Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / Abeer Mustafa is pictured in her office at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on Friday, Oct. 22, 2021.The U.S. Army used "Be All You Can Be" as its slogan from 1980 to 2001, and Abeer Mustafa was listening – and buying.
"I loved every minute," she said of her four-year stretch in the Army's 56th Medical Battalion. "I was putty, and the military shaped me into what I am today."
Mustafa was 8 when she came to the United States, settling in Houston with her family in 1979. Her father and mother were from India and Saudi Arabia, respectively.
"I'd had a very sheltered life," Mustafa said. "Fighting the culture - my parents told me that my options after high school were marriage or college.
"I just wanted to experience my own life, set my own path, be independent," she said.
(READ MORE: Jerry Sterner earned Bronze Star as intelligence analyst during Vietnam)
She recalled that at the beginning of her senior year in high school, she began a dialog with an Army recruiter. Then, halfway through her senior year, she enlisted - but didn't tell her parents until the night before she was scheduled to leave.
"When the recruiter came to our house the next day to pick me up, my dad really tried to stop it," she said. "He wouldn't let me leave for an hour."
BIO
Name: Abeer MustafaAge: 50Branch of military: U.S. Army National GuardYears of service: 1990-1994
Mustafa said she did basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., then opted to serve in the 56th Medical Battalion in Galveston, Texas - not all that far from Houston.
"I asked for the closest thing I could get to actual war," she recalled, "and I thought that with getting stationed close to home, there would be forgiveness."
(READ MORE: Ralph Tate, 89, served in First Marine Division in Korea)
Mustafa trained to be a field medic. She said she never saw combat - she was getting her advanced training when the Gulf War broke out in 1991 - but brought her skills to bear later, as a first responder at Houston's Astrodome following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
Mustafa said her Army experience shaped - and continues to shape - her life.
"It becomes a lifestyle," she said. "Everything in my house is left-right. I make the bed with military corners - gotta be able to bounce a quarter off one.
"I'd had a privileged life when I went to basic training," she said. "The military showed me what I could do, what I could be. It's learning to be part of a team, part of a unit. It's learning servant leadership."
(READ MORE: Vietnam vet Bruce Kendrick: I went 'so others wouldn't have to')
These days, Mustafa is putting her leadership skills to work as University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's associate vice chancellor for enrollment management and student affairs. In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, she took over in October as adviser to the university's Student Veteran Organization.
"I feel it's a privilege, an honor, to be able to serve our veteran students as they served all of us," Mustafa said. "To be able to advocate for them is priceless."
Veteran Salute will be published daily through Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
Veteran Salute will be published daily through Veterans Day on Nov. 11. Read about more Chattanooga-area veterans at timesfreepress.com/veterans/2021.