“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.”
This quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is one Tammy Milner-Briggs has lived by — and it has led her to her newest position as Army major.
Currently, Milner-Briggs is an Army captain, but she will soon be promoted to major after serving in the Army for 30 years. She serves as a chaplain, helping others overcome hardships and other issues they face in the military. Currently stationed in Hawaii, Milner-Briggs has chosen to celebrate this promotion surrounded by her family and loved ones in her hometown, Wetumpka.
“This is a significant rank to make as a chaplain,” Milner-Briggs said. “I’m a captain now being promoted to major. It’s a long-awaited rank, because you have to remain a captain for almost 10 years to become a major. Plus, my family has never seen a military promotion, so we’re doing all of the pageantry — we’re doing the national anthem; we’re doing the full-scale military ceremony because they’ve never seen it done in person.”
Milner-Briggs followed in her father’s footsteps in joining the military; however, she has surpassed her father’s ranking making her the first military officer in her family.
“My father was a sergeant, but we have no officers; I’m the first in the family,” Milner-Briggs said. “That’s why this is significant. I need my siblings, my nieces and nephews to see this in real time so they can have that picture in their mind that nothing is impossible.”
Milner-Briggs’ journey with the U.S. military began when she was a senior at Wetumpka High School. She joined the Alabama Army National Guard in 1993.
“I started doing my monthly drills as a senior,” Milner-Briggs said. “I went to basic training that summer. In June 1994 I went to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. When I came home, I was still in the guard, but I felt the call to go active duty.”
She went active duty in 1995; however, she ended up coming home for about a year before she rejoined the Alabama National Guard in Oct. 1996 which she served for eight years before switching to the Army Reserve.
“I was assigned to a unit in Gunner Park in Montgomery,” Milner-Briggs said. “I stayed in the state in the reserves for 10 years, then I became an army officer.”
It wasn’t that simple, though.
While she was in the reserves, Milner-Briggs’s mother died in 1998 when Milner-Briggs was just 22 years old. Experiencing a major loss at such a young age nearly put a dent in her career path.
“I had every reason to give up,” Milner-Briggs said, “but (my mother) instilled in me that I could be anything I wanted to be, and I wanted to make my mom proud.”
What really propelled Milner-Briggs forward was a conversation she had with former Alabama Gov. Donald Siegelman while grieving her mother’s death.
“(Siegelman) came to see us,” Milner-Briggs said. “That doesn’t happen to everybody. My mother worked for the state of Alabama, and when he heard about her death and heard about her service to the state, he set up a meeting at his secretary’s house. He said to me, ‘I know this is bad, but I need y’all to keep living.’ Man, that just sat with me.”
After hearing those words, Milner-Briggs decided to keep going. She knew she had to keep living in honor of her mother, and to share the legacy her mother left behind with her children.
Eight years later, Milner-Briggs was deployed to Kuwait. In 2006, she found her true calling in Kuwait after working alongside Army chaplains.
“When I was deployed in Kuwait, I got to see the day-to-day operations and how chaplains helped people get through the worst parts of their deployment,” Milner-Briggs said. “When I got home a year later in 2007, I heard the Lord tell me to go be a chaplain.”
At that point, Milner-Briggs was a sergeant; however, to become a chaplain, she had to enroll into seminary and begin the process of becoming a chaplain.
“It took me eight years to get through school to receive your Masters of Divinity,” Milner-Briggs said. “When I graduated seminary, I reapplied to go active duty as a chaplain, because I really wanted to change lives the way I saw those chaplains change lives in Kuwait.”
And that’s what she did. Since 2016, she has served as an active duty chaplain in the Army. After becoming a chaplain, she was first stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas as a chaplain. She then moved to Dallas, Texas to serve as a chaplain recruiter, and then was stationed in Germany before she moved to her current location in Hawaii.
Later this month, however, Milner-Briggs will be coming right back home to Wetumpka to celebrate the biggest achievement of her career.
“It feels surreal,” Milner-Briggs said. “When I got the notification that I was getting promoted, I just didn’t know how to feel. When I think back to the beginning of my career, never in a million years did I ever believe that I will be one, a major, and two, a chaplain.”
Throughout her service, she believed she would retire as a sergeant. However, Roosevelt’s quote has continued to keep her in motion throughout her career.
“Don’t stop the process until the person who can tell you no, tells you no,” Milner-Briggs said. “If they can’t give you a yes, then they are just in the way.”
Milner-Briggs will hold her ceremony at 6 p.m. March 29 at the Wetumpka Civic Center.
