Mobility Warriors: Oldest flight nurse in Air Force Reserve still active, making a difference

Published Sept. 2, 2009
By Capt. Joe Knable
19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. -- The flight crew was alerted at 3:30 a.m. for an aeromedical evacuation mission. They hadn't eaten since the previous evening and wouldn't eat again for another day.

After a long but successful aeromedical evacuation mission aboard their Belgian C-130, which began at a simulated bare-base here and ended at Fort Polk, La., they were dropped off in thorny woods, given their coordinates and destination, and they were on their own all night long.

This crew of six coalition aircrew members, including two Belgian paratroopers, one Belgian pilot, one Belgian loadmaster, one Air Force AE flight technician and one flight nurse, were the only flight crew chosen to participate in a survival, evasion, resistance and escape exercise during Joint Readiness Training Center Exercise 09-09 at Fort Polk, La., and Little Rock AFB.

As the rain poured down on the face-painted, poncho-less evaders that day, a person might never have guessed that one of these six crewmembers who successfully evaded the dogs and SERE trainers until the exercise ended the next morning was the oldest flight nurse in the Air Force Reserve.

At almost 66 years old, Lt. Col. Emma Faulk, of the 452nd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron from March Air Reserve Base, Calif., is the oldest flight nurse in the Air Force Reserve. She is also the second-oldest person in the Air Force Reserve by only a month, said Renee D. Daughtry, executive officer for the director of manpower, personnel and services of Air Force Reserve Command.

Colonel Faulk is also older than any Air Force active duty nurse, said Maj. Melissa L. Mouchette, nurse utilization officer at Air Force Personnel Center. She may be the oldest flight nurse in the Air Force overall, but the Air National Guard was unable to confirm.

Most services require members to retire by age 60 without an age waiver. Colonel Faulk is currently on her third age waiver. She will be 67 years old when she retires in March 2011. Hers has been a remarkable, prolific life and career. "It's a full life," she explains enthusiastically. She loves what she does, even participating in exercises such as the JRTC exercise, she said.

Before she joined the Air Force in 1991, Colonel Faulk was already a wife, mother, and registered nurse. She worked for Kaiser-Permanente from 1982 until she retired for the first time in 1996 and earned her master's degree; she would still serve in the Air Force for fifteen years afterward.

When her children were older, Colonel Faulk looked into joining the military. "They put in a call for nurses for the first Gulf War and I answered the call," she said.

She initially tried the Navy, but by the time they reviewed her paperwork, they had reduced the age limit to 36. Colonel Faulk was 47.

"Then my husband saw a call for nurses in one of my nursing magazines; the Air Force age limit was still 47," a special age limit for nurses to support the war. The age limit brought with it a promised chance to serve 20 years and retire. She had already taken the Navy physical, so she quickly collected her package and took it to the Air Force Reserve recruiter.

Colonel Faulk said her husband of 25 years, Mason, is one of the main reasons she joined the Air Force and why she's stayed in and remained so active for 18 and a half years.

"He's been my inspiration, the force behind me," she said. He was a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot and was medically retired after he sustained a spinal cord injury when ejected out of his disabled F-8 Crusader in 1965. He is now a retired lawyer.

He swore in Colonel Faulk when she commissioned. "That was a great honor for me. He is my hero and my advocate, my biggest supporter and my pillar of strength," she said.

Colonel Faulk's children and grandchildren have made a large impact on her career as well, and her family has seen a great deal of adversity.

Many service members begin their careers around the same time their parents retire, but Colonel Faulk joined the Air Force the same year her son retired. Her son, Jeff, was medically retired from Army Special Forces in 1991 while she was at Air Force flight nurse school at Brooks City Base, Texas.

Colonel Faulk is the mother of four children and a grandmother to five.

Her middle son, Lance, who had just turned 36, passed away on her birthday during her deployment in November 2007. He had pinned on her lieutenant colonel rank less than two months earlier.

Her daughter, Heidi, passed away on her birthday four years earlier. They both died of congenital heart problems.

She says she handles adversity through prayer and faith. "I get my strength from God and have learned to trust in him for everything."

Colonel Faulk has been very busy during her 18 1/2 years in the Air Force Reserve.
"I have a spirit of adventure...If I can help, I'm there." She volunteers for everything and anything, she explained.

She has deployed three times -- in 2002, 2004 and 2007. During the first one, which she considers the best one, she traveled to 14 countries including Afghanistan, Oman and Djibouti evacuating patients and earned two flying achievement medals, which you receive for ten missions into the "-stans," she said.

Her contingency crew, made up of one flight nurse and two technicians, were the first ones to get deployed from her squadron after Sept. 11, 2001. During the second and third deployments, her AE crew was staged at Germany and they evacuated patients out of the hot zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Colonel Faulk has also participated in a variety of domestic missions including Hurricane Katrina relief, help for a hurricane in Hawaii, and two JRTC exercises, including this most recent one.

"It's been very challenging and rewarding. I've been all around the world," she said.

Colonel Faulk is driven to help patients and often thinks of innovative ways to care for them.

During her deployment in 2002, she discovered that patients were suffering life-threatening complications from fat emboli, or fat clots, caused by large bone injuries when they would fly. The fat breaks away from broken bones and gets into veins or arteries -- this causes strokes or other complications and the patient can die from it, she said.

She explained this to a Navy doctor who was releasing the patients for flight and recommended that he give the patients Lovenox to prevent the complication. Since the doctors are unable to follow-up with patients after they're released, he was unaware of the issue, but agreed with her suggestion and ordered the medicine for immediate use.

"I'm very thankful I'm able to help our troops and give back," she said.

During a mission to Panama, Colonel Faulk's bus almost hit a man with no legs who was pushing himself across the street on taped cardboard. Soon after the incident she began collecting, repairing and cleaning used wheelchairs to have them delivered to the Republic of Panama Rotary Club for distribution to needy people. She received a humanitarian award for her work.

The most difficult thing about the job is getting attached to the patients. One patient she helped medevac was a double amputee. He was using the maximum dosage of morphine but was still in tremendous pain. To help him, Colonel Faulk demonstrated deep breathing and prayer, and stayed with him through the flight.

"I wonder where he went, how he's doing," she said.

Colonel Faulk has remained just as active as a civilian nurse as she has for the Air Force. She is currently a public health nurse for the Veterans Administration Center at Long Beach where she manages four clinics: podiatry, prosthetics, orthopedics, and rehabilitation and follows through with patients to make sure they get what they need.

It will be her second retirement when she retires from the Air Force Reserve in 2011, but she plans to continue working as a VA nurse.

"I still have the drive. I still have the motivation. I just don't feel like I'm about to be 66 years old," she said.

She's works out several times a week and has passed every physical fitness test she's ever taken. She didn't think she'd still be here more than 18 years later. But she's still here and loving it, she said, and "can still do everything the younger kids can do."

"I feel very blessed to be an officer in the US Air Force...to help our U.S. troops and to be there when they needed help and needed medical evacuation," Colonel Faulk said. "I've had a very fulfilling career."