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1st female command master chief retires

NORFOLK, Va. — Beth Lambert joined the Navy as a teenager in 1978 hoping to see the world.

She spent her entire first hitch in Meridian, Miss.

“I never even made it north of the Mason-Dixon line,” the command master chief said with a laugh.

Toward the end of her enlistment, she planned to get out and go to college. She changed her mind after being enticed by a three-year gig in Rota, Spain.

Lambert retired Wednesday, ending a 30-year career as a Navy trailblazer.

She was one of the Navy’s first female aviation structural mechanics, the first woman named Sailor of the Year, a member of the first class of female chiefs to deploy on an aircraft carrier, and perhaps most significant, the first female to serve aboard a carrier as command master chief — the highest-ranking enlisted sailor onboard.

She also found time to be a wife and mother.

Lambert, 48, eventually got to see the world that enticed her into the Navy. She has browsed Turkish bazaars, climbed Japan’s Mount Fuji and watched gondola races in Venice. She did tours in Greece, Cuba and Hawaii. But the highlights weren’t typically geographic.

One challenge she’ll never forget, for example, was serving aboard the carrier Eisenhower in 1994, on its first deployment with a mixed-gender crew.

“The Ike tour was absolutely wonderful for me. But it was very difficult at first,” she said. “Most sailors walk onto their first ship as junior sailors. I walked onto my first ship as a brand-new chief.”

She learned then that most Navy men were no different from the mechanics she worked alongside in her early years. Once they realized she’d pull her weight, they accepted her.

After being named Shore Sailor of the Year in 1988, Lambert spent time at the Pentagon, working in the office of the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy. She went from wearing greasy coveralls and fixing airplanes to donning dress whites and working alongside admirals.

Her first boss, Master Chief Bill Plackett, said that when he met Lambert, he knew she was special.

“There was no doubt in my military mind that she was going to be a master chief,” said Plackett, who now lives in Virginia Beach. “None. She has the strength of character and personality to take on day-to-day challenges and absorb them like a sponge.”

At the Pentagon, Lambert also impressed the chief of naval operations, the late Adm. Mike Boorda. Lambert said Boorda told her repeatedly that she should consider being commissioned as an officer.

“I made the decision that I was going to be a master chief instead,” Lambert said. “That was a little arrogant, but it worked out.”

She said she believes “men or women can lead men or women.” But young sailors with problems may be more likely to approach superiors who look like they do, so it’s important to have women in positions of power.

When she was selected in 2003 as command master chief for the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, it caused quite a sensation.

“But that didn’t matter to the chiefs,” Lambert said. “If anybody was resentful, they kept it to themselves.”

Some women who preceded Lambert into top ranks are sorry she’s retiring — they hoped she might one day become the first female MCPON.

Linn McDowell of Virginia Beach, who retired as a master chief petty officer in 1988, called Lambert’s selection as the Roosevelt’s command master chief an “amazing milestone.”

“That was a big brick in the pathway,” McDowell said. “I think she was up against a whole lot of competition, and a whole lot of guys who’d spent their careers at sea.”

As she rose in rank, Lambert’s duties changed.

“I’ve explained it to my mother this way,” she said. “I used to fix airplanes, now I fix attitudes. Airplanes are often easier but not nearly as rewarding.”

Her work with young sailors may be ending, but Lambert expects to be back around young people soon. The mother of three — she has a 22-year-old daughter and 8- and 11-year-old sons — plans to spend the summer hanging out with her boys.

Her husband, Jean P. Lambert, a master chief in the Seabees, plans to retire next year.

She said she’d like to teach science at a local high school.