A PATRIOTIC SPIRIT

BY LYNN SCHNEIDER

As Director of Resident Life at Shell Point, Laura Slack oversees the planning and implementation of the numerous special events and activities that residents enjoy every month.

“Growing up, I wanted to be Julie McCoy, the cruise director on the TV show The Love Boat,” said Laura. “I always liked planning trips and activities for my family and friends.”

Laura was born in 1959 in Levittown, Pennsylvania to Richard and Jean Birchard. Her father owned a landscaping company, and her mother was a stay-at-home mom. As the oldest of five children, Laura was often put in charge of her younger siblings.

During her childhood, the family moved around to a number of small towns in the Pennsylvania area including Glenolden, Exton and Cochranville. “We lived in the country surrounded by farmland.”

When Laura was in the seventh grade, her father purchased an old farm with a farmhouse that was built in 1801. The family moved into the farmhouse and they turned the barn into a large garden center, Birchards Nursery and Garden Center.

The land was zoned for agriculture, so they had to grow half of what they sold. All of the kids worked on the farm in the summer and in the garden center and greenhouse in the winter. “It was tough work,” said Laura. “They would call it character-building nowadays.”

In addition to the other plants, the family sold Christmas trees, which they had delivered in November and sold in the nursery. “My dad would load up a truck and go to another town after Thanksgiving to sell trees until Christmas Eve,” she said.

In addition to working at the garden center, Laura also worked at several part-time jobs throughout her years at Octorara High School until she graduated in 1977. “Frankly, I knew that to find my future, I had to leave our small town, and I couldn’t wait to see the rest of the world.”

Laura started her military service at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas for basic training, followed by an assignment in Wichita Falls, Texas, and then on to one of her favorite assignments, Hickham Air Force Base in Oahu, Hawaii. Following her time in Hawaii, Laura also had assignments in Omaha, Nebraska and Boston, Massachusetts.

On the advice of a cousin who was in the Army, Laura visited a recruiting center. “He advised that I should not go into the Army, so I chose the Air Force,” she said.

Laura was sent to Philadelphia to take several aptitude tests. “When the scores came back, they suggested I should be a cook or go into computers. I chose computers.”

Laura shipped off for six weeks of basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where she studied the Air Force mission, organization and customs, while receiving additional training in human relations. In addition, she earned credits towards an Associate degree in applied science through the Community College of the Air Force. “This was my first time to be away from my family, and it was especially hard that first Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s,” she said. “I had mixed feelings. I was feeling a combination of excitement for the future with ‘oh, no, what have I done!’”

Following basic training, Airman Laura Birchard was assigned to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, where she received specialized training in telecommunications as a teletype operator. “At the end of our training, they sat us down and told us to fill out a ‘Dream Sheet’ with the three top choices of where we would like to be stationed. They specifically said not to waste one of our spots by putting down Hawaii because no one ever gets it straight out of basic training,” said Laura. “But I decided to go for it and I put down Hawaii. And that’s where I was stationed.”

Laura was stationed at Hickham Air Force Base on Oahu. The base was attached to Pearl Harbor and adjacent to Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii. She was one of very few women stationed at Hickman at that time.

Laura discovered a love for Oahu and the other nearby islands. During her free time, she enjoyed water skiing, hiking, exploring the local waterfalls, visiting the scenic landmarks, swimming, snorkeling, and hanging out with her friends from the military. “I loved everything about the islands,” she said. “It was so different from my experience growing up in Pennsylvania.”

“I had a lot of visitors while I was stationed in Hawaii,” said Laura. “It was so cheap to hop to the other islands back then. Plus, I was able to take two military hops to Japan and Korea for $20.”

One of Laura’s most vivid memories of her time in Hawaii was December 7, 1981 when the 40th anniversary of Pearl Harbor was commemorated. “My parents and my grandmother were visiting me at the time, and we attended the service in the Memorial

Laura was surrounded by a tropical paradise, but went to work every day in a huge room that was kept ice cold. “You had to wear a parka because it was so cold and a pair of sound-muffling headphones to protect your ears because the computers were so loud.”

“I did that job for a while, and then they moved me to a new assignment where I worked in ground communications to an airborne command post. My job was to relay messages from the ground command to the airplanes above.”

Laura enjoyed working in this capacity but realized that she would rather be up in the air instead of on the ground. “My two-year assignment was coming to an end. I made the decision to go up in the air, so I applied for a job change to become a teletype operator in the air. I got the transfer, which required more schooling — including two weeks of survival training.”

“At that time, I was one of a very small number of females and the leadership hated that I was there. Survival school was usually only pilots and co-pilots, but now they were going to send all the team members,” said Laura. “Everyone knew how hard it would be so they sent me first, hoping I would fail.”

Cemetery of the Pacific, where war dead are buried in an extinct volcanic crater known as the Punchbowl, overlooking the capital city Honolulu.”

Thousands of people, including survivors, came to participate in the traditional laying of wreaths and the minute of silence at 7:55 A.M., the precise time when the attack began, killing more than 2,400 Americans, destroying 18 naval ships and 321 planes in the sneak assault.

“The program included recognizing the surviving Pearl Harbor veterans who shared their stories of that day and thanking them for their service,” she said. “The event ended with a thrilling military flyover.”

“Survival school was unlike anything I could ever imagine. We were left in the woods to survive, and then we were thrown into a mock concentration camp where we endured physical punishment and extensive mind games. Small cells. No sleep. No food. Loud music playing. Every time they moved us, they put bags over our heads. At one point, I was placed into a 55-gallon drum and they put a lid on it and covered it in dirt. It was grueling, and I wondered if I was going to make it. But, at the very end when we finished, they raised the American flag and played the national anthem. I had never been very patriotic growing up, but at that moment, I realized how much that flag meant. When that flag went up, I was so proud to be an American, and that feeling has never gone away.”

Following survival school, Laura was shipped to her new station in Omaha,

Nebraska at the Offutt Air Force Base, which was the strategic air command headquarters.

During this time, America was in the middle of the Cold War with Russia. Because of this serious threat, Offutt had an airplane called the Looking Glass, which was flown 24-hours a day, seven days a week to carry a General in the air so that in the event of a nuclear war, if the President and executive leadership were wiped out, this General would become the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

“I arrived at Offutt in 1982, when women were not allowed to go into combat. I was an Airman First Class and worked as a teletype operator. They were very unsure what to do with me because I was one of the first women to be on this aircraft. It was fine while we were in the air, but on the ground, I was treated like a second-class citizen. There was a lot of animosity toward the few women who were stationed at this base, but I knew I was pioneering this for other women in the future.”

“Although the attitudes of the upper leadership were frustrating, the work was exciting and I loved it,” she said. “We would practice operations in the event there was ever a war, including releasing fake missiles out of the silos and running drills. I was part of a team that included the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and about twelve other staff. We even had a chef because the General was on board, so we ate like kings and queens up there!”

Laura flew 2,000 hours during her time in Omaha. Prior to leaving Omaha, she tested and made Sergeant before she transferred to her next base, in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for the military. Here Laura’s previous real-life experiences helped her in her work regarding sexual harassment and racial discrimination.

Laura met her future husband in

Boston. Jeff Slack was also stationed in the Air Force. “When we were dating and decided that we were going to get married, we realized that we did not want to try to have a family and be in the service where we might be separated or required to move all around.” ple had their son Christopher.

For the next four years, Laura held positions at Architectural Resources and Charter Glade Hospital before working 19 years at Gulf Coast Village in Cape Coral, where she started as activities director, advanced to director of programming, and eventually was responsible for opening the adult daycare program. “I discovered I loved working with older adults,” she said. During this time, Laura added a second Associates degree from Edison State College and a Bachelor of Business Administration from University of South Florida to her resume. From 2008 to 2010, Laura and Jeff moved to North Carolina where she became the executive director for the United Way, and in 2010 to 2015, she worked for the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi. In 2016, she came to Shell Point as Director of Resident Life.

Today, Laura is surprised that she has indeed become the Shell Point version of Julie McCoy, cruise director. “I absolutely love my job, and every day is different,” she said. “The growth in our department and the new levels of sophistication that we can offer through the Tribby Arts Center are truly exciting.”

The young couple honorably discharged from the military. They got married in August 1985 in New Jersey. Immediately afterward, they moved to Fort Myers Beach, where Laura’s father had moved to open a little Italian restaurant. Laura helped her father in the restaurant while Jeff went to work for Robb & Stucky. In 1991, the cou-

Laura is also proud to be able to serve the veterans of Shell Point through the numerous patriotic programs that she and her team plan each year such as the Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Veterans’ Day programs. In 2021, with the help of resident Roland Garlinghouse, Shell Point was able to participate in the exciting Operation September Freedom event presented by Dream Flights, which allowed World War II veterans the opportunity to fly in a Stearman biplane.

“Interacting with the residents of Shell Point reminds me every day what a special place this is,” said Laura. “I could never have dreamed when I was growing up on the farm that my life would turn out this way. I am just so thankful.”