.
She has overseen four commands, including the 92nd Troop, which managed the mobilization of 1,900 soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan.
And she has watched more and more women pour into the Guard — today, 794 women are in the Nebraska Army National Guard and Nebraska Air National Guard. They make up about 16 percent of the guard's total force.
On Saturday, Roma Amundson's brother, the one shocked that she joined the Guard, will attend the ceremony at the Nebraska Air National Guard headquarters in Lincoln.
So will her husband, Randy, who retired from the Guard on May 31. Her children will be there, and so will a grab bag of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.
They will watch as Nebraska Guard officials salute Gen. Roma Amundson for the first time.
Amundson says she won't feel like a woman setting a milestone.
“Let me explain,” she said. “I don't think this (position) has anything to do with me being a woman. First and foremost, I am a soldier.”
Contact the writer:
444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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