Today, Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, we highlight the service of Maj. Sharon Frederick, who served in the U.S. Air Force in Dubai during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Born in Abilene, Texas, and attended Abilene Christian College in West Texas before joining the Air Force Reserve in 1987, she credits joining the military because of the strong sense of community it offered, something she learned when she was married to her husband who also served in the Air Force.
"After traveling around with my husband, I learned to love the connectedness with the military," Frederick said. "From the family members to the military members, and it was truly a community within a community."
Frederick thought many times about going to active duty with the Air Force, but her parents talked her out of it because of they stay wanted her to be home for, both, her parents, and her daughter.
"So, I thought OK, well the best of both worlds, I'll join the Reserves and I really won’t have to travel too much, and also be able to go back to school because I dropped out when I got married," Frederick recalled. "It just offered the best opportunity to be a part-time weekend warrior and go to school and work on my educational goals."
A few short years after she joined the Reserves, things started to get serious, Frederick said, when everyone started getting their marching orders for deployment
"It was kind of surreal because everyone else were getting orders and I was hearing from my friends then, ‘oh, you’re gonna be next’ and I was like ‘Nah, I’m not going anywhere, we’re not going anywhere’,” Frederick said of that time. “Then I received a phone call, and after hearing all about the horror stories, about what I’m going to do, people telling me I was going to die within two minutes, it was a lot. Of course, my family was devastated and being a single parent, I had to send my daughter to live with my parents in West Texas.”
Over the course of her 24 years spent in the military, Frederick was deployed on multiple missions. She recalled the surreal experiences during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, when your next breath was not guaranteed.
"You just lived under a threat every day not knowing what was going to happen," Frederick explained. "It was almost like an accepted fact, if anything happened, we knew we weren't going to make it, and that’s how we operated."
To listen to U.S Air Force Veteran Sharon Frederick tell her story, click the button below:
Veterans can email VoicesofVeterans@glo.texas.gov to tell their stories. Please note that the Veteran must be a resident of Texas at the time of their interview.
Voices of Veterans is a state agency's first Veteran oral history program. It records the stories of Texas Veterans through their time in service and after returning home from combat.
The VLB records interviews with veterans over the phone or in person. Their interviews are then permanently archived in the Office of Veterans Records at the GLO, where they join the historical documents of other Texas heroes such as Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Barret Travis.
Veterans' interviews are also available to researchers, historians, genealogists, and the public. These precious records inspire future generations and remind us of our Veterans' sacrifices.
To listen to the over 500 archived stories of Veterans documented through the GLO's Voices of Veterans oral history program, click the button below: