She was just looking for a way to pay for college. So Anne Martin Weinberg enrolled in Marine Corps ROTC her freshman year. She figured she'd put in the required four years of active duty after graduation, then become a doctor.
But Weinberg never made it to medical school. As her service obligation was winding down in the winter of 1993, she found herself in Somalia, working with interpreters to locate hostile clans and weapons caches so that convoys could safely transport food through the countryside. That experience, Weinberg says, gave her "a sense not necessarily of patriotism, but purpose. It makes getting up and going to work that much more important."
After 11 years in the Marines, Weinberg is so much a soldier that she laments being stranded stateside with a knee injury during the Gulf War. Now a major,she is a branch chief at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., where she directs analysis of the North Korean military forces. "She's articulate and has a strong presence -- you know when she's in the room," says retired Maj. Al Edwards, who has known Weinberg since he oversaw her work in the early 1990s. "I wish there were 100 more of her running around in the Marine Corps."
Weinberg says being one of a few female Marines -- women make up just 4.8 percent of officers and 5.9 percent of enlisted personnel -- has its good and bad points. Some male colleagues view her as "the mom, the sister or the little daughter." Then again, her substantial tenure as a female Marine has earned her extra respect from many people, both inside and outside the military. And "I've gotten to do things women don't usually get to do," she says. "I've hung out of a helicopter on a spy rigging 200 feet above the ground, with six other people on the same rope, being flown across a river. Where else would you get to do that?"
Nevertheless, Weinberg plans to leave the military this fall. Her husband, Steve, finished law school in the spring, and the family, which includes Weinberg's stepdaughter, Elizabeth, 6, and son, David, 18 months, will move to San Francisco. Weinberg will look after David, who has a congenital condition that causes fluid to accumulate in his brain. "As much fun as I'm having, he's much more important to me," she says. In other words, Weinberg has found a new sense of purpose.
-- Kathy Zonana, '93, JD '96
