Spouses Conference

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Carolyn Herrick
  • JBPH-H Public Affairs
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii --  Kimberly Dozier, an award-winning CBS reporter, spoke to a group of more than 300 women Oct. 22 at the 2011 Joint Spouses Conference.

Dozier, who was born in Hawaii but has not been back to the island since age 13, was severely injured when a car bomb exploded in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2006. She attended the conference here to give a realistic account of her experiences while embedded with the Army.

"When I get a chance to speak to spouses, the interesting thing is that I can tell them stuff their loved ones won't talk about," Dozier said. "I start with the big picture and then I describe what it was like being a war correspondent in Baghdad, being on patrol in Baghdad, and then being in a car bombing in Baghdad - being in an incident where you get horribly injured and the people you care about also get hit. That's pretty universal - that can happen in any war zone, anywhere."

She described the injury process and recovery process in graphic detail, explaining to these spouses who aren't in the field how to relate to their loved ones who might be in harm's way.

"(This is) an audience who needs to hear this," she said. "These are the people who keep their loved ones in the field going. If they get hit like I did, these are the people who will get them back on their feet. That is the way I healed, so I want them to understand what people could face out there, what they might face back here and how - yeah, it's really tough going t through his whole horrible process of being injured, but you can come back and this is just one example."

The day-long conference also included a wide variety of workshops for attending spouses - opportunities to learn new things but, more importantly, to talk to each other and share experiences, according to Jane West, the director of this year's conference.

"The purpose of this is to educate and give the opportunity to network to our military spouses of all ranks and all branches," said West. "We rarely get the opportunity to all come together - so this is a chance to learn from each other and learn about what resources are available to them as military spouses. The attendees really (enjoyed) it."