Mary Jennings Hegar (néevon Stein;[1] born March 16, 1976) is an American United States Air Force veteran and former political candidate.[2] In 2012, she sued the U.S. Air Force to remove the Combat Exclusion Policy.[3][4] In 2017, she published the memoir Shoot Like a Girl, which describes her service in Afghanistan.[5]
When Hegar was seven years old, her mother, Grace, moved her and her sister from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Cedar Park, Texas.[5]: 16 Hegar grew up in Cedar Park,[8] where her mother remarried to a Vietnam veteran, David Jennings, when she was ten.[5]: 14–15
Hegar was her high school class president, on the cheer squad, and played various sports, including soccer.[9]
In 1999, Hegar received a BA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied criminology, sociology, philosophy, and world religions.[1] While an undergraduate, she was Vice Wing Commander of Detachment 825 AFROTC and Deputy Commander of the Arnold Air Society. In 2015, she graduated from Leadership Austin Essential Class.[10] In 2016 she received an Executive MBA, also from the University of Texas at Austin.[11]
In 2004, the Air National Guard selected Hegar for pilot training. Upon completion of her training at the top of her class, she served two deployments to Afghanistan as a HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter pilot, flying Combat Search and Rescue[12] on over 100 missions[13] as well as Medevac missions as a helicopter pilot.[14][15][16] As a member of the California Air National Guard, she worked as a pilot and trainer at the San Jose-based Counterdrug Task Force from 2007 to 2011.
In addition to the deployments to Afghanistan during the Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan, Hegar flew marijuana eradication missions, suppressed wildfires with buckets of water on cargo slings, performed pilot duties in evacuating survivors from hurricane-devastated cities, and rescued civilians on civil search and rescue missions in California and at sea.[5]
On July 29, 2009, on her third tour to Afghanistan, Hegar and her co-pilot were shot down near Kandahar while on a combat search-and-rescue mission.[17] She received shrapnel wounds in her arm and leg from Taliban ground fire, but her helicopter was able to rescue the soldiers it had been sent to help. Under further heavy fire, her helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing. Other U.S. Army helicopters rescued her, her team, and the other soldiers, but because the rescue helicopters were small and full, she and others had to fly out standing on the skids.[18][19]
Hegar was awarded the Purple Heart in December 2009.[16] Her actions on this mission earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device, awarded in 2011.[20] She was one of the few women to receive this medal after Amelia Earhart.[21][22] In 2016, she described a 2007 mission to medevac a child in great detail in a TEDx Talks presentation.[23]
Due to the restriction of the Combat Exclusion Policy on women applying for ground combat positions, and because she was medically disqualified from flying due to a serious back injury sustained during the 2009 mission,[24] Hegar transitioned out of the Air National Guard and became a Reservist Liaison.[3]
In March 2017, the Berkley Books imprint of Penguin Books published Hegar's memoir, Shoot Like a Girl, in a new military division called Caliber.[18] In 2016, it was announced that the movie rights to the book had been optioned by TriStar Pictures, with Angelina Jolie reportedly in negotiations for the lead role.[26][27]
Politics
On July 6, 2017, Hegar announced that she would run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Representative in Texas's31st congressional district.[2] In May 2018, she won the nomination.[6] In June, Hegar released a short-form political ad, "Doors", that described her military career, including being shot down in Afghanistan. The video went viral and drew the attention of celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda.[28][29][30] In the November election she lost to Republican incumbent John Carter, who received 50.6% of the vote to her 47.6%; it was Carter's narrowest win in his nine elections to Congress.
Hegar's campaign received the endorsement of former president Barack Obama on September 25, 2020.[33] Her campaign focused on her support for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), protecting individuals with preexisting conditions, and creating a public health insurance option.[34][35] Cornyn won the election, 54% to 44%.[36] Occurring during 2020, which saw historically high turnout, Hegar received 4,888,764 votes.
Combat Exclusion Policy
Shortly after the 2009 mission in which Hegar was wounded in Afghanistan, she was medically disqualified from flying. The military's Combat Exclusion Policy automatically excluded her from applying for ground combat positions that would have moved her military career forward.[22] She was barred from cross-training for a ground combat position (such as a special tactics officer) despite her expertise as a pilot, which had it not been for her gender would have been a next step.[21][37]
In 2012, Hegar was the lead plaintiff alongside former U.S. Marine Corps Captain Zoe Bedell, U.S. Marine Corps First Lieutenant Colleen Farrell, U.S. Army Reserves Staff Sergeant Jennifer Hunt, and the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) in a lawsuit against U.S. Secretary of DefenseLeon Panetta asserting that the Combat Exclusion Policy was unconstitutional.[21][38][39] Hegar said the suit was about military effectiveness and would give military commanders a larger pool of applicants.[18] The lawsuit failed, but the policy, implemented in 1994, was repealed in January 2013.[13][40][41]
Personal life
In 2011, Hegar married Brandon Hegar, whom she knew from high school. She and her family live in Round Rock, Texas, a suburb of Austin.[29] She has two sons as well as stepchildren from her husband's previous marriage.[18][23]
Hegar has many tattoos, which were prominently featured in her 2018 viral campaign ad, "Doors."[42] She has said that the cherry blossom tattoo on her shoulder was a way to cover up shrapnel scar tissue, to take control and make the wounds beautiful. In her book, she mentions being sexually assaulted by an Air Force medic during a physical exam.[22][43] The ad also discussed the domestic violence perpetrated by her father against her, her mother, and her sister during her adolescent years.[44][45]
Hegar, Mary Jennings (2016). Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front. New York: Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. ISBN978-1-101-98845-9. OCLC935676913.
^ abcdHegar, Mary Jennings (2016). Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front. New York: Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. ISBN978-1-101-98845-9. OCLC935676913.
^MacKenzie, Megan H. (2015). "2. The disintegration of the combat exclusion in Iraq and Afghanistan: Legal challenges". Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth That Women Can't Fight. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 58–63. ISBN978-1-107-62810-6. OCLC914235926.
MacKenzie, Megan H. (2015). "2. The disintegration of the combat exclusion in Iraq and Afghanistan: Legal challenges". Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth That Women Can't Fight. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 58–63. ISBN978-1-107-62810-6. OCLC914235926.
