Marine Gunnery Sgt. Sandra Center stands at ease after inspection of class 05-08 in Kay Hall. Journal photo / Frieda Squires

Gunnery Sgt.
Sandra Center

By RICHARD SALIT
Journal Staff Writer

Eleven years ago, Sandra Center felt burned out. She had it with junior college and the sports scholarship that landed her on the basketball and fast-pitch softball teams.

"I needed a break," she says. "I needed a challenge."

One day, while exploring her options at a Marine recruiting office in Arizona, she noticed a corkboard with pictures of all the locals who had gone to boot camp and graduated.

"It was all male," she recalls. "There were very few females on that board. To me, that was the challenge that was ahead of me — to come back and put my picture on that board and say, ‘I did it.' And maybe be a good example for someone else that was thinking of it.

"Not only did she survive the Marine drill instructors at Parris Island, in South Carolina, she eventually became one herself. Today, she's a gunnery sergeant and only the second female drill instructor in the history of Navy Officer Candidate School.

Away from her students, Center flashes a warm, almost shy, smile, framed by smooth skin and high cheekbones. But when she's leading her class, she's all business. Beneath her olive, wide-brimmed drill instructor hat, her eyes narrow when she doesn't like what she sees, and they seemingly bulge when she's reprimanding. When barking out commands, she puts her whole athletic body into it, tensing her arms and shoulders, opening her mouth impossibly wide and appearing ready to bite. When she talks about getting the candidates in her control, she describes it as "game on, come to mama."

It's easy to picture her driving the lane as a point guard for Mesa Community College (not far from her native Scottsdale, Ariz.) or teaching martial arts to male and female Marines as a black belt instructor at Parris Island.

Center doesn't think being a drill instructor is any different for a woman than a man. She's already had one tour at Marine boot camp, the only branch of the armed services that segregates training for men and women. Her tour in Newport is the first time she's serving as a drill instructor for men.

"I've never had any problem with being a female drill instructor," she says. "They don't look at your gender. They look at how you conduct yourself, how you speak to them.

"Questions about her being a female drill instructor "don't get asked very often," she says. But she does get noticed. At one ceremony for families of OCS students, a young woman came up to her to applaud her accomplishment.

Center, soon after taking charge of her class, promised that "they are going to be pushed to their physical limits," adding, "A lot of them have probably never been yelled at." Single and 32, she said in jest, "They're going to be really thrilled that I have no kids and nothing but time."

In just 10 years after joining the Marines, she has become a gunnery sergeant. There are only two ranks above her among enlisted personnel. She's not interested in becoming an officer.

"I'm happy to be a gunny," she says. "I really enjoy the enlisted side. There is a lot more interaction and mentoring than supervising, managing and making policy."

During the remainder of her three years here, she plans to study criminal justice at Roger Williams University and get the bachelor's degree she never finished.

Master Gunnery Sgt. Robert Foshee selected the "cream of the crop" in assembling his team of drill instructors. But he says it took him more than a year to fill the last slot.

"I was trying to find the right female drill instructor with the right qualifications. There's not many of them," he says. Center, he says, "was an angel sent by the drill instructors' god. Her personal appearance, her physical appearance, her entire military record -- she was just the perfect person for the job."

She has only impressed him more since arriving.

"Hard and demanding" is how he describes her, "but fair and compassionate."

rsalit@projo.com