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Alicia Dietz was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the Army from 2001 to 2011. Here, she's in Egypt, having just completed her 1,000th hour of flight. (Photo by Maj. Richelle Treece, U.S. Army National Guard)
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Photo by Maj. Richelle Treece, U.S. Army National Guard
Alicia Dietz recalls the last day she wore her military uniform. She took a picture of herself and then took the uniform off and instantly became a civilian.
“It was like stepping off a cliff,” the Ohio-born Richmonder says. At first, there was a sense of opportunity as she envisioned a world of possibilities. “Then," she says, "I was like, ‘Who am I?’ ”
During 10 years as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot from 2001 to 2011, she knew. Dietz flew in Iraq, transporting VIPs such as Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and top civil administrator Paul Bremer; she led a maintenance company in Alaska, and she was aviation company commander with the Multinational Forces and Observers peacekeeping effort in Egypt. She flew along the Egyptian-Israeli border.
“I really felt like I fit into that environment,” she says. “Leading was a rush for me — to see what made the soldiers tick, getting to know their families.”
After leaving the Army, like many veterans pursuing a new career, she faced a disorienting transition into a culture that operates with a different set of rules and expectations, one without the familiar jargon and the bond of shared experience. These challenges, and efforts to connect veterans with jobs, will be part of the discussion Nov. 1 from 6 to 8 p.m., as The Valentine begins its seventh Community Conversations series (Richmond magazine is a presenting partner).
The theme of the evening is “freedom,” but the topics aren’t necessarily what you’d expect. As Valentine Director Bill Martin explains it, this series begins a three-year exploration of indicators contained in the RVA Snapshot report from the Capital Region Collaborative, an effort to improve the quality of life throughout the Richmond area.
We all have beliefs about freedom, about giving and philanthropy, about education, about families. Something the conversations will consider, he says, is “where do those beliefs come from, and how can we use these core beliefs as the region looks at some of its challenges?” There will also be opportunities to put words into action for people who want to get involved.
The Nov. 1 discussion will look at human trafficking — “which may be the ultimate loss of freedom,” Martin says — in a five-minute TED talk-style event led by Fay Chelmow of Impact Virginia. Access to housing is another topic: Bob Adams of HD Advisors will speak on the role of land trusts to keep housing affordable as neighborhood real estate values increase. As for veterans’ employment, Martin says, “After you have served to protect our freedom, you should have the freedom to have a job when you return.” Matt Kellam, military and recruitment programs coordinator with Dominion, will talk about the company’s initiatives related to hiring veterans.
Matt Kellam is Dominion's military and recruitment programs coordinator. (Photo courtesy Dominion)
Any of of those topics would make good column fodder, but given some of the attention Richmond magazine has paid recently to housing issues and human trafficking — and mindful of the approach of Veterans Day on Nov. 11 — I decided to give Kellam a call. He’s been involved with Dominion’s veterans program since 2011, when the company partnered with five others to launch an effort called Troops to Energy Jobs. Kellam, who served in the Marine Corps Reserves for six years, also represents Dominion in the steering committee for the state's Virginia Values Veterans (V3) program. Begun in 2012, V3 offers training, education and certification for employers and connects them with veterans seeking employment.
Driving those programs was an increase in veterans entering the workforce because of military downsizing. Andrew Schwartz, V3 program manager, says that about 200,000 people leave the U.S. military each year. Since the launch of V3, he says, 700 companies have signed up for the program, and they've hired nearly 20,000 veterans.
At Dominion, veterans make up 20 percent of the people hired since 2011, and they represent 11 percent of the company’s workforce, up from 8 percent in 2010. It makes sense to hire veterans, Kellam says. “The type of work the company has done aligns well with the type of work and skill sets the military has.” Veterans have a strong work ethic, they’re trained to emphasize safety and look out for each other, and they’re also civic-minded, Kellam adds. Through a company resource group, Dominion Veterans Network, they recruit other veterans, help new hires transition into the job and give back to the community through organizations such as Wounded Warriors and programs that offer housing.
Dominion recruiter Saddiq Holliday (left) talks with service members at the company’s military job fair held on March 30 at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach. (Photo by Daisy Pridgen/Dominion)
“By employing our veterans and keeping them employed, that’s a part of freedom,” Kellam says. “They’re able to do so much more.”
For her part, Dietz, the former Black Hawk pilot, is taking an entrepreneurial route post-military, crafting furniture and conceptual pieces out of wood. She decided that the 10-year mark was a good time to transition away from military service. She had already stayed in longer than the six years required as part of her ROTC scholarship and flight training. In 2011, she was 32, still young enough, she thought, to start a new civilian career. She moved to Richmond, the home of her partner, also a military veteran. With funding through the GI Bill, she attended Vermont Woodworking School and then earned a Master of Fine Arts in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Craft and Material Studies.
“All of my work in grad school was about transition to civilian life,” she says. “It was much more difficult than I thought it was going to be.”
In the military, Dietz felt confident. She was part of a team. She belonged. She knew what her mission, task and purpose were.
“I realized I didn’t have that anymore, in the daily sense,” she says. Through her graduate thesis project, “Collective Cadence,” she reconnected with other veterans and active service members and their families by collecting 127 stories (so far) and presenting them in a series of wooden boxes grouped by blood type — one way every military person is identified — in a design that suggests a digital camouflage pattern.
Two sections of this work are on display at the Hull Street branch of the Richmond Public Library through Nov. 15 as part of the Artober happenings throughout the area. On Nov. 1, the same evening as the Valentine talk, she’ll lead a discussion at the library from 6:30 to 8 p.m., joined by a couple of people whose stories are told, and participants in the Mighty Pen Project, which helped arrange the exhibition through CultureWorks. The entire "Collective Cadence" work will travel to the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft for display in the "United by Hand" exhibition from Feb. 3 to May 28, 2017.
Two sections of Alicia Dietz's "Collective Cadence" are on display at the Hull Street branch of the Richmond Public Library through Nov. 15. (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
After our interview, Dietz and I headed to the library to take a look at her work. She stopped at one box containing a picture of two young men and a woman in dress clothes, smiling and posing with cigars. This one is personal, she says. The woman, Sara, was someone she had mentored and who had become a good friend. Sara was killed in a helicopter crash March 11, 2013, during a storm in Afghanistan. The writing is from one of the young men in the picture, Robbie, sharing how he had to suppress his grief the day he found out, while conducting a mission. As with the other stories in her piece, Dietz condensed it into a poetic form and pulled out a single phrase to engrave on the box: "Friendships rarely have the luxury of time."
Through "Collective Cadence," Dietz has found a new mission, task and purpose in her civilian life. The sections of the exhibition are held secure by burlap sacks. As an explanatory panel notes, concealment on the battlefield is necessary for survival, but away from the battlefield, transparency enables survival. For her, storytelling is its own form of freedom.
"Sharing other people's stories has allowed me to share my own in the sense of a shared community," she says. "I don't feel alone and [now] feel part of this larger group, just as I did when I was in the Army — that I am an individual and have my own experience, but that this experience is also part of the larger picture and collective experience."
