 Hi, I'm Mary D from DAV, and I'm here with Marianne Smith, an Air Force Reserve veteran who was a flight medic for about 10 years, who's now on the front line fighting the COVID pandemic as a nurse. Marianne, can you tell me a little bit about your service and kind of what brought you into it, and what made you want to be a flight medic? Sure. I joined the Air Force in 1991. I wanted to fly, and my recruiter said that I could be a medic on a plane, so, and that would, I could fly a ride on a C-130, so I said, great. I became a flight medic. I really enjoyed it, got through the world and learned a great career. Yeah, it kind of opened the door for your interest into the medical world, right? Yes, absolutely. So, when you were getting out, I know it's kind of a challenging time for people when we go from, you know, military service to civilian. What was that time like for you, and did you know right away that you wanted to stay in the medical field? Oh yeah, absolutely. I had a lot of mentors in the military, nurses, who I think still friends with. Yeah, I wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to continue my career. I went to LPN, RN, BSN. This fall, I'm going to start my master's degree. So, how did you come across DAB, and how did DAB help you get there? When I got out of the military, I needed medical, I needed some resources like my military records, some other, you know, my discharge papers, just little things I needed help with. A friend of mine said that I should go to the DAB, and there's people there that can help me get some things that I needed. I found a gentleman who was really helpful, hooked me up with the VA, got me my benefits, all my paperwork I needed, also got me my resources to help me out with school, got to, that's how I ended up going through to get my nursing degree, and got me some other resources like groups and networks that I could stay socially connected with other veterans. So, that kicks us to today. Now we're going through this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic that's affecting people all across the world. Our country is in self-distancing, quarantine, phasing back to normal, all these things that we've never dealt with in our time. So, what does that look like for you as a nurse on the front line of all of this? Unpredictable, unsure what's going to happen, taking it day by day, step by step, doing the best we can. How do you think your military experience prepared you for this? It's given me a lot of skills, prepared me with survival skills, leadership skills, good training, a lot of good training. We've learned how to prepare, I think, just knowing that you can get through anything. Well, and you were talking a little bit earlier about how it's kind of helped you with your fellow nurses, kind of encouraging them to just focus on the job and keep going no matter how hard it seems, how long the days are, that kind of thing. You know, you encourage each other to come up, you know, hey, teamwork, hey, you know, keep going, you know, you help support one another. You come together a lot more in hard times. I think the military teaches you that, to do the teamwork. You don't see that so much like, I'd like to see a lot more of that. You know, you work in your own cubicles in the civilian world and in the military, it's teamwork, do or die. You know, you learn that, that is your core. And so I think we're seeing a lot more of that now. So now that things are starting to reopen, we're going into, you know, we hear a lot about phases, phase one, phase two, different states, taking different actions, different things are allowed. You know, people kind of are starting to forget or maybe think it's over, but you don't think it's over. You think we should still be taking the necessary precautions, correct? Absolutely. And what does that look like for you? What advice do you give people, maybe your patients, your friends and family, who are starting to kind of get back out, reaching for a new normal, if you will, out into the world? I think we should go real slow. I think we should remember to think about things before we decide to do them, take steps, you know, use our good hygiene and precautions as we would and go very slow. I mean, it's not open yet. We need to remember what happened, not to forget. What would you say to any other service members, especially the ones near and dear to your heart in the medical field, who are getting out and going into the civilian sector? What advice would you have for them? Remember your loved ones, you know. We all have older parents, you know, we have children, older parents, we have brothers and sisters and patients that we have to think about. We have to also remember that we have responsibilities as nurses, as caregivers, that we need to put them as a priority. Their health is important. It's our job to protect them and that we should be careful. And we should be careful for ourselves and put ourselves first. Is there anything else that you would like to add? I mean, you have this great story of doing this in the military and now you're literally on the front lines a second time, so. I'll be time for fun later. You know, the fun is not going to go away. You know, it can wait. You know, your lives won't, you know, you can't get your life back. Well, thank you for everything that you're doing. You know, it's great to talk to somebody who's there every day, who's putting on the protective equipment and facing this head-on. So thank you sincerely for that and to all the nurses and doctors and the front-line workers who are taking care of this because, yeah, it's been a couple of months now. People might, you know, start getting lax in their protective measures and things, but we might be phasing back. But like you said, phase back slowly. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Marion. And I hope you have a good day. And again, thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you so much.