By Philip E. Jenks

San Antonio, Tex. -- Lorraine K. Potter will be the first to tell you.

"I never liked being first," she admits. "Even at birth I did not want to be first. My twin sister was born one hour before I was born."

But the petite and affable Lorraine discovered that some of the doors God was showing her had been sealed tight for centuries.

"I accepted the Lord Jesus as my personal savior at 12 years of age," says Lorraine. "I was determined to faithfully respond to God's direction. My mother is a lay minister in the American Baptist Churches. There was nothing strange or revolutionary to me about a woman preaching."

American Baptists had been ordaining women since the Civil War, but when Lorraine experienced a call to ministry, the ordination door hung on rusty hinges in many American Baptist regions. "In 1971 local churches in our American Baptist denomination were not really open to a woman pastor, unless they could not afford to pay for a 'real' -- that is, male -- minister."

But Lorraine's calling to ministry was unambiguous and she earnestly prepared for it. She graduated from Keuka College in New York's Finger Lake region and earned her master of divinity degree at the ecumenical Colgate-Rochester/Crozer Theological Schools. She did two-years post-graduate work at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Still, she says, in the early seventies, the idea of a woman minister had not caught on everywhere.

"There was a concern that a woman should 'not speak in church,'" she recalls, "unless it was to stand in the pulpit to announce, 'Anybody with a name beginning with A through G, bring a vegetable dish; H through M bring a desert; N through Z bring a main dish...' But don't tell of God's love -- unless you can sing it or play a musical instrument."

Be that as it may, Lorraine Potter was convinced that her calling was to do precisely that: tell of God's love. If that meant pushing through a few shut doors, so be it.

Her personal biography, which describes her with some understatement as a "trailblazer in civilian ministry and military chaplain leadership for over 35 years," puts it succinctly:

"She was the first woman ordained by the American Baptist Churches USA in the state of Rhode Island in 1971. She became the first woman chaplain in the United States Air Force, commissioned in 1973 ... She was the first woman chaplain in all military services to be promoted to colonel in 1992; brigadier general in 1999; and major general in 2001, assuming the position of Chief of Air Force Chaplains."

The steady accumulation of "firsts" belies the fact that it was always an uphill journey.

"I wrote to the Chief of Air Force Chaplains in 1972, asking if it were possible for a woman to serve as a military chaplain," Lorraine recalls. "The initial response was a form letter defining the qualifications: a bachelor's degree, a three-year seminary degree, ordination by a denomination or religious organization, two to three years pastoral experience -- and be male. I met all but one of the qualifications. I accepted that. I knew God had a plan.

Several weeks after her initial letter, Lorraine received a second letter stating that the Chief of Chaplains had dropped the gender requirement. "The letter said, if my church says yes to the endorsement, then it is possible." At the time, the American Baptist chaplain endorsing agent was a retired Air Force colonel chaplain named Charles Wills, and his boss was the Rev. Dr. Paul Madsen. The denomination endorsed Lorraine to apply to the Air Force chaplaincy. She was commissioned as a first lieutenant on September 27, 1973 -- the first woman ever to serve as an Air Force chaplain.

"A few Air Force chaplains challenged me that I was taking a great job away from qualified, 'more deserving men," she says. Later, when she was assigned to a base in Europe, airmen walked out of the chapel when she preached. "They would wait until I approached the pulpit and then leave. After too many weeks of this I told my boss they may have a right to their prejudices but they do not have the right to disrupt others in worship." The word got out that Chaplain Potter was about to confront the young airmen the next time they walked out. "It never happened again," she says.

As Lorraine rose through the ranks, her critics either suggested that she was being promoted because of her gender or continued to express their disapproval of a woman chaplain. "My chaplains do not like women," one endorsing agent complained loudly. But another endorser replied, "That's too bad, because most men do like women. Tell me about it." It felt good, Lorraine recalls, to have a gallant defender. "I chuckled inside."

Lorraine's promotion to "bird" colonel in December 1992 was an affirmation of her gifts for the chaplaincy. Until then, no woman chaplain in the U.S. armed forces had attained the rank, and Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak organized a promotion ceremony in the Pentagon to celebrate the milestone. Lorraine's husband, Chaplain (Colonel) Robert "Rocky" Saunders, could hardly restrain his pride.

Rocky asked Lorraine if she found herself staring in the mirror in awe of her new eagles, and she said she had not thought about it. "However, later that very same day I was walking into my office building at Bolling Air Force Base and noticed a woman colonel walking toward me. I was excited for this opportunity to meet her because I had only met a few women colonels and all were in the nurse corps. To my great surprise, no one else was there -- it was my own reflection in the door."

From that point on, Lorraine's skills as an empathetic administrator led to increasingly responsible positions. She was named executive director of the Armed Forces Chaplain's Board, then command chaplain of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), then command chaplain for Air Education and Training Command, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.

"In all of this," she says, "I saw the U.S. doing ministry and the work of the Gospel around the world. The Air Force mission in Europe was to establish and maintain peace in Bosnia, rescue weak and endangered refugees, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, heal the sick and injured through humanitarian relief. This was a calling outlined in Isaiah 61:1-2, and quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18-19."

In December 1999, when she and Rocky were in San Antonio, Lorraine fell and hit her head and was rushed to the emergency room. Rocky rushed to her side. "I told him I was okay but had a bad headache," she says. "I then told him I had other news. General Lloyd W. "Fig" Newton, my commander, had seen me at the Christmas party earlier that day and, standing by the meatballs on the buffet table, said, 'Tomorrow history is to be made. One Airman Lorraine Potter is on the list for brigadier general.' After what seemed like a long pause, Rocky said, 'How hard did you hit your head?'"

Lorraine served as Deputy Chief of Chaplains for 18 months and was named Chief of Chaplains in May 2001.

Her tour as Chief took place at a critical time in world history, including the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The years also challenged the ecumenical and interfaith skills of a Chief of Chaplains who proudly considers herself an American Baptist evangelical. There were widespread reports of Christian chaplains and senior officers attempting to evangelize airmen of other faiths, and it fell to the Chief to model an approach that made people more comfortable with the faith they already had.

"The role of the chaplain is not to use superior rank to coerce those who are junior to you into a church," Lorraine says. "When I was Chief I often said that chaplains are visible reminders of the holy, but by doing that we have to walk the walk. As St. Francis said, at all times preach the gospel -- and only when necessary use words."

Lorraine Potter retired from active duty on June 1, 2004, and she and Rocky live in San Antonio. Today her professional activities include guest speaker and preacher for military and civilian organizations and volunteer chaplain at local nursing homes in the San Antonio area -- "My first love," she says.

Looking back on the many doors she has helped to open, she believes deeply that her story is uniquely American.

"The added privilege and responsibility that came with my promotions are the boundless opportunities to encourage and mentor others. When they would see this five-foot woman with stars on her shoulders, they would think, 'If she can do it, I can, too!' To which I say, 'Amen. Reach for the 'stars' and become the best God wants you to be."

NCC News contact:  Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228 (office), 646-853-4212 (cell) , pjenks@ncccusa.org