Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Backstory

May 4, 1970 – Ohio National Guard shoot and kill four Kent State University Vietnam War protesters and wound nine others.

    Two days later, newly married, I am on my way to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, for my husband to start Armor Officers Basic training.

    Mitch's orders to report to active duty say nothing about bringing his wife.  (You know the old army saying: "If the army had wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one.")  But I am not going to be left behind.

     Skip ahead a few days after we have managed to secure an appointment in Muldraugh, Kentucky, a small town with no mail delivery.  Mitch comes home from AOB one day with an invitation for me to attend a social function for AOB wives. 

     Of course I go – I am so bored in Muldraugh, Kentucky.  And there I learn that we are going to be trained how to be a proper officer's wife.  For our graduation luncheon there is a need for committee chairs.  I shoot up my arm to be the entertainment chair.

     "Now we usually have a fashion show or an etiquette lesson," a senior officer wife says.  I nod, and think how I'll write a skit satirizing AOB.  (To protect the innocent I set the scene at Valley Forge in 1776.) 

     To this day, while I remember everything else and have all my original army documents (some of which can be seen on my website at www.mrslieutenant.com), I can't remember how I got the four other members of my committee: a Southern Baptist, a black (the correct term in those days), and two Puerto Ricans – one of whom couldn't speak English.

     The five of us spent the next few weeks together learning how to be a Mrs. Lieutenant.  And from that day onward until now, I've wanted to tell the story of what being a new officer's wife in the U.S. Army was like during the Vietnam War. 

     MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL is the result 38 years later.  I mashed up characters and incidents (some things I included at Ft. Knox really took place when we were stationed in Munich, Germany, the scene of the sequel I'm now writing – MRS. LIEUTENANT IN EUROPE), and I invented backstories for the main characters.  Yet the overall story is an accurate depiction.

     And in order to place the events in their historical context, the start of each chapter includes a news item as well as a quote from Mary Preston Gross' booklet "Mrs. Lieutenant" (Third Edition), which we used in 1970 to learn the rules and expectations for an officer's wife.  One such pithy statement of the book: "It has been said that when a man acquires a commission, the government has gained not one, but two – the officer and his wife."

    The story of MRS. LIEUTENANT may seem like ancient history.  But today the U.S. is again involved in another unpopular war.  And race issues, which are a theme in MRS. LIEUTENANT, are again in the news.  Maybe I was destined to wait 38 years before publishing the book – until the time was ripe for this specific past to shed light on this specific present.

     Please visit the author's website for more about her life and work.

Comments

[susan chodakiewitz]

Thanks for your interesting background on what inpsired you to write Mrs. Lieutenant - A Sharon Gold Novel. It's always so incredible that people hold stories for years, nurturing them, molding them until the time is right for the story to be born and shared with others. Thanks for finally putting the story out there for the rest of us who don't have military backgrounds. It's interesting to note...."we've come a long way baby"... but have we really?

[Malcolm Campbell]

I hope you find a lot of readers who served in the military or who were wives/husbands of those who did: they'll probably read you're story and then remember a lot of things they'd forgotten about those days.

Malcolm

[Margay]

This sounds like an amazing book, one I think is very timely, even though it is set against the backdrop of Vietnam. I remember what it was like growing up in the shadow of Vietnam - and what it was like when we learned it was over (which I pray will come soon for all of the kids living in the shadow of Iraq). I can only imagine what it was like for the women who sent their husbands over there and then waited for them to return. Isn't it ironic that we may soon elect for President one of the ones who did come back?

[Phyllis Zimbler Miller]

Thanks, Margay, for your comments. I got chills just reading what you wrote thinking of the men fighting in Vietnam. There's a scene in the movie DEER HUNTER that I've never forgotten -- the unnamed man in those Vietcong metal cages half-submerged in water with blood dripping down his face who had just given up, who was waiting to die.

[Karen Harrington]

I agree with Margay. What a timely story - one that resonates with similar situations and issues we face today. What literature will come out of this era, huh?

Much success on your tour. I hope your book flies off the shelves - virtually, as well.

Cheers,

Karen Harrington
author, Janeology

[Phyllis Zimbler Miller]

M.J. --
Enjoyed reading your new marketing column in the August issue of Writer's Digest. I think it's a great idea to have a book marketing column in the magazine.
Phyllis

[Tricia Dower]

Ha! I was an Army Wife in the '60s and went through the orientation for officer's wives. Enthusing over the luncheon centerpieces, holding an ashtray for the Colonel's Lady, listening in horror as my husband's brigade commander at Ft. Campbell, Ky. talked about itching to lead his men in battle. As it turned out, he did. My husband went to Vietnam with one of the first combat troops in 1966 when I was pregnant with our son. It was a horrible time and it breaks my heart to see it repeated in Iraq.

I will look for your book.

[Tricia Dower]

Ha! I was an Army Wife in the '60s and went through the orientation for officer's wives. Enthusing over the luncheon centerpieces, holding an ashtray for the Colonel's Lady, listening in horror as my husband's brigade commander at Ft. Campbell, Ky. talked about itching to lead his men in battle. As it turned out, he did. My husband went to Vietnam with one of the first combat troops in 1966 when I was pregnant with our son. It was a horrible time and it breaks my heart to see it repeated in Iraq.

I will look for your book.