{"id":38968,"date":"2013-12-22T10:18:14","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T15:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38968"},"modified":"2013-12-22T10:26:11","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T15:26:11","slug":"rachel-washburn-cheerleader-turned-army-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38968","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Washburn, cheerleader turned Army officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rachel<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Several of you have been sending this link<\/a> to us over the last couple of days – the story of Rachel Washburn who went from being an ROTC student and Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader to a two-tour El-Tee in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

“Initially, it was kind of a novelty to people I met if they ever found out,” Washburn said Thursday in a phone interview from Savannah, Ga., where she was on the first day of her post-deployment leave.<\/p>\n

“It’s kind of a bit of a shock. You don’t expect those two things to go hand in hand with one person.”<\/p>\n

She didn’t join the Army on a whim. During her three seasons with the Eagles, Washburn was an Army ROTC student and history major at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her father was an Army helicopter pilot and an Air Force fighter pilot. She figures she moved 17 or 18 times growing up, but she calls Philadelphia home even though she just attended college there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Rachel<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Actually, I thought the story was a little sexist. We have a Ravens’ cheerleader in our midst who went in the other direction. After serving in Afghanistan (a hardship tour, since he was TSO’s battle buddy), our own VTWoody became an NFL cheerleader and USAToday never did a story about him. What’s up with that, media?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several of you have been sending this link to us over the last couple of days … Rachel Washburn, cheerleader turned Army officer<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-who-knows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}