photo by Mychal Richardson
Margaret “Margie” Witt is a decorated, 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force who made history in 2010 with her successful constitutional challenge to a notorious law— known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT)—that prohibited known gays and lesbians from serving in the U.S. military. Three months after she was ordered reinstated, Congress repealed the law.
Margie was born in 1964 in Tacoma where she became, among other things, a four-sport varsity athlete at Curtis High School and a two-sport varsity athlete at Pacific Lutheran University. She received her Nursing degree from PLU in 1986 and joined the U.S. Air Force the following year. She was on active duty for over eight years and, among other assignments, served as an operating room nurse at the Wiesbaden Regional Medical Center in Germany where she tended to soldiers wounded in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. After transferring from active to reserve duty, she joined the 446 AES at McChord AFB where she served an additional ten years. She served in Operation Enduring Freedom and Southern Watch. While serving with the 446th she received a Master’s Degree in Physical Therapy from Eastern Washington University in 1998. Since then her work (as a civilian) has mostly been as a physical therapist for Spokane-area school districts and the Veterans Health Administration. In 2012 she received her Doctor of Physical Therapy from Temple University. She is currently the supervisor Rehabilitation Services at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. Most recently she has assumed the authorship of Math for Meds and Dimensional Analysis for Meds textbooks for nurses, created and authored for decades by Anna Curren.
In her Air Force career, Margie logged nearly 2,000 hours as a flight nurse before being suspended, in 2004, when the Air Force announced it was pursuing her discharge under DADT. After prevailing against the Air Force and the U.S. Government at trial, she reached a settlement agreement and retired from the Air Force. She continues to speak out about her challenge to DADT and to campaign for equal rights and protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals. She lives with her wife, Laurie Johnson, in Portland Oregon.