JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA — Lt. Col. Deborah Rieflin learned early that nothing was out of reach, even if the rest of the world said otherwise.
Her parents had instilled that in her before she could remember. So at 18, Rieflin fearlessly pursued a profession dominated by men, studying engineering on an Air Force ROTC scholarship at Cornell University in New York.
It was 1979, just three years after the service opened up pilot training to women. When Rieflin learned halfway through college the Air Force would select 25 women to fill pilot slots the year she graduated, she decided to vie for one of them.
Rieflin was among those chosen, becoming part of an even smaller minority; women would represent just 2½ percent of the 1,000 pilot openings that year. She was customarily undaunted.
Rieflin flew C-141s for nearly a decade. In the early 1990s, she was selected as part of a small cadre of Charleston mobility pilots who would test a new airframe — the C-17 Globemaster.
She went on to earn the distinction of first female C-17 command pilot, serving most recently as aircrew training chief for the 315th Airlift Wing.
Those earliest days aboard the newfangled jet proved to be one of the highlights of a 31-year Air Force career that came to a close here Oct. 27.
That final chapter closely corresponded with the final delivery of a C-17 Globemaster III to Joint Base Charleston less than a year ago.
"I really looked at it as an opportunity that I assuredly would not have again," Rieflin said of her early work on the aircraft. "To be involved at the grassroots level of how it was to be employed and flown and how the regulations were going to be written — I was just excited about the chance to be part of the development of it. I wasn't disappointed."
Path to flight
Rieflin's father was a longtime commercial pilot. Even so, she never really considered a career in flying until college.
"I didn't know any women commercial pilots. I didn't know anybody in the military," she said.
Rieflin did like machines and figuring out how they worked. A childhood friend two years older had gone to college on an Army ROTC scholarship and wrote home about all the fun they had camping and rappelling.
"I really had no idea what ROTC was about," she said.
But Rieflin couldn't turn down a full scholarship and a guaranteed job in engineering for four years after college. "I viewed it as an environment that would be predicable and structured and disciplined, and that appealed to me. That's my engineering side: Everything has order."
When Rieflin told her father about her plans for the military, he supported her. "He said, 'What the heck. Give it a shot. I think you'd enjoy it.' He was a great example. I reflect on that more now than when I was in college. I have a great appreciation now."
When Rieflin became a candidate for pilot training, she headed to the local airport for 15 hours of training aboard a Cessna.
It was her first time behind the controls, and she loved it. Rieflin went on to get her private pilot's license. She took the man who would become her husband on her first cross-country flight.
"It was free and empowering to work that hard learning something completely new and different and then go someplace, looking down at the cars and houses and people," she said.
Being one of only a handful of female pilots came with challenges, she said. "Probably the biggest one for any minority is maintaining your self confidence and determination and not allowing the biases and negativity to overwhelm the positives of what you're doing. I wouldn't be truthful if I didn't say there were biases I had to deal with. But I refused to allow them to be proven true. If there was a negative opinion about a woman being in the cockpit or in engineering or in the military, I decided I'll show you I can do it as good or better. I'm not going to hide my head. I'm just going to show you it doesn't matter."
The grueling months of pilot training left Rieflin and her Air Force colleagues with a shared sense of pride.
"It was my very first experience of Air Force teamwork at that level," she said. "The prize at the end was the wings, and we all knew that's why we were there, and we supported each other."
On assignment night, when the newly minted pilots received their aircraft assignments, Rieflin got her first choice: A C-141 to Charleston.
Of the Air Force's 37 airplanes at the time, she said, women were eligible for just 15. Fighters would be off-limits for another decade.
"It wasn't a horribly, limiting feeling," Rieflin said. "I headed off to Charleston in 1985. I haven't looked back since."
'Not a typical' career
In 1992, when Charleston became the first base to receive the new C-17, Rieflin was among those selected to test it out.
"I felt to privileged to be part of what I consider an elite cadre of aviators," she said, which included those who'd taught her how to fly the C-141.
"History has shown it's been a tremendous airlifter and has done everything it was designed to do. Back then, there were skeptics. It still wasn't accepted by the Air Force yet. There were still a few years of testing and evaluation to determine if it was really going to stick."
The C-17 was novel — a two-person cockpit instead of three and no flight engineer, Rieflin said. "This whole concept of three crew members moving an even bigger airplane farther and closer to the front lines, it was very new and sort of suspect. Not everybody was a believer it was going to work. But over the years it has proven necessary and capable and worthy."
Rieflin piloted it all over the world, carrying troops and supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan, responding to humanitarian missions and providing presidential support. But nothing was so meaningful as bringing home fallen troops, a sacred duty that leaves her emotional every time she thinks about it.
"The realization that this person gave their life for the cause that you're supporting, in the nation's defense of freedom — that's what it's all about," said Rieflin.
Rieflin spent all but two years of her more than three decades in the military at the South Carolina base, choosing to go into the Reserves and give up promotions to keep her family rooted in one place.
"It is not a typical Air Force experience," said Rieflin, a mother of four.
On Oct. 27, she chose to make part of her "fini" flight with an all-female crew. It was a first on her final day of service, a fitting way for the first female C-17 command pilot to close out her career.
But Rieflin isn't putting away her wings just yet. She'll soon go to work for a commercial airline, just as her father did.
