Glass ceilings are made to be broken – but not just for the sake of breaking.
Felicia French is just one example of an astounding woman who has looked at convention, turned it on its head, and made the world a better place for it. This is just a snippet of her remarkable story.
French grew up in a large family of five siblings in both Arizona and California and enjoyed the sunshine of the western states. She grew up on stories of her great aunt, a strong and fierce-minded lady, who served as a nurse during World War I, and, early on, she realized that both military service and healthcare would be part of her future.
"She actually joined in the French Army (in 1914), because it was before the U.S. entered the war," French said. "I grew up with that strong, female image of my great aunt, the army nurse."
At the age of 17, French enlisted in the Arizona National Guard, where she trained as an Army medic in San Antonio, Texas.
She served as an Army medic for several years before enrolling full-time at Arizona State University and graduating with her bachelor's degree in nursing several years later.
After graduating, she entered the Army Nurse Corps and spent several years serving at bases in the United States and was deployed to Honduras in 1985. During her time in Honduras, she became acquainted with the various med-evac pilots who regularly transported patients to the hospital, where she served and, eventually, gathered the courage to pursue the next step in her career.
"My true love was flying, I wanted to be a pilot but, back then, it wasn't something that women really did," she said. "One of the pilots said, 'What's the worst they can do to you if you apply, say no?'"
So, she applied to become a med-evac pilot. The glass ceiling shuttered at her approach but remained intact for several years.
"It took me two years, they kept telling me my arms were too short, my eyesight was too bad (even though I had 20/10 vision), I was too short, anything they could do to keep women from flying," she recalled.
However, her persistence paid off and, in 1987, the glass shattered with a resounding crack as she entered flight school as the only female in her class.
Flight school proved to be a thrilling challenge for French and she learned to ably and competitively pilot several aviation vehicles -- including Black Hawk helicopters.
After finishing flight school, she was deployed to Germany during the Cold War and flew multiple med-evac missions around the then-divided country. She was lucky to witness one of her childhood dreams as it came true – the destruction of the Berlin Wall.
"I actually got to be there and take a part of it down – we snuck out and went to Checkpoint Charlie in East Germany…we had bought a sledgehammer and a chisel to get some of the walls down because we had heard rumors that it was coming down," she said. "It made me upset that we had walls like that separating people and families and I wanted it to come down."
One of her treasured possessions is a piece of the Berlin Wall before its destruction in 1989, but she spent three busy years completing lots of flight training and completing numerous missions, where she transported injured civilians and military personnel.
In 1991, she returned home to the United States after giving birth to her daughter in Germany and, almost immediately, began pursuing additional education back in San Antonio.
Afterward, she entered the New York Army Reserves during which time she flew med-evac for two years. During that same time, she also worked as a nurse manager in a civilian hospital on the pediatric/geriatric floor.
"Working there opened my eyes to a lot of our social injustice," she said.
She and her family moved back to Arizona during which time she served again in the National Guard, but this time, as a commander of her old unit – an unusual occurrence for a woman in the military at that time.
Another glass ceiling loomed before French after the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and, in 2009, she was deployed as a colonel and senior medical advisor in her brigade to Afghanistan. Though she characterizes it as one of the worst years of her life, she had the opportunity to improve the lives of her fellow women and girls during her service in the Middle East.
One of her primary functions was to determine where medical assets, such as supplies, personnel, and equipment were most needed but she also conducted numerous humanitarian missions. In addition to seeing and treating numerous patients, including battered women and children, she and her co-workers also brought solar ovens and health clinics to the general populace.
"I had to choke back tears a lot of times because you see these women who were 30 years old and they looked like they were 50 or 60 because they're just so beaten down," she recalled
She returned home in 2010 and, after 32 years of military service, formally retired from active service.
"Retired" life was anything but calm for French, however, as she enrolled in the doctorate of sustainability program at Arizona State, served on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona during the COVID-19 pandemic, taught at a community college, and ran for congressional office throughout the 2010s. Glass ceilings offered nothing but a tempting challenge for French in any setting she found herself in.
So, how did she get to Cañon City?
That is thanks to her daughter getting married and having her first grandbaby last year, and by September, French was happily lured to Fremont County. She remembers visiting the Royal Gorge when she was a child and now only lives a handful of miles from the landmark.
When she isn't caring for her beloved grandson, French has already catapulted herself into life in Cañon City and is a member of the Canonland Walkers and Hikers, Fremont Adventure Recreation, and also participates in the county's newly-formed women's veterans group, which meets from 8 to 9 a.m. on the second Wednesday of every month at the Fremont County Administration Building, located at 615 Macon Ave., Suite 203.
Though she plans to divide her time between her new home in Colorado and her old home in Arizona, she has many quality stories to fill any conversation so be sure to wave her over the next time you see her at Village Inn or hiking the trails that crisscross Fremont County.
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