Alumni Spotlight: Fall/Winter 2008 Cal U REVIEW
Herstory offers a unique look at Cal U alumna's life: She has been a military officer, a musician and singer, a semiprofessional softball player and a reunion organizer. Now, in fulfilling a longtime dream, H. Lenora Byrd ('72/'81 alumna) can add author to her list of accomplishments.
"It's something I've wanted to do for a long, long time," Byrd said of her first book, WAC Major: Herstory, a Black Woman in the White Man's Army, (Xlibris Corporation). "It began as a catharsis for me, a way to purge everything that had built up inside me over the years."
The healing process began in 1995 with Byrd, a resident of LaBelle, PA, pulling thoughts and emotional scars from the journal she had kept for many years. It culminated in 2007 when she invested her own money to have her book published. Byrd, a 1958 graduate of Brownsville High School, pulls no punches in her tales of humiliating defeats and triumphant victories of a feisty, black, gay woman as a member of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and later the "regular Army" in an interrupted career running from 1961-1965 and 1971-1989. Those experiences included a stint as an ROTC instructor (1977-1980) at California University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a bachelor's degree in social work, a master's in secondary guidance counseling/consulting and a certificate of completion in multimedia technology.
Her deep faith and firm convictions led Byrd through many challenges in her military career that was interrupted when she married Fred Lindsey and became pregnant. "I was an officer, and he was a sergeant first class," Byrd said of her former husband. "But officers dating enlisted personnel was a definite taboo. My superiors were not at all pleased with this kind of fratenization. Once I became pregnant, I was forced to resign my commission and leave the Army."
The brief union did produce one of the most glorious achievements of Byrd's life, a daughter, Chantay, who now works at the Pentagon. "(Marriage) wasn't for me," Byrd, 66, said. "I've learned that later when I accepted the fact that I was gay. But it did bring this wonderful girl into my life, and I am deeply grateful to God for Chantay."
Herstory focuses on many other aspects of Byrd's life. It tells about a military career in the Women's Army Corps that began as a private first class, took her to Officer Candidate School and was revived when she was re-commissioned. Despite continuous struggling during her military journey, Byrd successfully ended her career as a military police officer and retired as a major in 1989. In addition to various assignments in the U.S., she also served three years in Germany.
The book also relates Byrd's passion for music and her experiences as a singer and bass player; her achievements as an all-star and champion semipro softball player; her role in organizing Brownsville High School class reunions; and her most recent role as caretaker for her 87-year-old mother, Eunice Byrd.
The autobiography is a good read, an inspirational story about overcoming adversity with the willingness and ability to succeed.




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