Loadmaster gives wings to childhood dream

  • Published
  • By Senior Master Sgt. Sandi Michon
  • 439th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
WESTOVER AIR RESERVE BASE, Mass. --  It was love at first sight for four-year old Susan Bolduc. 

Her new-found love was well-traveled, very tall, powerfully built and helped a lot of people. She was hooked. 

The object of her young affections was a C-5. 

Twenty-four years later, the smitten, brunette loadmaster stands on Westover’s tarmac surrounded by the giants she still loves. She is on cloud nine. She can hardly contain her excitement. 

She leaves for Officer Training School the first of the year. 

The staff sergeant’s flight suit-green eyes sparkle as she describes her first encounter with the C-5 at a New England air show. “I felt like I was climbing Mt. Everest,” she said, recalling her young trek up the aft ramp of the C-5. “It was so big, it really stuck in my mind.” 

As soon as she could read, she pored over her mom’s aviation books – always looking for the C-5. “My mom put aside her dream of becoming an astronaut when she married young and began her family. I think she lived her dream vicariously through aviation books,” Sergeant Bolduc said. 

Although the sergeant trained in figure skating as a child, she inherited her mother’s voracious appetite for books. “I was a nerd. To this day, neither my mom nor I are allowed in Barnes and Noble unsupervised,” she quipped. 

As an adolescent, her passion for aviation ran low on fuel when a high school sweetheart temporarily grounded her flight plans. After graduation, she worked two jobs, bought a house and enjoyed what most would call the “good life.” 

“I ignored the dream. I kept thinking I didn’t have what it took,” she said. It was her mom’s motivation that broke the inertia and rekindled the dream to fly. She enlisted in the Air Force in December 2000 – and never looked back. Shortly after becoming a C-5 loadmaster, she was activated for a year after September 11, and volunteered for two more years. Flying all over the world, she set her sights on the pilot position. 

“It’s something deep, something in my soul. It’s something that makes me glad to wake up in the morning – to pursue my dream,” she said. 

During her activation, she added skydiving and hang gliding to her list of hobbies which include scuba diving, gun competitions and motorcycles. She began online courses at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, majoring in aeronautics and aviation safety. In 2004, Sergeant Bolduc attended in residence at Daytona Beach, Fla., to complete her bachelor’s degree.

Typical of her supersonic energy level, she was also working on her instrument rating at the local airport, working on her noncommissioned officer course to be eligible for staff sergeant, she completed her Community College of the Air Force degree and was studying to take the Air Force Reserve Officer’s Qualifying Test – and flying C-5 trips every 60 days to maintain her loadmaster currency requirements. 

She describes one gloomy morning in April as the only time she felt tempted to give up her dream. She was exhausted and discouraged while driving to Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., to take her NCO test. She heard the familiar engine whine of the C-5, which rarely lands at Patrick. A C-5 with the Westover tail marking passed directly overhead. 

“It was the most amazing sight. I pulled over and bawled like a baby,” Sergeant Bolduc said. “That’s why I’m doing this.” 

She passed all her tests and graduated valedictorian of her class and began studying for a master’s degree in space science – and submitted her pilot application package. Sergeant Bolduc learned the board results were in while she was out on a C-5 mission.
“I didn’t sleep a wink that night,” she said. When she got the results the next morning, she screamed so loud a few crew members ran out of their rooms to see what was wrong. Back at Westover, news had spread. 

“I got 500 hugs at a squadron party a few days later. It really touched me,” she said. “The support has been so overwhelming. 

“Every pilot here has been a mentor of mine whether they realize it or not,” she said. “(Lieutenant) Colonel Jennifer Farrelly (one of Westover’s three female C-5 pilots) has been my greatest mentor – not just directly, but silently.” 

“It was an easy decision to recommend Sergeant Bolduc,” said Lt. Col Jennifer Farrelly. “With her dedication and attitude as a loadmaster – always giving 110 percent – we knew that she would give as much or more as a pilot. Aviation is her passion.” 

The future female pilot is looking at more than a year of training before returning to the C-5, but she’s almost breathless with excitement. 

“It’s going to be the most difficult, most stressful, but most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” Sergeant Bolduc said. “It’s my chance to make my childhood dream come true.”
She gazed up at the C-5 cockpit. 

“I’ll be very happy up there,” she said.