Air Force veteran gets waiver to bury same-sex partner at Willamette National Cemetery

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(Gallery by Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian)

Nancy Lynchild's grave at

, when it is dug, will seal a marriage while setting a national first. And it will provide a public expression of a life that retired Air Force Lt. Col. Linda Campbell once had to live in secret.

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The burial of Lynchild's ashes at the military cemetery will be the nation's first of a veteran's same-sex spouse.

, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which administers national cemeteries, personally approved a waiver of VA policy to permit the burial.

three days before Christmas.

Shinseki's waiver was no sure thing. It followed a monthslong campaign by Campbell, encouraged and supported by Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner

and

D-Ore., they told The Oregonian. And it didn't arrive until Jan. 29, more than a month after Lynchild died, while Campbell agonized about funeral arrangements. It is the latest signal that the military -- and the nation -- is changing the way it views same-sex relationships.

A self-described lifelong "rule follower," Campbell is overjoyed that she and Lynchild will have their ashes buried together at Willamette. They will share space in the same cemetery where her father, a World War II veteran, and her mother have their ashes under a stone that says "Together forever."

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"I learned to be patient and hope the rules change," said Campbell, 66, who was closeted during her active-duty Air Force career in the pre-"don't ask, don't tell" era. But when Avakian encouraged her last spring to apply for a waiver to VA's burial policy, "a light went off."

As a young woman at Marshall High School, then Portland State and the University of Oregon, Linda Campbell felt alone. "There weren't books or support groups," she said. She worried about even researching "the H word" at the library, for fear of tipping off someone that she was curious about homosexuality.

She wasn't "out" in any sense of the word, but she knew she preferred the company of her friends to dating boys. While aware of her "inner nature," she said, "I knew it wasn't acceptable. I had to change."

Already in an unseen minority, she decided to join another -- women in the military.

When she entered the Air Force right out of college in 1968, "I had never even seen a picture of a woman in uniform." But after she graduated from the University of Oregon, "I was looking for a good job and the Air Force had one."

She lived a highly compartmentalized life. She had developed a tight social network of like-minded young women before entering the Air Force, but otherwise didn't talk about intimate things. The Air Force, in those days, was not a welcoming place for women, she said, much less gay women.

Her four years of active duty included some miserable times. She was verbally abused by a lieutenant colonel who reminded her regularly that he believed women belonged at home, having babies, rather than in the military. She kept a calendar, marking how many days remained on the term of her Air Force contract.

She didn't tell her parents she was a lesbian until a difficult weekend during her Air Force years when they were calling her friends, trying to locate their daughter. She had left her station in the Bay Area to visit her partner in Portland and happened to be there when her parents called to ask if she knew where Linda was.

Linda and her partner locked eyes and the woman said she didn't. It was the moment Linda decided to stop lying to her parents. She went to their house and told them. It didn't go well.

Her father, a staff sergeant in World War II, announced that he no longer had a daughter. Her mother told her, "I just wish you hadn't told us."

It was 1972.

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While it was a lonely time for Linda in the Air Force 41 years ago, the military has been moving in her direction at an accelerating pace. It took two decades for the implementation of the awkward Clinton-era compromise policy of "don't ask, don't tell," which sought to ignore the issue of sexual identity. A lame-duck Congress rescinded that policy in December 2010, allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military for the first time.

This week, outgoing Defense Secretary

to extend additional military benefits to same-sex partners. From now on, he said, the military should apply to them the same rules it applies to heterosexual partners regarding emergency leave, commissary privileges, joint duty assignments, transportation, disability and death payments, and child care, among other things. And Tuesday night,

, the same-sex wife of Army Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith, was a guest of Michelle Obama during the State of the Union speech.

"It's miraculous," Campbell said, recalling the way she tiptoed around the use of pronouns, dragged male friends to military functions and, generally, hid her nature from people she worked with. "I never dreamed in my lifetime things would change."

Yet the military isn't yet blind to sexual orientation. Still to be settled, Panetta wrote in his memorandum, are thornier, more complex issues that remain restricted by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. Among the still-not-equal military benefits, Panetta wrote, are health care, housing allowances and on-base housing.

And burial benefits.

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After leaving active duty, Linda Campbell went on to a long career in the Oregon Air National Guard and then the Air Force Reserves, from which she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1994. Her mentor for much of that time was t

Her face lights up when talking about Rosenbaum, who died of kidney cancer in 2010, because he was an exception to the military rule. He accepted her, knowing who she was.

It happened when she summoned up the nerve to ask him, after he'd invited her to another party, how he would feel if he were invited to an event and asked to bring a woman who wasn't his wife.

"Linda, are you gay?" she says he asked. She acknowledged she was and that she had a partner.

"Well, for heaven's sake," Rosenbaum replied, "bring her."

Campbell did, and they were greeted warmly at the door by Jane Rosenbaum, Fred's wife. After that, she felt safer. "Fred made it tolerable," she said.

Rosenbaum chaired the Housing Authority of Portland, the agency that provided housing to low-income and at-risk Portlanders. Campbell followed him into that career, first in Portland, then to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, where she was a subdirector in the Portland office.

She was in another committed relationship with a partner who was "beautiful, smart and my family loved her." Together, they decided to become parents, and her partner gave birth to a boy named Brady.

In the course of her work, she met a former electrician who had risen through the ranks at the Housing Authority of Eugene. Nancy Jean Lynchild was a crackerjack manager, straightening out housing office problems with calm confidence. And, Campbell learned later, she was gay and also in a long-term relationship.

There was a spark between them, but they recognized they lived in separate worlds. Then one day over lunch, Campbell said, Lynchild announced she had broken up with her partner. Campbell, who said she was experiencing problems in her own relationship, agonized about the information.

Finally, she said, "I ran away from home." She lived alone for a while. But, she said, "I was just compelled to be with Nancy."

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Formalizing a gay relationship, even in the mid-1990s, was an uncertain process. Lynchild and Campbell twice registered in Oregon as domestic partners, first when the city of Eugene invited couples to do so, even though registration carried no benefits. They also raced up to Multnomah County when county commissioners briefly opened the window to gay marriage in 2004, marrying quickly without family around. They eventually were legally married in Vancouver, B.C., in November 2010.

But the anniversary that matters to Campbell is Oct. 13, 1995. That's when she and Lynchild got in a car and drove from Oregon to Washington, D.C., where Campbell was accepting a job at HUD headquarters.

"From that moment," she said, "we were married."

Jobs changed. Their bond deepened. Campbell says other people have told her "marriage is hard," but with Lynchild, she never found it so.

Campbell retired early, at 51, and the couple moved back to Oregon at Lynchild's urging. She thought Campbell needed to be closer to her parents.

Campbell's parents had overcome their initial disappointment about learning their daughter was gay. They had come to love Lynchild, as they had loved Campbell's previous partner. It was the parent-daughter relationship she always wanted.

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They all lived in proximity for four years, until Campbell's mother, Joyce, died in 2004. For Gordon Campbell, the retired staff sergeant, it was a crushing loss. He and Joyce had been married for 62 years. They had no funeral plans, beyond a vaguely expressed intent to have their ashes scattered somewhere. When Linda Campbell accompanied him to the funeral home to discuss cremation, she said, "the light was gone from his eyes."

When the funeral director learned Gordon Campbell was a veteran, he told him something he had never known: His wife was eligible to have her ashes buried at Willamette National Cemetery. And when his time came, Gordon Campbell's ashes could be placed in the same grave, under a single headstone. It was, Linda Campbell said, an electrifying family moment.

"It changed Dad so much," Campbell said. "He would know where Mom was. It was a gift from his country to him and from him to her. It made him proud."

After her death, Gordon Campbell moved to Eugene to be closer to Linda and Nancy. When he died in 2009, his plan was carried out.

"I was just so grateful they had this," Campbell said. "At the same time, I was hurt that Nancy and I couldn't be honored the same way."

The pain wasn't an abstraction. In 2000, Lynchild was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. Yet she insisted on living the full life of bicycle rides, hikes and birding outings she enjoyed with Campbell.

Her oncologist,

of Portland's Compass Oncology, said Lynchild was determined to live her remaining life to the fullest and she wasn't shy about saying so. "She wasn't going to roll over" and accept middling results, Weinstein said. "She lived better, she lived bigger, she lived more joyfully."

On Dec. 22, more than 12 years after her diagnosis, she died in the bedroom of the Eugene home she shared with Campbell. She was 64.

Campbell was bereft. "Nancy has always been my rock," she said. "It seems very strange for me to be alone."

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Lynchild's illness and the uncertainty about what would follow her death were weighing on Campbell when she got a phone call from Brad Avakian. Oregon's commissioner of Labor and Industries thinks he was on his way to Eugene for a campaign event last spring and was dialing potential supporters to invite them.

The way they both remember the conversation, Campbell asked what the commissioner of Labor and Industries did. Avakian explained that the office enforced workplace law, including civil rights discrimination claims. Did he support gay rights?, she asked. He did, he said. Did he support gay marriage? He did.

So she explained that Campbell and Lynchild were out thousands of dollars in medical costs that would have been covered under the military retirement package if she had been married to a man. More important, she said, she couldn't be buried with Lynchild at Willamette, near her parents.

But, she told Avakian, "I know there's nothing you can do."

Replied Avakian: "Don't be so sure."

Back in Portland, Avakian said he looked up the section of the federal code that covers veterans' benefits. It was true, he saw, that same-sex couples couldn't have nonveteran partners buried in national cemeteries as long as federal law defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. But he saw the possibility of an exception in a single semi-sentence.

Under the heading "Persons eligible for interment in national cemeteries," Section 6 notes, burial could be allowed for "such other persons or classes of persons as may be designated by the Secretary."

That refers to the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which owns and operates the nation's national cemeteries. At present, the office is held by retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki.

At Avakian's urging, Campbell filed her first request for a waiver last May, when Lynchild's death seemed imminent.

"Mr. Secretary," she wrote, in part, "Our time of need is now. We want to put our affairs in order and share the peace of mind that comes with knowing we will share our final resting place together."

Avakian sent his letter the same day, telling the VA's undersecretary for memorial affairs that Oregon supported Campbell and Lynchild's request. The state, he said, believes the request "not only to be morally right, but ... what is required under the civil rights of our state."

Avakian also called his friend Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who also wrote in support of the request. The VA acknowledged the correspondence, but offered no answer. To the agency, waivers are granted only at the "time of need," which it interpreted to mean when death has occurred.

After Lynchild died in December, Campbell renewed her request, again with support from Avakian and Merkley. Merkley discussed the matter personally with Shinseki, stressing his and Oregon's position.

The VA should follow the lead of the Defense Department when it struck down "don't ask, don't tell," he told Shinseki. The Constitution specifies that states may not deny equal protection of the law to their citizens. And finally, Merkley said, discrimination against a same-sex spouse is simply morally wrong.

Shinseki, Merkley said, was noncommittal, but promised to review the case carefully.

Back in Oregon, Avakian's office drafted a civil rights complaint against Shinseki and Willamette National Cemetery. It said the commissioner of Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries had reason to believe the federal agency was illegally denying equal burial rights to a same-sex spouse. All that would be required to set the process in motion would be Avakian's signature.

"I never wanted to have to pull the trigger," Avakian said. "But I was ready to use every possible tool I had to make it happen."

Then Campbell got a call from the VA mortuary official in charge of scheduling. Shinseki had granted the waiver. "It was just surreal. I cried, I shook, I got on my knees, I thanked her."

Merkley said Shinseki had told him he wanted to make a decision that would produce a fair outcome.

"A huge thank you to him," Merkley said. "It's a huge stride for the secretary to come to this conclusion."

Shinseki approved Lynchild's burial, a VA spokesperson said by email, "in part, on evidence of a committed relationship between the veteran and the individual."

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Campbell has sold the house in Eugene and is preparing to move to a condo on Portland's South Waterfront. She says she will have a view of Mount Scott, the butte that looms over the southeast side of the city.

She will know that high on that hillside are buried the ashes of the people she has most loved. And someday, hers will join them.

This video was produced jointly by Basic Rights Oregon and the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, which has been working with Linda Campbell since last spring to get a waiver to the VA's policy prohibiting burials of same-sex couples in national cemeteries.

Together Forever from Michael Kurz on Vimeo.