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Leveling Her Wings

Flying medical evacuations in Blackhawk helicopters for the National Guard appeals to Lindsey Jefferies ’12 because it requires many skills and serves her need to help others. (Courtesy of Lindsey Jefferies ’12)

Skyward seems to be the natural heading for Lindsey Jefferies ’12 — even if she had a rough takeoff.

Jefferies is the first Black female pilot of Blackhawk helicopters for the N.C. Army National Guard, where she is a captain and commands a detachment. She’s also a devotee of the soft sciences, with a degree in sociology and psychology from UNC and a master’s degree in counseling from UNC-Greensboro. She’s a professional couples counselor, a fitness leader and an entrepreneur. And very soon, an author.

In her 33 years, she’s done a lot of things — except back down from a challenge.

Her mother, Trudi Crank, set the example — moving her three daughters and a son around North Carolina in search of better-paying jobs and financial stability. Through it all, Jefferies said, her mother kept the family stable by keeping her and her siblings “busy and focused.” For young Lindsey, that meant doing what wasn’t so easy — climbing all the trees, catching fish in a cup.

But Jefferies forgot her mom’s mantra — “make me proud, and make yourself prouder” — and flunked fourth grade as “the class clown” at Smithfield Elementary. It was her “come to Jesus moment,” she said.

In her 33 years, Jefferies has done a lot of things — except back down from a challenge. (Contributed photo)

“I cried all summer,” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘You know what? This is going to be the last time.’ ” She chased a boy off a school bus to beat him up after he teased her about repeating a grade. Then she got a fix on her studies — and her future flight path, though she didn’t realize it at the time.

On a field trip in Junior ROTC at Broughton High School in Raleigh, she got to fly an airplane.

“We got to ride in a Cessna,” she recalled. “And I got to sit in the front seat. And the pilot was like, ‘You want to take the controls?’ ‘Yeah!’ So now I’m moving the cyclic, and I’m like, ‘Oh, no, this is cool. I’m actually controlling this airplane!’ ”

The “seed was planted,” she said — but then it was back to earth, back to school. And it wasn’t a love of flying that led her, when she joined the Army National Guard before high school graduation in 2005, to pick aviation operations as her specialty. She chose it because the training took only nine weeks and the location was convenient — at RDU International Airport.

But her life decisions have never been accidents, she insisted. Always it was, “God put that on my heart.” And when she had the option a couple of years later to be a pilot for the Guard, “it all started to click,” she said.


“My faith has reinforced my confidence that things will always work out for good.”


Since then, she’s been picking up gauntlets. Like the one tossed by the boss at her restaurant job during a gap year before UNC: “All I was ever going to do in life was work at Zaxby’s.”

Or the one about flying helicopters being men’s work.

After getting her UNC degrees, she trained at Fort Rucker in Alabama to fly the UH-60 Blackhawk, first for assault and “infil” missions, transporting troops, and then for medical evacuations, which she liked better because she needed more skills — “how to load a litter, how to run to a helicopter and start up really fast and go, how to send people down on the hoists.”

It also served her need to help people.

“It always amazes me how she goes above and beyond for her family and friends,” said Tiye Young of Charlotte, her best friend since high school and also a captain in the Guard. Young recalled how during her trying first week in college, she was surprised on her birthday by Jefferies, who had driven hours from flight training.

Being a friend to couples led to Jefferies’ civilian career in 2016. “I’m always talking about relationships with my girlfriends,” she said, “but in this situation, the men were like, ‘You know, Lindsey … ,’ and they’re feeling comfortable.” She felt called to be a couples counselor, completing a master’s program at UNC-Greensboro.

Now she’s added fitness instruction (she’s designing workout wear — “it’ll have, like, runway lights up the leg”) and writing a book of advice: Level Your Wings: A Pilot’s Guide to Healthy Relationships.

That theme of leveling the wings — coming out of a climb or a descent or a turn, seeing the horizon, finding the course, getting where you’re going — unifies everything she’s doing.

“My faith has reinforced my confidence that things will always work out for good,” she said.

— Eric Frederick ’81


 

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