On Memorial Day, honoring service women

Like many young people after 9/11, former Long Beach resident Ali Bardeguez-Perkins, 28, felt compelled to join the military to fight for her country. As a student attending Monroe College, she felt aimless, she said, and decided to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps at 19, just like her grandfather, who had fought in World War II.

“My cousin had joined the Army, and that planted the seed in my head,” said Bardeguez-Perkins, who was forced to relocate to Queens after Hurricane Sandy. “And I thought about my grandfather … a lot of the stuff my grandfather talked about, this immense sense of pride and patriotism, I kind of ended up deciding that that was it … if I’m going to do it, I’m going to go all the way.”

Sgt. Bardeguez-Perkins would go on to serve in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East, where she worked on maintaining military helicopters and equipment, roles that, not too long ago, were reserved for men.

“The day I graduated boot camp, my family was there and my mom and my dad were so proud, and my dad said that my grandfather would have been proud,” she said.

According to 2011 military statistics, there were more than 200,000 women serving in the military, or 14.5 percent of the active-duty force. Bardeguez-Perkins, now a reservist, completed active service in 2011 and works for the Long Island Rail Road as an electrician. She is among the more than 2 million female veterans, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, approximately 10 percent of the total veteran population of more than 22 million.

It’s not often that female troops are recognized for their heroic efforts and sacrifices, but on Memorial Day, the Long Beach VFW Lt. John F. O’Grady Post 1384 is looking to change all that, and has named not just one, but 10 women, including Bardeguez-Perkins, as the parade’s grand marshals, which begins at Ohio Avenue at 10 a.m.

“It was very difficult when I came home,” she said. “I didn’t think I was going to have a hard time, but socially, people who weren’t in the military don’t comprehend women veterans — they don’t think we’re actually doing what we’re doing. And historically, it has always been the men who have been highlighted.”

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