Though she wouldn’t describe herself as being part of the “action” during the Vietnam War, the layman might not have known it watching Barb Bianchi control air traffic in the U.S. Air Force.

“My job was just to get them in and out,” said Bianchi, who was a sergeant in Guam and Turkey, in addition to Texas and South Dakota, from 1974 to 1983. “We had B-52s coming in and out.”

Being an air traffic controller is always a matter of having your mind going in 15 different directions at the same time, she said. That can be particularly true with small runways on islands like Guam, where the strip was only three miles long and one mile wide.

“When those planes came in, we usually had our hands on the red crash phone,” Bianchi said. “Those B-52s would take the entire runway. It was always like we were white-knuckling it.”

-Submitted photo
Barb Bianchi's adoptive father Gerald VanDeWal, left, was an Air Force veteran who inspired the Fort Dodge woman to follow in his footsteps to serve her country.

“Please lift off, don’t go into the water,” she would repeat in Guam, directing traffic that she had to keep separate from parallel civilian traffic.

In Turkey, she wore a helmet and canteen belt as the country was briefly at war with Greece. There, she had to decipher what the Turkish air traffic controllers were doing to keep their traffic and U.S. military traffic separated — by gestures, not language.

But no matter where she was or what she was doing, being usually the only woman in the room meant she had to do things differently.

“It’s a man’s world,” she said. “I think I was accepted because I studied so hard. If I wouldn’t have done that, they wouldn’t have respected me at all.”

Over her nine years of service, she was a crew chief on every base but her first one for training, where she earned respect by maintaining outstanding performance — a requirement that might not have been necessary for respect had she been a man.

-Submitted photo
Barb Bianchi, center, served as an air traffic controller in Turkey, Guam and stateside from 1974 to 1983.

“I did it because I loved it,” she said — but not because she thought she had to be better than them.

“I just had to be better than myself, every day,” Bianchi said, something she still tells her grandchildren. “Your only goal today is to be better than you were yesterday.”

Though she didn’t ask to be put into air traffic control, she absolutely loved it, working both control towers and radar towers.

Bianchi’s inspiration to go into the service came from her adoptive father, Gerald VanDeWal, who took her in at age 12 after her only living parent died.

“His service was just exemplary. He displayed so much integrity, honesty,” Bianchi said. “He was truly my hero and my example.”

Watching him iron his uniforms to a paper-thin crease, she came to learn that, when worn, the uniforms were more than a shirt and a pair of pants — greater than the sum of their parts as they covered the patriots who defended their country.

She set out to emulate him, and in doing so, left a proud example.

In her service, Bianchi earned a Meritorious Service Medal and two Commendation Medals for “immeasurable contributions” to her squadron and tours of duty that were “exemplary and mirror the image of the ideal Air Force noncommissioned officer,” according to her commander, Lt. Col. Ronald L. Davidson.

During her time, she developed realistic training simulators with mock situation scenarios, helped needy military families through Operation Warmheart, saved landing planes from crashing without their wheels down and contributed her photographic memory to the benefit of her peers.

On Veterans Day, she remembers that the price of freedom is high, even to the many veterans who return alive.

The price of freedom is “the highest price, in my opinion, paid,” she said.