Remission doesn’t lessen Swann’s diligence

Charlene Swann, named the Enterprise Area Chamber of Commerce August Ambassador of the Month and then 2021 Ambassador of the Year at the banquet Sept. 16, is known for her diligence.

The Ambassador of the Year honor goes to the person who has demonstrated a high level of involvement for that year, according to Enterprise Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Erin Grantham. “Our Ambassadors program is comprised of an elite group of business and civic minded professionals dedicated to promoting the work and value of chamber membership,” Grantham said. “She is wonderful. Charlene’s outstanding contributions along with her commitment to advancing the mission of the chamber has been instrumental in our success this year.”

As a member of the Enterprise Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors serving on the military and veterans affairs committee, Swann has not missed a single event or meeting.

Swann, who moved to Enterprise to be with family members who were stationed at Fort Rucker, currently is a Disabled American Veterans Chapter Service Officer from the Enterprise office on Crawford Avenue.

Currently a lifetime member of the Enterprise Chapter 9 DAV, Swann served as past DAV Chapter 9 Commander in 2014 and she holds the distinction of being the the first female African-American commander of the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 9 in Enterprise.

She has been in remission from a battle with breast cancer for 18 years. She tells her story to hopefully encourage other women, she said.

Swann was born and raised in Detroit, Mich. She grew up in the Brewster-Douglas Housing Projects, the largest residential housing project owned by the city of Detroit, located in the Brush Park section on the east side of Detroit.

Brewster-Douglas was home to such notable figures as singers Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard of the Supremes and comedian Lily Tomlin. “I grew up down the street from Diana Ross,” Swann said with a smile. “I went to school with one of her brothers and with Mary Wilson’s sister Catherine. I continue my friendship with Diana’s brother Fred who is still living in Detroit.

“That’s when the projects were beautiful. They say it takes a village to raise a child and it was exactly that—a community. That’s what I grew up with.”

Graduating from high school in 1967, Swann joined the Army in what was then called the Women’s Army Corps the next year at the age of 19. She flew on an airplane, for the first time in her life, to basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama. “That’s where all the ladies did basic training,” she said. “All the drill sergeants and commanding officers were women. When I went in the Army, women could not be married or have had any children.”

Swann laughs and shakes her head as she remembers her first night at basic training. Seated on her bunk, nervously holding a bag of M and Ms her mother had sent with her, Swann was startled by a drill instructor yelling, “Who told you to sit down?” Jumping to her feet, the candy spilled all over the floor and Swann made the mistake of asking the drill instructor if she could have assistance picking the candy up. The DI’s response reduced Swann to tears. “We didn’t draft you, we didn’t come knocking on your door begging you to join up,” the DI yelled.

“I burst out crying, begging to go back home and she said, ‘You’re not going home until 1971.’ I cannot stand M and Ms to this very day.

“It was a learning experience,” Swann said, laughing. “I thought 1971 was never going to come but yep, I made it.

“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Private Benjamin?’” Swann asks, referring to the 1980’s movie staring Goldie Hawn as a naive young woman who joins the Army on a whim and finds herself in more challenging situations than expected. “That. Was. Me,” Swann said as she shakes her head and laughs.

“They thought that because I was from Detroit that I would know how to shoot. Girl, you should have seen me,” she said. “They said I killed all the birds in the sky trying to hit a target.”

Serving in the military from 1968-1971, Swann served as a communications specialist in the Signal Corps. First stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Swann was then transferred to Frankfurt, Germany for the last two years of her military service. Talked into joining an Army softball team by a fellow soldier, Swann said that her two years in Germany consisted of a lot of travel with the ball team that earned championship status.

“We paved the way for the ladies today,” Swann said. “When I went in, my pay as a private was $101.20 a month we were paid monthly.

“It was a journey. It was an experience,” Swann. “I applaud these women in the military today.”

After Swann was honorably discharged as a Specialist E-5 she returned to Detroit and two months later was employed by the now defunct Veterans Administration Medical Center in Allen Park, Michigan. “I was their first secretary and worked my way up from a GS3 to a GS9, which was the highest I could go with my bachelor’s degree.”

Deciding to pursue a graduate degree, Swann returned to school at the age of 44. Her son was 14. “He started high school and I started graduate school—and that house was never the same. In 1994 when I started graduate school I had been out of school 14 years.”

Swann ultimately retired from the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit in the psychiatric department as a clinical social worker and that hospital was actually key to her breast cancer recovery process after a spot was detected on her right breast during a routine mammogram in 2003. Following a lumpectomy, Swann was told that the surgeon had not been able to completely remove what was discovered to be a cancerous mass.

“It was a scary feeling hearing the word ‘cancer’ because I had just retired from the VA,” Swann said. “It’s like you really don’t believe it. You hear people say that they felt a lump during a breast self examine but I never did feel anything.”

Rather than undergo another lumpectomy and the subsequent radiation or chemotherapy, Swann chose to undergo a mastectomy at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center. “I had a good plastic surgeon,” she said. “They pulled the skin from my back and reconstructed this breast.”

“It’s still uncomfortable,” Swann said about the reconstructed breast. “I can’t sleep on that side.”

The fact that her breast cancer has been in remission for 18 years doesn’t lessen the diligence that Charlene Swann has about regular mammograms.

“I still go faithfully every year for a mammogram and every year they tell me that whoever did my mastectomy did an excellent job,” she said. “I tell them I had it done at the VA hospital in Detroit.”