An Iowa warrior for women veterans
Army vet, Iowa college prof wins honors at pageant drawing attention to women vets
OSKALOOSA — She may not be “G.I. Jane” but she’s definitely pulled together “Brittny’s Battalion.”
That’s Brittny as in Brittny Tschetter, a 10-year Army Reserve veteran and business professor at William Penn College in Oskaloosa.
Her legion of backers is topped by her family and her husband Jared, a currently serving Army Reservist. They also include her students, her former superior officers and many others.
Her mission, and their mission in support of her, is simple. No comrade left behind — including and especially Tschetter’s sisters in arms after the uniform is put away. And to encourage others to follow their dreams, however unconventional the route may seem.
Tschetter, working on a doctorate degree in business administration, recently placed as second runner up in the Ms. Veteran America competition in Orlando, Fla. She was one of 20 finalists selected from around the country for the competition, sponsored by Final Salute Inc., a support organization helping homeless women veterans. More information on the organization can be found at the link here.
It’s something Tschetter has dedicated a big portion of her busy life to. The Texas native was a single mother of two when she joined the Army Reserve. She was encouraged to explore the military by her Navy veteran grandfather, and found her call to duty.
“I never saw myself, young, as joining the military,” she said during a recent visit with her husband to the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum in Waterloo. “It was after I had my kids that it kind of sparked and interest for me. I had a little bit of college under me, and it seemed like the right time.” She’d grown up listening to her grandfather’s Navy stories and he thought the service would be a good fit for her. He took her to the recruiting station and she enlisted.
“Being a single mom and trying to juggle that with the kids, I definitely had to have a lot of help on the side,” she said. “My grandparents helped me tremendously. My boys remember when they were quite small that they would go to drill with me. So I had a military family that actually helped with my boys as well.” Her grandparents and former husband helped on duty assignments.
“Many, many hands play in when you’re a mother, trying to raise two kids, trying to serve at the same time, trying to hold a job down, going to school still on the side. I was fortunate to have people help me on my journey.” Tschetter said.
While a Reservist, she received an active-duty overseas deployment to the Middle East in 2015-16. She and Jared met while preparing for that deployment, and they deployed together, although to different areas of the Middle East.
He was in Kuwait, Iraq and Egypt and she was in Jordan. She was a human resource-finance specialist. Drawing from her education and experience in the private sector, she negotiated contracts with a Jordanian representative and others on infrastructure installation and other work. She had worked in business and finance with the Texas-based Pilgrim’s Pride poultry company in civilian life. She received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Army in 2016.
She and Jared were married in 2017. They now live in Pella. He’s a native of southeast Iowa and graduated from high school in Hedrick, population 728, in Keokuk County.
While Jared had lived in Pella for many years prior to Brittny relocating there from Texas, Brittny made a lot of contacts in town through an additional enterprise: She’s a professional dog trainer, including service animals. She supports the “Pause for Paws” student canine therapy program at William Penn.
”I have this question posed to me a lot: How were you able to be a good mom and serve at the same time? Definitely if there’s a will, there’s a way to do it,” she said. “I think there is challenges that come with it. They talk about the sacrifice piece of that, when you start serving. And I think for mothers, single mothers, that have to share custody,” it’s a challenge.
In her situation, she found it best for her sons to stay in one place and her do the traveling between duty assignments.
”It was challenging sometimes,” she said, and the separation was difficult when she had to be on duty. It is part of the sacrifice of service. “You have to look at the bigger picture,” she said.
Now one son is in college and the other is a sophomore in high school and she’s retired from the military. But she’s still serving in an advocacy role for women veterans through Final Salute Inc., as the number and incidence of homeless women veterans increases.
According to research by the federal Veterans Administration, women veterans are twice as likely to end up homeless as women who did not serve in the military. While homelessness among male veterans decreased 3 percent from 2018 to 2019, homelessness among women veterans increased 2 percent for the same period.
Women make up 10 percent of the total veteran population, but their numbers have doubled over the past decade according to the VA, making them the fastest-growing segment of the veteran population. They face challenges returning to the civilian workforce after military service, particularly if they are single parents.
“Women want to serve. At the same time they’re trying to be a good mom, or trying to be a good wife, or they’re trying to have a career in this economy and they have to work really hard,” Tschetter said. “Sometimes it’s hard to have all those pieces come together.
“It’s definitely a different dimension or avenue women go through when they serve,” she said. “There’s different challenges, there’s different barriers in our way,” including getting promotions. Despite that, she said, “Women are rising. I think we’re getting better at placing women in high-ranking positions. But we still have a lot of work to do.
“Times are changing. It is getting easier for women to have their kids in the military,” Tschetter said. “More accommodations are being made for women that have kids in the military. If I were to enlist right now with two boys, there’s no way I would feel pressure to need to leave them behind. There’s so many resources now to accommodate me” — just as Final Salute Inc. is available for women veterans and their families, including those still on active duty.
“I really love the organization and what they’re doing,” she said. “Half of my duty is to spread the word and continue to inspire others to do the same thing.” Ms. Veteran America was established not only as a fundraising event for Final Salute, but to find veteran advocates for the organization.
“People a lot of times mistake Ms. Veteran America for a beauty pageant,” she said. “We do get in gowns and we are showcasing the woman behind the uniform as far as grace and beauty and poise and all of those things. It’s about how we can go out and support our sisters in arms and how well we can make those connections” with like-minded organizations and individuals to support them.
Tschetter applies the same zeal in her advocacy for women veterans to her business students at William Penn, some of whom come to campus from difficult living situations. She takes time to counsel them in academia and check on their well being. She’s encouraged a number of her business students in entrepreneurship and business startups, encouraging them to follow their dreams as she did.
“I think I enjoy teaching my students more than I would following a paycheck” in a conventional business job, she said. “I get to work with students and I get to build community at the university. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else than what I’m doing right now.”
Her students were “very supportive” of her competition in Ms. Veteran America. “They had a field day with it” — and it motivated them in terms of what they could accomplish in their own lives.
She also had a little help with her Ms. Veteran America competition from one of her students — Abi Baku-Tiako, who was crowned Miss Iowa in June. She will compete for the title of Miss America in 2025.
As part of the Ms. Veteran America competition, Tschetter also received the Serina Vine award — an award based on leadership in not leaving a veteran, students or anyone else behind. She was recommended by numerous superior officers she served with in the military. Serina Vine was a U.S. Navy World War II veteran who was found homeless in Washington D.C. and suffering from dementia. She was placed in a VA community living center and Final Salute Inc. head and Army Maj. Jaspen Boothe arranged for a turnout of 200 people at her 1995 funeral.
While at the competition in Orlando, Brittny took the opportunity, aided by her fellow contestants, to spring a bit of a surprise on her husband Jared. The couple had a chance to renew their wedding vows. The event fell close to their seventh wedding anniversary.
They had an informal wedding in 2017 at Comfort House hospice home in Pella in front of Jared’s father Jerry, prior to his passing later that year. Brittny wanted a more formal expression of love for her husband. Having won first place at the competition for best gown, and with many of her friends and contestants saying it looked like a bridal gown, and with Jared already in his dress uniform at the competition, it seemed the pieces had all fallen into place, like their relationship.
The spouse of one of the competition’s staff was a minister. Having taken second runner up honors, Brittny even had a bouquet of flowers for the renewal ceremony.
”I couldn’t have done anything I was doing without him,” she said of Jared, drawing a bit of an eye roll and chuckle from her husband. “He laughs, but every event I spoke at, he was there. Every time I needed to go somewhere or needed a dress or an outfit” or raising funds, “he was helping me. He’s a little modest about that, but he was doing much more in the background than anybody could see. That wasn’t just him. That was other husbands along the way.
“It just shows, when you have a military couple like this, the work they can do,” she said.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription .
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We need people like this woman to run for office. Great story, Pat!
Pat, thank you for this positive news on a deserving woman and her path.