The armed forces taught Senior Master Sergeant Cathi Bradford many valuable lessons which she is now passing along to her students at Hanceville Middle School.

It was 1986, and as young woman who had grown up surrounded by the women’s rights movement throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s Bradford was taken aback by an interaction that occurred between her and her boss while working as a secretary at an engineering office.

“One morning, I had come to work and one of the engineers came out and sat a can of Pledge and a dust rag on my desk and said, ‘Hey, we’re having a meeting. I need you to go in and get the conference room tidied up.’ I didn’t say anything, I mean I was respectful and I went and did what I was supposed to do, but I was like ‘I am not dusting tables,’” Bradford said.

Bradford decided to begin a career in the armed forces by studying avionics and working on test sets that ensured all of the equipment onboard the aircrafts were functioning properly. When she was assigned to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to work on the F-4, she said that she knew very little about aircrafts and did not realize that the plane was in the process of being phased out of service.

After less than two years of active duty the aircraft was retired and Bradford’s job was eliminated. Rather than starting her technical training over with another aircraft, Bradford chose to apply for separation and return to her home in Connecticut. That was until she became aware of Operation Desert Storm.

“I saw Desert Storm happening on television and I wanted to be involved. I think it was just like that patriotism thing. I know it sounds corny, but I just wanted to be a part of it. So, I went back down to the recruiter’s office and signed up to be in the reserves and went to work at Westover Air Reserve Base. I did basically the same job, but it was on the test sets for the electronics on the C-5 aircraft,” she said.

Bradford would go on to be stationed in Saudi Arabia during her participation in Operation Southern Watch where she earned her Veteran of Foreign Wars status. During this time she was living in building #131 of the Khobar Towers building just one year prior to a terrorist attack that resulted in its destruction and the deaths of 19 Air Force personnel.

Throughout her life, though, Bradford said that teaching had always remained somewhere in the back of her mind, and when her two daughters started to attend school at their local church in Cocoa Beach, Fla., those thoughts began to surface.

“They called me one day and said they needed help, so I thought Ok, I guess I could do that.’ I just felt the need and the call to do it, and I’ve been teaching ever since,” Bradford said.

The move to Hanceville came when her husband — who is originally from the area — began to search for work closer to his hometown when the space shuttle program that he had been employed with was retired. She then utilized the military’s Troops to Teachers program to earn her teaching certificates to teach in Alabama, and became employed at Hanceville in 2007 where she has remained, and passes the lessons that the military taught her along to her students.

“Integrity is a big one. I talk to the kids about integrity, I ask them ‘You know what integrity means? It’s doing the right thing when no one’s looking.’ That’s what we try to teach our kids,” she said.

Bradford said she isn’t sure now what she expected when she first walked into the recruiters office all those years ago, or what caused her to choose the Air Force over the other branches — she remembers having to pass by the Army recruitment office to reach the Air Force recruiter — but she is sure of what the Air Force has given her.

“It helped me become more confident. It gave me direction in my life — because I don’t think I had very good direction in my life — and it helped set me on a course to become successful … and I would be remiss if I didn’t say my love of my country. We have the best place in the whole wide world right here, I love my country,” she said.