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Happenstance: The Inspirational Journey of CAPT Sunita Williams
Happenstance: The Inspirational Journey of CAPT Sunita Williams
By LT Elisha “Grudge” Clark, USN
Stop Saying “Thing”
It was an unordinary day in 1988 on a T-34 flight line when future aircraft commander, test pilot, and astronaut Suni Williams walked out to her first aircraft.
“So, tell me what’s going on here,” her onwing asked, pointing at the unassuming turboprop engine expectantly.
Flashing forward to the present, Suni recounts the interaction: “I remember him asking me how the engine worked,” she recalled. “I kept saying ‘this thing is connected to that thing,’ and ‘this thing does this,’ and finally he said…”
“Hey!” the instructor frowned. “Stop saying thing.”
Any Student Naval Aviator (SNA), current or former, can relate to this moment. You are asked a question you don’t know the answer to. Your reaction to this particular type of stressor potentially, among other factors, hold the key to your future success or failure.
Suni’s experience was no different. “Nice guy, but he was putting his foot down,” she said about her onwing. “At the Naval Academy, my grades weren’t that great. I think my foundation as an engineer was a little bit loose. When I went to flight school I just wanted to get in there and fly. It took someone to say: ‘hey, you need to pay attention. If you have a problem, you have to understand the aircraft so you can fly it.’”
For Suni, the struggle ensued throughout primary, although eventually the lightbulb did come on. She likes to remind us: “I am through and through a rotorhead,” despite her desire to fly jets after T-34 primary training. Her priority was making it to the fight.
“When I started, there were limited spots for women in combat.” At the time, the combat restriction on female servicewomen had not been entirely lifted, and wouldn’t be until 1993. It was only 1989 when Suni earned her wings.
“I knew there weren’t many billets to do something operational, so I was excited to fly helicopters. I knew with helicopters I could deploy on ships. I wanted to do the job, get out there, and do the Navy thing.”
Proving her dedication to her platform, after her first fleet tour she turned down the opportunity to transfer to the jet community.
“I told them: nah, I really love this. I never remembered a struggle in helicopters. It just felt natural. I always tell people: I can teach you how to hover. Just point that way and then keep pointing that way. Anyone can do it, it just takes a little concentration. You just can’t take your eye off the ball.”
Suni is certainly one of those people who never took her eye off the ball.
Grow Where You’re Planted
“I’d absolutely describe myself as a glutton for punishment,” she chuckled as she recounted her path to the Naval Academy.
Although she was born in Ohio, Suni attributes her firmness of spirit to her upbringing in Massachusetts.
“Growing up there really shaped me because people from Boston are a little rough around the edges,” she recalled when asked to describe how her childhood had shaped her. “There was no intention for me to go into the military when I was little or when I was in high school, but I ended up getting into the Naval Academy and was looking at my options. I didn’t expect it to be such a good fit. I had long hair, I was a swimmer, I wanted to be a veterinarian, but my life came together when I went to the Naval Academy.”
As the main influence in her life, Suni’s family encouraged her to test the limits of her comfort zone. Her father, born in India, overcame struggles that echo a message Suni still follows.
“Gandhi was always my hero. Accomplished so much with so little. [He and my father] taught me that you can do whatever you want to, even if you start from zero.” Her father studied to become a doctor while in India, moving to America and starting his residency at Case Western Reserve University in his later 20s.
Ohio is where he met Suni’s mother, who was working at the same hospital as an x-ray technician and studying to be a nurse. She remembers her upbringing with her Mom fondly: “my mom was always a great role model. She’s the type of person who always has a pot of coffee, cookies, and is just a nice person to everyone no matter who they are.”
A few years after the pair were married and Suni was born, they picked up and moved to Boston, where her father rose to become a pillar of the community in medical academia. “This is why I never thought of the military. I always thought I was destined to join the scientific community.”
Suni seemed to be on a path toward vet school or professional athleticism toward the end of high school. Sometimes it only takes one person to change the trajectory of where life seems to be going. This happens to Suni quite often, in what she describes as “happenstance.” Her brother had gone to the Naval Academy four years before her, influencing her decision to apply. “He knew it would be hard, but he also knew it was something I could do,” she recalled fondly. “It’s not what I thought I was going to do, but I loved the teamwork aspect and being part of something bigger than yourself. You gravitate toward [the military community] if it’s in your personality.”
Along with her mom and dad, her older brother continued to be a robust influence in Suni’s life, encouraging her at plebe summer in 1983.
“He said: ‘take a chill pill kid, you’re going to be alright.’”
Five and Out
After earning her wings in July of 1989, Suni moved on to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron Three (HC-3), where she learned how to fly the H-46, and then ultimately was assigned to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron (HC-8) in Norfolk, Virginia. She participated in multiple deployments to the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf in support of Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort 1. At the end of her fleet tour in 1992, she was entrusted with the responsibility of Officer in Charge in Miami for relief from Hurricane Andrew. At the time, the commitment for Naval Aviators was 5 years after wings, and Suni had started with the “five and out” mentality. Another happenstance moment changed that trajectory.
“People noticed that I was very curious about how things worked. One of the senior enlisted told me I should go to Test Pilot School (TPS). Good people around you who understand what you are interested in are so important.” She applied and was accepted, starting TPS in 1993.
For Suni, this was when “five and out” started to turn into a career. She graduated from TPS in December of 1993 and began testing. She filled her logbook with over ten different types of aircraft, including the SH-60B/F and CH-53.
“I really did like testing. I had the opportunity to fly everything in the Navy and Marine Corps at the time. Let’s change an engine, let’s change a rotor head and test it out, see how it works. I even ended up going back to TPS as an instructor.”
The stay-go decision can be a tumultuous one for Naval Aviators, and it was no different for Suni.
“I didn’t have too many options at the time,” she said chuckling. “They said to me: ‘you just got off a pretty good tour so if you want to stay in the Navy, you’ll have to do your disassociated sea tour, and I was like ‘oh no… I don’t want to do it,’ but I reluctantly agreed.”
Not even the then LT Suni Williams could escape the dreaded disassociated tour. She reported to the USS Saipan (LHA 2) as the Aircraft Handler and eventually Assistant Air Boss (cite source from NASA). Suni has a talent for making every situation work for her, growing wherever she is planted. The Saipan was no exception.
Suni speaks warmly of those days, describing life on the ship as “really fun,” which is quite a contrast against grumbling aviators when they describe mandatory time on a ship away from the aircraft. “I like to find out how things work,” she said, remembering how she would spend her free time in Norfolk while her husband was working as a deputy Air Marshall across the country in Washington State. “I lived on the ship and would just hang out with the [sailors] on the weekends. With the fuel guys, I loved following them through the bowels of the ship down to where they worked, I ran chocks and chains, I tried needle gunning. I was even there when I got the call from NASA.”
When Suni got the call that would forever shift the trajectory of her life and career, she was sitting in the Air Operations office. It was a typical workday. Sailors from the Air Department were in and out, making coffee and jokes, answering and dialing calls on the singular shared phone in the office.
After hours, as Suni was finishing up some work, the phone rang. As most had trickled out of the office by this point, Suni picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Suni! I’m so sorry, we have been trying to reach out all day.” It was Theresa Gomez, the administrative assistant of the astronaut office at NASA.
“After she started to say that, I thought ‘oh, well that’s that, I didn’t get in.’ When applying to NASA, if you got in, the Chief of the Office will call you to tell you. If you didn’t, the Admin will, ” Suni explained.
“We have been trying to reach out all day, but couldn’t get through!” Theresa continued. “The Chief left and wanted me to tell you that we want you to come work at NASA!”
A Unique Perspective: Bridging the Gap with Aviation Experience
As every other pivotal event in her life and career, applying to NASA was another happenstance moment for Suni. “I never realized that TPS was a stepping-stone to apply to be an astronaut. People around me started apply to NASA and I’m like alright, I guess that is how it works,” she recalled, describing the casual nature of the decision making process that led to her successful NASA career.
“We went down to the Johnson space center and sat for a talk with John Young, who had been to the moon a few times and he was talking about the Lunar Training Vehicle (LTV) that they flew to get ready to land on the moon. As a helicopter pilot I thought, ‘oh, I think I have some of those skills!”
Helicopter pilots do carry some of those marketable NASA skills- a fact the organization readily recognized. Out of all the pilots in Suni’s TPS class, both of the rotary-wing students were accepted to the astronaut program, leaving behind the remaining fixed wing pilots.
Suni’s NASA career would take her to many notable places, the most notable of which was arguably outer space. That said, the experience that brought her back to her helicopter roots the most took place in the towering mountains of Colorado.
The High Altitude Aviation Training Site (HAATS), established in 1985 to train military helicopter pilots how to fly in mountainous terrain, conducts training at altitudes ranging from 6,500 to 14,000 feet MSL. With the four UH60As and four OH-58 helicopters organic to the schoolhouse, and utilizing the native platform of attendees (dubbed a “bring your own helicopter” school by the nearby Eagle County Airport web page, 2 instructors teach the students of HAATS the concepts of helicopter landing zone evaluation. For some time, these students have included NASA astronauts. Most recently, the crew of Artemis III was sent to the course in Gypsum, Colorado to gain skills that will be sorely needed to navigate the lunar surface for their mission in 2025.(3)
The concepts attendees trained to at HAATS would have been put to good use by the pilots of the first lunar landing, had they been given the opportunity. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong missed their landing site by about 4 miles on their first approach. The Apollo 11 crew only realized this as they were 9 minutes away from touchdown. Scrambling to find a different landing site, the crew had to overcome the unanticipated hazards of terrain flight. The moon’s surface is rocky and unforgiving terrain, not unlike unprepared landings in the mountains of Colorado. As a result, the crew’s original landing site had been chosen because it was relatively smooth and free of boulders and craters. They were forced to find a new place to land, and quickly.(4)
These are the skills that get imparted and sharpened at HAATS. The ability to scan the terrain and evaluate a landing site are crucial to lunar-bound astronauts.
“You have to understand visual illusions and altered planes of reference to be able to land on the moon,” Suni explained. She traveled there several times for NASA related assignments.
The mechanics of flying are not the only unique quality helicopter pilots bring to the table at NASA. Suni demonstrated this fact during a visit to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL). Housed in the Johnson Space Center, the NBL prepares NASA astronauts for missions involving spacewalks. Trainees don spacesuits and are submerged in the 40 ft deep pool, practicing tasks and skills they will be responsible for in space. It is the closest simulation to zero gravity that earth offers.(5)
Suni showcased the inherent Crew Resource Management (CRM) and situational awareness she possessed from her days in the cockpit readily in the NBL. “When we got in there, I said wow, this is like two helicopters deploying together,” she recalled. “During the lab, there are two of you in the water and there’s a guy doing a task in another spot. You always want to know where the other helicopter is so you can act as SAR for them, so I was always asking where the other person was in the water. It’s the same concept.” Suni would complete 50 hours and 40 minutes of spacewalks, second on the list of total spacewalk time by a female astronaut.(6)
A Cherished Role Model
Not only was Suni was able to successfully bridge the gap between space-flight and earth-flight; she also successfully carved a spot for herself in the hearts and minds of young women who aspire to be pilots and astronauts.
“The aircraft doesn’t know who is flying it,” Suni stated candidly when describing the challenges of a career as a minority female. “Perceptions of physicality were hard to overcome, and actually more so at NASA.” As it turns out, space suits only come in medium-large and extra-large, making it that much more difficult to get used to an entirely foreign environment.
Suni could have reacted to this news with despair, but that wouldn’t have been her style. “Life isn’t fair,” she argued. “Things aren’t going to be handed to you. Things aren’t going to be equal and fair. But it’s not personal. Don’t take any of those things personal. When you do, it gets in your mind and gets in the way. When you accept it and say ‘that’s how it is, and I have to make the best of it,’ you surprise people by how well you do. The spacesuit doesn’t know who is wearing it. The aircraft doesn’t know who is flying it. Make it do what you want to do.”
Suni recalled a time when she taught this lesson of what equality truly means to her to one of the junior pilots in her squadron. “We were flying onto the ship in the North Atlantic, and my copilot was getting out of the helicopter. Someone approached her to take her seabag. I turned to her and said: ‘come on, take your own bag.’ Later, she asked me why I would make such a big deal of that. I said to her: ‘because, you don’t have people do things for you right from the get-go. That is how people are going to treat you [from then on], like you have to be waited on. You’re strong enough, I’ve seen you out there doing PT. Don’t let people have the impression that you’re weak; you’re not. Be confident that you can do hard things.”
Suni’s relationship with her husband was built on this foundation of mutual respect for one another’s ability to “do the hard things.” Suni reflected on what it was like to have her husband in the sister squadron to hers during her first sea tour. “It was really nice having someone to bounce things off and have professional conversations with.” Suni’s husband, Mike, regards her as an equal partner, fueling her confidence to achieve the goals she set her mind to. “My husband never gave me a break, and I appreciated that, just like my onwing never gave me a break. His thing was ‘hey, just because you’re a girl, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to not know what this part of the aircraft is called.’”
Countless books about Suni’s life and career line the shelves for children and young adults in English and Hindi, reaching readers around the world. In 2017, the Needham Public Schools committee voted to name the town’s new elementary school after her. She continues to make headlines, always preparing for the next mission, the next adventure.
Suni proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone, regardless of background, can “do hard things,” an axiom she continues to live by today.
Footnotes
1. https://www.nasa.gov/people/sunita-l-williams/
2. https://www.flyvail.com/general-aviation/haats
3. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/eagle-county-airport-high-altitude-training-site-us-army/
4. https://www.history.com/news/apollo-11-moon-landing-terrifying-moments
5. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/167748main_fs_nbl508c.pdf
6. https://www.nasa.gov/people/sunita-l-williams/
