Angela Faustini was a bit of a wild child during her teenage years in Northern Maine.

“I was a loose cannon,” the 56-year-old Gulf War veteran remembers. “I was a handful for my dad. He thought I needed discipline.”

Her father had served in the Army, and thought military service might do her some good. Her mother said if she had the opportunity to travel and get an education “on someone else’s dime” that she should go for it.

So Faustini marched herself into the recruiting office in May 1979 and chose the Air Force because it was the door right in front of her.

“I looked straight ahead,” she said, recalling how nervous she was to consider her options. “I had almost six months to think about it.”

She enlisted in May that year, but the Air Force wasn’t taking new recruits until October. Faustini didn’t back out, even though boot camp was a rude awakening.

“I was a cry baby. I was planning my escape,” she said about her basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

At first she couldn’t handle the drills that began even as young recruits stepped off the bus. She remembers being ordered to pick up her suitcase, then set it back down, pick it up, set it down ... “and don’t ask why.”

“They were instilling discipline,” she said. “It taught me there will always be someone above you and that was a very good lesson.”

As Faustini explored career fields she found her niche as an inventory management specialist at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. When she filled out her “dream sheet” of bases where she wanted to be assigned, her heart ached to be closer to home on the East Coast, but once she was assigned to Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire she realized: “I should probably go overseas.”

That led her to a base outside of Oxford, England, in 1981, with a position once again in inventory management.

“I loved it,” she said. “I did some traveling, went to Scotland and Wales. They had a beautiful MWR (morale, welfare and recreation) program. It kept us sane.”

Faustini eventually got married while serving in the military. Her daughter was born while she was stationed near Pearl Harbor.

WHEN THE Gulf War erupted in 1990 she was working again in inventory management at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Southwest Idaho with the 366th Supply Squadron.

“It was a desert area so it was used as a fighter training base, with prep activity for Desert Storm,” she said. “It was very intense.”

By this time she had divorced and remarried. Her second husband was deployed during Operation Desert Storm.

“I was the active duty member who stayed at home to support him,” she said.

When Faustini was honorably discharged in 1992, her heart remained with the military and prompted her to sign on with the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, a worldwide retailer for those branches of the Armed Forces. That paid position brought her to Germany, where she worked in book store retail management.

In 1996 she volunteered to go Camp McGovern in Bosnia and work as a civilian manager. American peace troops began arriving there in January that year following the end of the Bosnian War.

“We were the peace keepers. It was eye-opening how people lived in those countries,” she said. She worked in a post exchange in a chapel, one of the only standing structures in the war’s aftermath.

“It’s as clear as yesterday,” Faustini said. “If I hadn’t had a military background, I wouldn’t have been prepared for it.”

She suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome upon her return to the U.S.

“I had PTSD but it wasn’t enough to stifle me,” she said. “I talked about it and shared my feelings ... When I got out it was a big change. No one told me what to wear. I had opportunities and freedom and responsibilities and had to figure out, what do I know how to do?”

Being separated from her daughter Lauren also had been a challenge. Lauren, now 29, also lives in the Flathead Valley.

Management had served Faustini well, and as an E5 staff sergeant when she got out of the Air Force, she realized “I was kind of a born leader.” She worked in retail management for many years.

Today she’s an office manager for a physical therapy office in Bigfork, where she enjoys interacting with patients. “I’m kind of the office mom,” she added.

Reflecting on her life, Faustini said the military was exactly the right fit for her. “The camaraderie was amazing,” she said.

As a veteran she pays it forward by visiting residents at the Montana Veterans Home.

“I love talking to people there,” she said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.