Lisa Wingo, medical assistant II at Eskenazi Health Center North Illinois Street, was hanging out in the woods in basic training when she realized she’d made the right choice to join the Indiana National Guard. She was peering up from a foxhole, feeling “so little” down there, with her rifle stuck standing straight up in the dirt beside her.

Moments like these, far from discouraging Wingo, reminded her how she was enjoying herself. “Being 17,” she says, “and being with other young people, and we all were in it together, and you’re having fun, you’re getting in trouble together …. ” “Oh man, I loved it,” she says. “I would do it over again.”

Sergeant First Class (SFC) Wingo’s more than two decades of service for the guard began with work on fuel pipelines and with fuel trucks. By the 1990s, she was moved to water purification, experience that was critical during her deployment to Hurricane Katrina, when her team put up temporary showers and clothes washers for residents.

She pursued her medical assistant license at the Aristotle College of Medical and Dental Technology and later a health information management degree. Her military service, she says, “allowed me to go to school. It allowed my son to go to school.” She also found that her weekend and summer commitments to the guard enabled her to meet “a lot of people from different areas of the world. Some of them I’m still friends with now,” she says.

Still, Wingo’s long service had a cost. Thinking back on her only son’s high school years, she says, “I had to be away from him. I missed a couple of good years of things. I missed the prom. I missed basketball season, football season.”

Now in “one happy family” with her son, stepchildren and step-grandchildren, Wingo has discovered that her military service has given her an ability to manage stress that often catches others, including her husband Larry, by surprise. “When I leave work,” she says, “I leave work just as happy as when I came, even on my busy days.”

A fellow church member referred the veteran to Eskenazi Health two years ago. Wingo describes her job as a medical assistant for Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Care at Eskenazi Health Center North Illinois Street as “a calling.” “I love it,” she says. “I wish I would have had this job a few years ago.” “I love what I do,” she adds. “I love working with people. I really do.”

Wingo sees the results of her military training every day in her work. At her health center, colleagues call her the “coordinator” for making things happen, she says. The need to see things through is something she’s noticed in other veterans as well. “Even after you’re done, you still have that military mettle,” she says. “I was an E-7 when I retired,” she adds, referring to the rank of sergeant first class. “I think I did pretty good.”

“Starting at the bottom as a private — as a little bitty, lowly private — and just making those little bitty milestones just to make it up was a big deal back then,” she says. Her accomplishments have even inspired others. “I had a nephew that joined [the military] because of me,” she says. As a young woman, she remembers admiring “all that brass” her cousin wore as a major general. “You never know who is paying attention and who is watching,” she says.

Wingo has started expressing her patriotism by singing the national anthem at big events, including for a Pacers game in honor of Veterans Day. She’s hoping to one day perform the anthem for the Indianapolis 500 in memory of her sister Debra Houston, who waved the green flag at a 2021 race practice after appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show as the oldest soap box derby racer.

Two years ago, Wingo, eager to collaborate with veterans again, joined Kappa Epsilon Psi, a military sorority. Last year she marched with the National Association of Black Military Women (NABMW) in the Veterans Day Parade and is hoping they can form a new chapter in Indianapolis.

Whether by joining organizations, by marching or in song, Wingo wants everyone to know her dedication to the service that has made such an impact on her life. “I’m camo all the way. I’m veteran all the way,” she says.