Tina Pollard’s path to serving in the military all began when she crossed paths with a recruiter on senior skip day.
The then-teen was cutting class with friends as part of an annual student-organized tradition where high school seniors collectively skip one day of class together. In the midst of “acting silly as teenagers do,” she suddenly needed to use a restroom.
Pollard stumbled into a federal building, where she asked a military recruiter in the hallway to point her to the nearest bathroom. In return, the recruiter had Pollard take an aptitude test to see if she would qualify to enlist in the military.
The words he said about her results stuck in Pollard’s memory.
“He says, ‘You’re going to the Army. I’m going to be your mentor till you graduate and I’m going to get you all the way to entry day,’” Pollard said, recalling the recruiter’s response. “So that changed my life in a nutshell.”
Pollard served in the U.S. Army as a 71 Lima, an administrative specialist. She was assigned as a battalion clerk, responsible for transferring orders, special files and award orders.
Today, the Tarrant County resident serves as a commercial flight attendant, a woman of faith and the founder of Wings of Worth, a nonprofit that empowers youth through family-oriented events and workshops.
“I knew that the potential that was inside of me really had to come forward,” Pollard said.
Discipline and resilience
Two characteristics carried Pollard through her childhood, into her service in uniform and across all her work in civilian life: discipline and resilience.
Pollard grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, in an impoverished household. As the eldest daughter, she helped her single mother raise her siblings. On the weekends or school breaks, Pollard would visit her father in prison, where he was incarcerated throughout her childhood.
As a student, Pollard did it all: athletics, drama club and student council. When she entered high school she began to slip away from her studies.
“I just really wanted to leave Saginaw. And once I met Mr. Jones, I knew that the potential that was inside of me really had to come forward. So I was just young and misguided and not really thinking about my future,” Pollard said.
After her encounter with the recruiter, Pollard decided to alter her life’s trajectory. She graduated from high school on time in 1985 and began basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Pollard made sure all of her military paraphernalia was spiffy, she said. Her boots shined. Her uniform was ready. Her bed was made.
Branch: United States Army
Rank: E-4 Specialist
Years in service: 1985-1989
Current title: Founder and executive director, Wings of Worth
Definition of service: Obedience
When Pollard became the battalion clerk, she was responsible for handling important documents containing orders, transfers and awards for an entire battalion, which can have up to 1,000 personnel, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It was up to her to make sure everything was correct. That’s when the weight of her responsibility started to hit.
“That weight being on me, not messing up somebody’s assignment, not messing up somebody’s award, and making sure that everything was done accurately,” Pollard said. “Having that weight put on me just for the entire battalion, that was a lot.”
Her military experience helped her develop social skills, she said. Growing up in an all-Black neighborhood and school, she felt enlisting helped her form friendships with people of different backgrounds.
“What the military taught me is that I have the capacity to serve everyone, all different people from all different backgrounds,” Pollard said. “So, leaving the military, I understood that the assignment was greater than just one demographic, and that I don’t just need to serve a particular population, but to serve all people.”
Tina Pollard is shown in her 1985 U.S. Army graduation portrait, wearing her Army green Class A uniform after successfully completing her initial military training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. (Courtesy | Tina Pollard)
A guided approach
Pollard completed her three-year enlistment in 1989 as an E-4 Specialist and returned to Michigan. She took on a teacher-supporting role at Grand Rapids Public Schools.
Similar to her childhood drive to do it all, she went a step further. On top of working with students in the classroom, she was a cheerleading and pompom coach.
Over the next 12 years Pollard grew from a paraprofessional to become an elementary school secretary, then an assistant to the assistant superintendent and on to being a human resources technician.
By then, Pollard was 38 and searching for more. She began pursuing a marketing degree with dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. After breaking her foot on the steps of her church, she took a leap of faith and moved to Texas.
“The Lord told me to go. ‘Don’t look back,’” Pollard said. “He brought me to this foreign place. I had no job. I had nowhere to live. All I had was a car filled with clothes, a computer and a broken foot. But I came on faith because I knew that being an entrepreneur is my ultimate goal.”
She graduated from Davenport University and began serving as an assistant youth director and marketing director for a Texas church.
But at 52, she was ready for another life pivot.
Pollard tapped back into her social skills and the resilience she honed in the military to go through flight attendant school. In 2013, she began traveling as an attendant with American Airlines.
Pollard briefly moved to Las Vegas and continued working as a flight attendant until she felt a call to return to Texas in February 2020.
In 2023, Pollard faced immense grief after the sudden deaths of her nephew and her brother.
Amid these major life events, Pollard’s desire to serve never left her. Instead, she navigated the loss of her loved ones by creating a nonprofit that offers workshops and mentorship to youth and parents.
“There is always hope for somebody’s circumstances to be better because that’s the life that I’ve lived,” Pollard said. “It brings you joy when you can fulfill a need for somebody else’s life to be greater.”
Tina Pollard wears her battle dress uniform coming from lunch at the mess hall in Fort Eustis, Virginia, 1989. (Courtesy | Tina Pollard)
A guided approach
Of all the roles Pollard has tackled in her lifetime — big sister, Army soldier, veteran, entrepreneur, church leader, flight attendant — she sees service as her way of being obedient to God.
“Everything that I went through, I can see where it can be purposeful now,” Pollard said. “God didn’t waste anything.”
As she reflects on her past, present and future, there’s one phrase she coined for how she has approached it all.
“I choose obedience,” Pollard said. “I let love lead me. I let hope guide me, and I let joy fill me. And that’s what I hope for others.”
Marissa Greene is the faith and fellowships editor at the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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