30 March 2004

Longwood alumna to receive flag with double significance

Mark Glover (right), the project superintendent on the construction of the new Ruffner, and Roger Dingle, a superintendent with another contractor working on the building, run a flag up atop Ruffner, to fulfill an unusual request from a Longwood alumna.

It's common for retiring military personnel to be given a United States flag that has flown over the U.S. Capitol. A Longwood University alumna decided to add her own twist to that.

Susan Young, an Air Force captain and 1980 Longwood graduate, asked that her flag be flown over Longwood's Rotunda as well. "I wanted to tie it to home," she said. In an effort coordinated by the Farmville district office of U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, as is customary with these flags, and the president's office at Longwood, she got her wish.

A 5-by 8-foot cotton flag was run up the new flagpole atop the Rotunda, which is under construction, on the afternoon of March 23 while Master Sergeant Jim Carver of Longwood's ROTC program watched nearby. After a few minutes, it was taken down and handed to two ROTC cadets, who folded it according to military protocol before returning it to Congressman Goode's office. The flag has been mailed to Capt. Young, a registered nurse who serves with the 355th Medical Operation Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, and will be presented to her when she retires April 29.

The flag had been flown over the U.S. Capital last Dec. 4. Capt. Young will receive the official certificate verifying that it flew over the Capitol (signed by the "Architect of the Capitol"), as well as a special Longwood certificate verifying that it flew over the Rotunda.

Longwood officials couldn't recall a request of this type. "In the 12 years I've been working in the president's office, it's the first time this office has been contacted with such a request," said Jeanne Hayden, an assistant in the president's office. Though Congressman Goode's office routinely handles requests for U.S. flags, Sarah Terry, an aide in that office, called it "unusual" that someone also requested that such a flag be flown somewhere else. (Mrs. Terry is a former member of the Longwood Board of Visitors.)

Capt. Young has served for a total of 20 years in three branches of the military and was in the Reserves for the three years she attended nursing school. Last year she was selected one of the top 50 nurses in the Tucson area, which includes civilian and military nurses. She learned in early March that she had been selected for promotion to major, but she still intends to retire. "That won't make me change my mind about retiring," she said with a laugh.

While growing up, Capt. Young, whose father was a career Air Force non-commissioned officer, moved frequently before moving to Hopewell (her father was stationed at Fort Lee), where she attended middle school and high school. Then, intending to teach, she majored in health, physical education and recreation at Longwood but was stymied by a shortage of teaching jobs at the time.

So, she joined the Army in 1981, serving as a supply specialist and then as a combat medic, and switched to the Coast Guard after three years. While stationed in Florida during her six-year stint in the Coast Guard, she worked on the recovery operations effort after the 1986 crash of the space shuttle Challenger. She was commissioned into the Army after receiving a nursing degree from Salisbury State University in Maryland and served almost four years before being part of a "reduction in force" involving the pink-slipping of 350 active duty Army nurses. She joined the Air Force in 1996. For five months in 1999-2000 she was a member of a medical team from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, that served with Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti.

She retains fond memories of the her Longwood days. "We were all family. It was a wonderful environment," said Capt. Young, who is thinking of eventually relocating to the East Coast.