For years she traveled around the world, making her home wherever her husband was assigned—Japan, Europe, Central America. These days, though, author Gilberta Guth Pierson keeps her travels a little closer to home, following the publicity circuit for her first book, The Fighter Pilot’s Wife: A Military Family’s Story. The memoir, published by Call Sign Press, chronicles Gilberta’s courtship and 45-year marriage to Air Force pilot Joe Guth, many of those years set against the backdrop of the Korean and Vietnam wars and the ever-present specter of danger and loss haunting their relationship.

“Although world affairs and armed conflicts change, some things about the military will never change. The danger and the living with potential loss, the separations and the necessity of moving from place to place remain the same,” reflects Gilberta. “It’s essential for the spouse and family of the soldier, the pilot, or the sailor to hold in high respect the chosen career of the military spouse. In the case of my life as a pilot’s wife, it became apparent very early on that flying was a passion. The more respect spouses have for that passion, whether it’s flying, ground soldiering, or sailing, the more flexible their thinking will be. Flexibility and acceptance are essential elements in the military life.”

Military life and the strains it puts on a family are really only fully understood by other military families. In writing this book, however, Gilberta strives to pay tribute to the lifestyle that defined her family for so many years while making that lifestyle accessible to the civilian. More than a war story, it is a love story.

Following the death of her husband in 1998, Gilberta began to compile Joe’s letters to her, typing each of them into the computer with the idea of giving copies to each of their four children. What began as a simple project evolved into a book and became, as Gilberta describes it, “a wonderful source of healing for me as I worked through my grief over the loss of Joe.”

Besides being a chronicle of their experiences as a military family, the book also delves into the Guths’ lives after Joe’s retirement from the Air Force, a turning point which brought the family to northern California. Gilberta earned her master’s in education from Dominican in 1976. “Since I had been mostly a stay-at-home mom for 20 years, I was pretty unsure of myself in an academic setting when I started my master’s program,” she recalls. To this day, she keeps the paper on which Dr. Bob Shukraft, former chair of the psychology department, wrote: “The time is approaching when you no longer will feel it necessary to apologize for your own level of understanding.” These words of encouragement have stayed with Gilberta. “Dr. Shukraft was unfailingly supportive, encouraging, and positive,” she remembers. “It was a great loss to Dominican and the community when he passed away.”

Gilberta credits her master’s degree with opening up a new world of opportunities for her. “It’s vital for women to pursue their own diverse interests and goals so that, in addition to marriage, children, and family, they have additional options to choose from, and to pursue after their children have grown. Whether they have chosen marriage or the single life, it’s important that they have something ‘of their own.’”

In the late 1970s, Gilberta was hired by Catholic Social Services to implement an employment assistance program for Southeast Asian refugees in San Francisco, and a few years later, she designed a similar program for residents of the City of Novato. Working with refugees was an experience that enriched her life and informed her conscience. Now embarking on a career as an author, a path which first came to her interest as a young college student in Arizona, Gilberta once again sees an opportunity for her work to benefit those in need. She has chosen to donate ten percent of her book sales to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, a cause which is dear to her. The Fund, originally established to provide aid to families of United States and British military personnel who are killed in action in the Middle East, is putting its resources towards the construction of a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center for amputees and other severely wounded troops. “As in every war, the physically and emotionally wounded warriors must be cared for. The Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio will be an innovative, technologically advanced rehabilitation facility,” Gilberta shares. “I’m honored to be part of helping to spread the word about the project as well as contributing in a small way to such a worthy cause.”

Send an email to the alumni office, alumni@dominican.edu or contact Mark Jaime, director of alumni relations: mark.jaime@dominican.edu, 415-485-3240.