In every country there are some citizens whose lives are never forgotten long gone, and for America, Tammy Duckworth is one of those individuals. Tammy is a politician currently serving as the junior United States Senator for Illinois. She was elected to the Democratic Party position in 2017.
Before getting into the political scene, Tammyserved in the US Army as a helicopter pilot. In the course of her service she lost both her legs during the 2004 Iraq war and would have lost her right arm as well had it not been for the timely emergency surgery which lasted 13 hours.
Who is Tammy Duckworth?
Ladda Tammy Duckworth was born to LamaiSompornpairin and Franklin Duckworth on March 12, 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand. Her father, who died in 2005, was an American development worker and US Army veteran, while her mother is a Thai of Chinese descent.
As a result of her father’s work, the family moved across Southeast Asia, living in Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia (then the Khmer Republic) and Singapore before moving to Hawaii when she was 16. This enabled Duckworth to become fluent in Thai and Indonesian in addition to English.
Giving up her childhood dream of becoming a childAmbassador, the tireless woman decided to follow in her father’s footsteps and joined the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in 1990 as a graduate student at George Washington University. Two years later, she became an acting officer in the United States Army Reserve, choosing one of them to fly helicopters as few combat roles were available for women.
During extensive rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Duckworth, she received a purple heart on December 3, 2004 and was promoted to major on the 21st of the same month. Normally, injured veterans are discharged, but because Tammy Duckworth is a woman with an unparalleled determination to keep pushing no matter the situation, she wrote a petition to stay on active duty. However, she transferred to inactive duty when she became involved in politics. In June 2006, she worked intermittently as an aviation safety instructor for the Illinois National Guard while also running her first congressional campaign.
Tammy eventually came to terms with the fact that she wasn’t as useful to the Illinois National Guard as she once was and while it was a tough decision for her, she decided to bow down and retired as a lieutenant colonel in October 2014 .
Between 2006-2009, Duckworth served as the director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. She previously fought for a seat in the US House of Representatives from the Democratic Party but lost by fewer than 5,000 votes. During the administration of President Barrack Obama, she was appointed Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (2009–2011).
She then resigned to run again for the House of Representatives from Illinois’ 8th congressional district and this time she won. In 2016, she again campaigned for the Senate against Mark Kirk, the incumbent Republican, and was elected. She took office in 2017. In doing so, she set some records in Congress as the first Asian American woman to be elected to Congress in Illinois, as the first disabled woman to be elected to Congress and as the first member of Congress to be born in Thailand. She also became the first female double amputee in the Senate, the first female senator born in office, and the second Asian American woman to serve in the US Senate
training
As early as 1982, Tammy’s family was living in Singapore, where she attended the Singapore American School. During her senior year, she studied at the International School in Bangkok for a few months and graduated from McKinley High School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1985. Despite moving from one school to another, her academic performance was not affected, but she did so well that she had to skip the ninth grade.
In 1989, Tammy Duckworth graduated from the University of Hawaii with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science amid a difficult financial situation in her family. She later transferred to George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, where she earned a Master of Arts in international affairs.
She then decided to further her education through a PhD in Political Science from Northern Illinois University and was admitted. In 1993, however, she put off her doctorate for a year to attend flight school. Unfortunately, Tammy never had the opportunity to complete the academic program being conducted in Iraq while she was in the process of writing her dissertation proposal. Although her first Ph.D. was not completed, in March 2015 Tammy finished and received a degree in Human Services from Capella University.
Her husband
While at ROTC, Tammy Duckworth met Bryan Bowlsbey, a fellow cadet. After a rough start, the duo fell in love and eventually married in 1994; It was a private event attended only by friends and close relatives. Like Tammy, Bowlsbey is a war veteran in Iraq.
The couple welcomed their first daughter, Abigail, in 2014, and on April 9, 2018, their second daughter, Maile, was born.
The story of her legs
In 2004, Tammy was called to active duty and deployed to Iraq. Unknown to her, the mission would mark a turning point in her life and military career. Due to the war, on November 12, 2004, Iraqi insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that Tammy Duckworth was co-piloting, shattering the legs and right arm.
She was flown to Baghdad in a medical evacuation helicopter and there, surgeons had no choice but to amputate both of her legs because of the irreparable injuries she sustained. While her right and left legs were amputated near the hip bone and just below the knee, respectively, surgeons were able to insert the bones into her right arm. She was later flown to Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany and quickly transferred to Walter Reed in Maryland, where she stayed for a year, undergoing surgery and physical therapy. Tammy now uses prosthetic legs to move around.
Since then, Tammy Duckworth has celebrated her “Day of Life” every year on November 12th.