Army Ranger School has a groundbreaking new graduate: Lisa Jaster, 37, engineer and mother
Late at night while going through preliminary training for the Army’s Ranger School, Maj. Lisa Jaster questioned one of the male soldiers in her class: Why was he so opposed to women being there?
The ensuing conversation at Fort Benning, Ga., took more than an hour, and cut into an already short night of sleep, she recalled in a question-and-answer interview on Facebook with fellow alumnae of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. She brought up the issue while observing that both male Ranger instructors and students were struggling to adapt to the idea the service was opening the legendarily difficult school to women for the first time, she said.
[Focus and determination marked female soldiers’ path to Ranger Tab]
“I asked Johnson, ‘After three days of training with us, can you explain to me why you still think women don’t belong?” she recalled in the Facebook post, since taken down. “I added, I am completely okay if you don’t think women should be here, I just want an educated, civilized discussion that considers the women you have been training with over the past 3 days.”
On Monday, the Army announced that Jaster, 37, has become the third woman to ever complete the Ranger School course. Jaster will join Capt. Kristen Griest, 26, and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, 25, who earned the Ranger tab on Aug. 21. Jaster will join 87 men in receiving the coveted decoration in a ceremony at Fort Benning on Friday. At graduation, Jaster will have spent 180 days in the course — far longer than the minimum 61 it takes, but within the realm of the possible for male or female students.
e three female soldiers are the only women to pass Ranger School among 19 who attempted the course beginning in April after the Army opened it to women for the first time. It did so as part of the military’s ongoing research into how it will integrate women into new combat roles in in the future. The move followed a landmark January 2013 decision by then-Defense Leon Panetta, who opened all jobs to women, but gave the services until this fall to research how to integrate and make recommendations about each position that was closed.
Like most of their male counterparts, Griest and Haver are relatively early into their careers. They made it through Ranger School while relatively youthful, and have rejoined their units since being lauded as trailblazers this summer.
Jaster, on the other hand, has had an even more unconventional path. Like Griest and Haver, she is a part of the first generation of women who will be able to earn the Ranger tab. But she’s also a higher-ranking officer in the Army Reserve, a mother of two children, and an engineer who temporarily left a position with the Shell Oil Company in Houston to tackle Ranger School.
[As women finish Ranger course, Army faces new pressure on gender barriers]
“I just think it’s phenomenal for her to do this at that age,” said Terron Sims II, a former Army captain who graduated from West Point with Jaster in 2000. “Forget gender. Her willingness to sacrifice at that age is just phenomenal and speaks a lot about her.”
Jaster, whose maiden name is Peplinski, joined the Army and 2000 and served about seven years on active-duty. She was initially assigned to Fort Stewart in eastern Georgia with the 92nd Engineer Battalion, and deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in her first four years, she said in the interview posted to the West Point page in May.
Jaster, who could not be reached for comment Monday, was then reassigned to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., for school, where she met her husband, Marine Lt. Col. Allan Jaster, she said. She left active-duty in 2007 and started a family and civilian career with Shell, but returned to the Army as a reservist in 2014, according to a LinkedIn profile listed for her.
The desire to remain physically apparently never left her while she was a civilian, however. She is listed as a participant in weightlifting competitions in Texas, and said in an online profile that she took up CrossFit workouts after the birth of her second child in 2012.(Washington Post)
