She was a straight-A student and a hard worker. But her meager circumstances offered little hope for the college degree she craved.
She worked menial jobs to keep her head above water. After two simultaneous layoffs, she made a decision that changed her life.
She joined the Army.
Sherry Barker-Jackson served for 20 years, surmounted gender bias and proved herself as a capable jill-of-any-trade by going beyond the call and working harder than any man had to.
The Army paved the way for her eventual bachelor's degree in psychology. The Army saved her.
Today, she's giving back. A service officer with the West Virginia Department of Veterans Assistance since 2004, she helps other veterans navigate the red tape that will land them the best possible benefits due them by Uncle Sam.
The early struggles, her Army training, the degree she earned in psychology and everything that happened along that journey prepared her for a role she loves as a problem solver for deserving veterans.
Kismet? Maybe.
She's 59.
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"I grew up in Spokane, Washington. I went to public school through fifth grade when I switched to a private religious school.
"My teachers always told me I was able to do anything I wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to be able to get a college education. I didn't come from a wealthy family.
"My dad was my step-dad, my mom's third husband. He was my mom's best friend for years. They didn't get married until I was an adult. He was blind, so I grew up living around people with disabilities. The sister of one of my best friends in high school was a burn victim and another friend had a sister who was born without arms.
"My mom, because we didn't have much money, would volunteer her time instead. She would get lists of people from the church who needed some help and she would find out what they needed and take them shopping and do chores for them. She would take me and my brother with her.
"We learned early on that it wasn't nice to get old and be alone and how hard it was to be able to take care of yourself. We also learned that a nursing home was where you went as a last resort. What my mom did helped people stay at home.
"I switched to public school my senior year and the private school wouldn't transfer my records, so even though I was an A student and a senior, I couldn't graduate. I got my GED five years out of school and passed with flying colors.
"I've been working since I was 11 on a special work permit. You learn that if you don't have a good education, you can't get a good job, and if you don't have a good job, you can't pay for that better education.
"I worked as a seamstress. I worked in furniture factories. I waited tables. I usually worked two jobs as once.
"There aren't many ways left in the United States where you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps, but the military is one of them. I wanted out of that cycle, the poor wages and poor jobs.
"When I decided to join the Army, it was because I lost two jobs in the same week. I didn't want to go on welfare. So I joined the Army in 2004.
"I trained in the signal corps. I was a radio man. There weren't any radio women. My first permanent unit was over 800 strong in one company. Of those, three were females. One was the commander's secretary. The other was a supply clerk, and then me.
"Everybody said, 'We don't want her, she's too little.' Really it was, 'We don't want her because we have no idea what to do with her.'
"I worked like a man. Every time I did a new job, I was never accepted for what I was. I had to be twice as good to be accepted as half as much. That's the way it was.
"My platoon sergeant discovered me when I was still a private. He discovered I was going to college, because the military paid 90 percent of my college. I was determined I was going to retire from the military and get my degree and nobody was ever going to offer me minimum wage again.
"He saw that I was going to school and taking secretarial skills. He asked me if I would mind setting up an office for him and handle paperwork when I wasn't in the field.
"He said we needed to do organizational maintenance for our signal equipment, so he sent me to train with a specialist in maintenance for the battalion.
"We were coming up on federal inspections and he loaned me out to various departments to get them ready to be inspected. I could make the paperwork right without pencil whipping it and do what needed to be done to be prepared.
"Before I left that first unit after five years I had more than 13 different jobs and most of them I was doing all at the same time.
"When we were fielded, I was a radio operator, and when we were in the rear, I did whatever else needed to be done plus my radio operator job.
"I went to the military education center and took the tests [for] some of my college. I passed all my tests at A levels so I didn't have to do my first year of college.
"When I transferred out of the signal corps and went into ordnance, I went into weapons systems. I wasn't more accepted there. In my 20 years in the military, that never changed.
"In ordnance, I did other things to meet the needs of my unit. I did training in between each job. By the time I transferred to my third unit, it was like, 'Welcome to the unit. Boy, have we got a job for you.'
"I was in the signal corps, ordnance, field infantry and special forces, quartermaster and again with infantry and a lot with maintenance. I went to Army aviation in my last years and once again worked with maintenance record keeping and with operations.
"I did a total of eight years in Germany and one tour of Korea for a year and a half. I got several awards for leadership classes or job training.
"I kept the same rank for many years. I got out as staff sergeant. I don't think they passed me over because I was a woman. I think it was because I served in multiple branches would always be new to that particular branch.
"I wasn't expecting it to be perfect, and it wasn't. But I was happy with my choice.
"I did more than four years of college in my first five years. I continued to take classes that interested me because they were covered by the military. I finished my bachelor degree in psychology after I retired.
"I figured the psychology degree would do me in good stead in business because a bachelor's in psychology means you know people and understand them. Psychology wasn't difficult for me because I'd been working with people from all walks of life from every possible environment and culture and they were all together in that great melting called the United States military. That gave me a good overview.
"I got involved with veterans affairs shortly after coming to West Virginia. A maintenance job for large-wheel trucks brought me here. I was a manager.
"My neighbor was a veteran and we talked. She said most veterans like to work for the state. She gave me the application. I took the tests. It took about a year before anyone was willing to interview me because of the salary I used to make. That was a problem I was having other places, too. It was 2004 when I took the job here.
"I love it. I learn something every day. I meet wonderful people and I get to help them. I help them understand their military benefits. I do the paperwork. I tell people, 'You talk. I type.'
"I fill out forms for them, give them resources, help them help themselves. Some are going broke because of their health or need additional funds to stay home or may have some disabilities. There are very few people I see that I can't help with something. I don't have a problem with red tape. That was my job in the military.
"I did pull myself up by my bootstraps. That's what I love about my country. That I can. I'm not stuck with what I was born into. I'm not stuck with poverty-stricken if I don't want to be there. There are things you can do for yourself.
"This is what I try to teach people who come in here. You are not stuck with where you are. You have to choose to make a change and that's scary. I don't try to push anybody off on any one benefit. I try to find out from them what is going to work best for them and help them get to that place.
"My life has not been easy. There aren't any things that people come here to talk about that I haven't experienced either with family members and friends or in my own personal life. I understand where they are coming from.
"We do the same thing I did in the military. We give them the tools, the training and information they need to make the change.
"In West Virginia, only veterans help veterans. To do my job, to be a service officer, you have to be a veteran. That's important because there is an understanding there.
"The military isn't right for everybody, but it was right for me. It was my way out. Here in West Virginia, it is a way out for a lot of people. It's a way to get an education, a way to prove yourself and get to know another culture and be somewhere and do something besides being born and living and dying in the same hollow."
Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com or 304-342-5027.