LtCol Megan Ann Santa Ana, USMC Ret. Oral History

title:

LtCol Megan Ann Santa Ana, USMC Ret. Oral History

creator:

Santa Ana, Megan Ann (Gillespie) (1954 November 12 -

subject:

Marine Corps | Marine Corps Reserve

description:

Megan Santa Ana (Gillespie) was born on November 12, 1954 in Sacramento, California. She went to college in Sothern California, graduating in 1976 with a degree in history. The economy that year was not doing great, and as she was walking around Oakland trying to find a job, she passed a recruitment office. She went with the Marine Corps because she'd already known a Marine and she was drawn to their ethos over that of the Navy. When she enlisted in the US Marine Corps, she immediately went to Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia she ended up in the final women's officer training class, but after some bad PR for the Marine Corps they hastily decided to complete the gender integration of Basic Training, so after her Christmas break she was in the first combined class in that stage of OCS. While there, she says she was "blessed" to have had a very positive experience with her male lieutenant and commanding officer, but that she knows some of the other women there with her faced much more hostility. After training, she went into administration as a personnel officer. She and the women in her class at OCS were the first to qualify as riflemen with both pistols and rifles. By the time she had finished training at Quantico, women had only been allowed in operational units for a year, so many of the men that she served with early in career had never really served with women before. While she wasn't deployed in support of combat, she did serve for three years in Okinawa with the 3rd Marine Division that was permanently stationed there. She left active duty in 1988 while pregnant with her second child, and joined the reserves after they were born. She was also one of the reservists called to active duty in 1990 during the Persian Gulf Crisis, which was the first time reservists had been called upon since the Korean War. One of her favorite things about her service in the Marine Corps was how it taught her how to take care of herself without having to rely on anyone else, and the commitment to service for others that it inspires in Marines. Megan served through the Cold War in Virginia, California, and Okinawa, Japan; and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with the Marine Corps Reserve before retiring in 1997. She has been awarded the Marine Corps Achievement Medal and Marine Corps Commendation Medal. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Gill, Dennis

date:

2022-03-26

type:

Moving Image

format:

Born Digital

identifier:

1355; 2022.002

source:

Voices of Freedom Project

language:

English

relation:

508721

coverage:

1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 1976-1988, 1988-1997

rights:

Unrestricted