Photo By Staff Sgt. Logan Swift | U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Katherine Scarborough, Army Reserve career counselor...... read more read more
Katherine Scarborough didn’t have an easy home life. By the time high school graduation rolled around, she was looking for a way out of her parent’s house.
“I just couldn't wait to graduate and get out of the house,” Scarborough said. “College was never on my mind. No one ever brought it up. I just saw the recruiters at the high school, and as soon as I graduated, I went and signed some papers to join the Army.”
Now, Sgt. 1st Class Katherine Scarborough is planning to retire in March 2026, but sharing her story as a part of Women’s Equality Day, she looks back on her journey and the perseverance and resiliency it took to overcome the obstacles in her path. Scarborough is a career counselor with the Army Reserve Careers Group. Her current assignment has her working in Kaiserslautern, Germany, to support 7th Mission Support Command, the Army Reserve command in Europe. But her story began in 1993, when she enlisted as a logistics specialist. Scarborough served eight years as an active-duty Soldier.
Reflecting on that time, she said she has seen improvements in the way that the military treats women — from uniform policies to women in combat arms — as well as the changes for all Soldiers to better report equal opportunity and sexual assault and harassment violations. During her time on active duty, Scarborough married and started a family. She’s a mother of four, including one set of twins. The additional responsibilities that come with family life meant changes for her military career, too.
“They were all two years apart,” she said, “and that was huge with my husband. We were dual military, so I just made the choice to go into the [Army] Reserve after that eight years.”
In her first position with the Army Reserve, Scarborough found work with agencies contracted to the U.S. military, and she would often be put on active-duty orders. She recalls that phase of her career being accompanied by new challenges and even more life changes. Around that same time, Scarborough and her husband divorced.
“I tell people sometimes that, because I was so caught up in it all, I was just a mom and working,” she said. “I was in robot mode.”
At the time, Scarborough was living in Virginia, juggling the demands of her job as a single mother with four children, paying for a house, car and daycare.
“Sometimes I reflect back on those years, and I don't remember a lot of things, which is a little upsetting,” she said, “because I can't remember the first day of kindergarten for my kids or little things like that.”
Her children struggled with her absence as well. Scarborough recalls that she would often leave for work before the children woke up and return home after they had gone to bed. Her mother came to live with them, but things didn’t work out, so she relied on a nanny to help take care of the children, she said.
“They just want mom,” Scarborough said. "They don't understand why I'm not there. You can explain all day, but it's not the same.”
Things began to improve when she came off active-duty orders and started a job with Northrop Grumman, she said. But once again, Scarborough would change direction in her military career. Her work with Northrop prevented her from attending monthly training with the Army Reserve, so Scarborough made the transition to the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). The IRR allowed her to retain her rank without the obligation to attend monthly or annual training.
“I lost a lot of military time while being in the IRR and working with Northrop Grumman,” she said. “But it was a really good experience because I learned a lot about outside of the Army, how to be a civilian and how to, more so, how to talk to people.”
Scarborough spent the next seven years in the IRR, until one of her coworkers at Northrop, a retired sergeant major, learned about her past.“He pretty much sat me down and was like, ‘what are you doing? You need to retire. You need to finish your career,’” she said.
His words resonated with her, Scarborough recalls. To achieve her goal of retirement, she applied to the Active Guard and Reserve where she was offered a position as a career counselor. Her position as an AGR put her back on active-duty orders in the Army Reserve and required her to move from Virginia to Kentucky. Her children are grown, and Scarborough says she is an empty nester, but that didn’t make the move any easier.
“That was the first time I'd ever been away from them,” she said. “Even though they moved out of the house and had their own place. But I was still around, and when I was in Kentucky, … I was depressed a lot, a lot.”
To help with the loneliness, Scarborough turned her attention to her two dogs and made the decision to foster puppies and kittens. She enjoys having extra animals around the house and even fostered one of the dogs, bringing her current count of dogs to three. She also focused on the non-profit she started while she was in Virginia. “I have a constant itch to do more for people,” Scarborough said. “The hardest part is the how.”
Her older daughter had attended Virginia Commonwealth University, and a lot of her daughter’s friends that graduated from the school of arts were struggling to find work after college. Being a maker and an artist herself, Scarborough wanted to help.
“So, one day I just talked to the manager of a local restaurant that my daughter happened to work at,’ she said. “And we did a very small market for local artists, and I think I only had like 10 to 12 [people] there.”
The market started small, but Scarborough said it has built a huge art community following, leading her to create a nonprofit called Kismet Market RV. Now that she lives in Germany, Scarborough said she hasn’t been making art as much, but she’s still managing the promotion and social media for the art market. She has a support system to help make sure the market is set up and the vendors get to where they need to be.
“I think everyone needs someone,” she said. “We can't do everything by ourselves. We can't do it alone.”
Scarborough wants to expand the reach of her nonprofit when she retires in 2026. She said she wants to establish grants to help lower-income people and people without housing. “I'm going to use that platform I already have to find ways to start building those programs and grants for not just the artists and makers, but for other people in the community,” she said.
With the end of her Army career drawing near, Scarborough is proud of her accomplishments. She is looking forward to what comes after she retires. “I want a homestead! I want chickens and goats and more dogs and a mini cow,” she said. “I am going to move back to Virginia with my kids … I'm really looking forward to being back around them.”
| Date Taken: | 09.04.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.06.2024 10:53 |
| Story ID: | 480047 |
| Location: | KAISERSLAUTERN, RHEINLAND-PFALZ, DE |
| Web Views: | 22 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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