ON BOARD THE USS CAMDEN — Navy Capt. Deborah A. Loewer is in the engine room of this 54,000-ton replenishment ship, where giant boilers produce the steam that turns the turbines that power the shafts that keep the 769-foot ship plowing through the water at 30 knots or more.
The engine room is cramped, hot, noisy, dangerous and decidedly unglamorous.
"This is my favorite part of the ship," Loewer said. "This is where I learned how to be a sailor."
In 1979, as a self-described "baby" junior officer of 24, Loewer was assigned to work below decks on the destroyer tender Yosemite. The Springfield, Ohio, native was among the first group of women assigned to sea duty after Congress in 1978 dropped its ban on women serving aboard ships.
Loewer and three other women served amid the Yosemite's 1,100 men, many of whom bitterly resented the women's presence. The men taught their female shipmates the intricacies of running a ship at sea but often through clenched teeth.
"We were accepted," said Loewer, who will turn 46 next month. " 'Accepted' is the right word. I won't qualify that with the word 'well' accepted or 'gladly' accepted or 'happily' accepted. . . . It wasn't fun; it was long, hard work. But I think we and the Navy learned much more about what it took to go to sea."
Two decades after her indoctrination on the Yosemite, Loewer is the Navy's senior female surface warfare officer--a designation involving extensive training, testing and sea duty in the areas of ship handling, combat systems, engineering and more.
Of 315 Navy ship commanders, Loewer and three others are women.
If you want to gauge how far the male-dominated Navy has come in accepting women as equals, and how far it may have yet to go, Deborah Loewer is a case in point.
Her word is law for Camden's 565 crew members, all but one of whom is taller than Loewer, who is 5 foot 1 and weighs 110 pounds. She is confident, energetic and seems to bounce from place to place on the ship.
If her authority is virtually unlimited, so too is her responsibility.
If anything goes wrong on the Camden, Loewer alone is responsible to the admirals ashore and the brass at the Pentagon. An error by the youngest of sailors can get a commanding officer sacked.
"I have no fear in that regard," Loewer said. "I have done everything that I can to train my folks."
