Capt Elizabeth Ferrill Oral History

title:

Capt Elizabeth Ferrill Oral History

creator:

Ferrill, Elizabeth Diane (1976 June 28 - )

subject:

US Air Force Academy (USAFA) | Air Force

description:

Elizabeth D. Ferrill was born on June 28, 1976 in Greensboro, North Carolina. She graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland in 1994 and enrolled in the US Air Force Academy. She first decided she wanted to go there when she was in fifth grade because she wanted to be an astronaut, but she had allergies, bad eyesight, and was just too short by the time she finished up high school. She was nominated in the application process by Congresswoman Connie Marrella and, despite her worries, passed the candidate fitness test. Once she was at the Air Force Academy, she was one of two women (out of the 32 total in her class) to major in computer science. Once at the school, they had basic training from June 30 until just before Labor Day, after which they got their shoulder boards. Over her second summer, she entered Combat Survival Training, which was meant to get practice in survival, evasion, and escape as if you’re a downed airman. The next summer she was part of the Operation Air Force program, where she went to an Air Force base in Germany to see what it’s like working at a base. In her final two summers, she was apart of the summer scientific seminar program, where high schoolers are brought in to take classes and see what it’s like to be a cadet at the academy. The summer before her senior year she ran that program and did a summer research program at the Pentagon. She didn’t have the sorts of negative experiences that other women have while at the Academy, which she partially credits to having an instructor who was a woman who had graduated in 1982. After graduating in 1998, Ferrill was sent to graduate school at Georgia Tech, where she studied computer science for about a year and a half. After getting her masters, she was assigned to the 497th Intelligence Group at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, DC as the Chief of Test and Evaluation. In that position, she was in charge of all the contractors who tested software before it was put on top secret and secret computer networks. She was at this job during the attacks on 9/11, so when the Pentagon was attacked the sirens at Bolling went off, they ran outside, and they could see smoke coming off the Pentagon. After Bolling, she was assigned to the Ballistic Missile early warning station in Tooley, Greenland as a communications flight commander. She left the Air Force in 2003 with the rank of captain, and enrolled in law school at University of North Carolina: Chapel Hill. As of the interview, Ferrill was a clerk for a federal judge in Virginia. For her service she was awarded a Commendation Medal, and Meritorious Service Medal. A transcript of the interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Reborchick, Marcy

date:

2006-10-21

type:

Moving Image

format:

MiniDV

identifier:

297; 2006.297

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

NR

coverage:

1990s | 2000s | 1994-1998 | 1998-2003

rights:

Unrestricted