Seeley Lake home to Navy's first female floating crane operator

SEELEY LAKE – Jodi Stierwalt never shied away from big tasks-or big vehicles. An equipment operator in the United States Navy Reserve, her attitude when asked if she could operate a specific piece of machinery was, "I don't know. Let me try."

A self-described Navy brat, Stierwalt is proud of her father who was a World War II Veteran. He survived the Japanese attack at Subic Bay in the Philippines, which occurred shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Stierwalt's tangential connection with the Navy continued when she married a Navy man whose father had also served in the Navy.

In 1979, Stierwalt was 38 years old, living in Las Vegas, Nevada, the mother of five children. During the school year she drove the school bus. During the summer she drove flatbed trailers and belly-dumps for a local construction company. A belly dump is one of those massive vehicles into which rocks or other material are loaded from the top and unloaded from the bottom.

Joining the Navy Reserve seemed like the logical complement to her other jobs. The Reserve's one weekend a month schedule, capped by a two-week junket once a year, presented a chance for her to gain more knowledge and experience while still meeting the various demands of her civilian life.

Stierwalt began her Reserve career by learning arc welding. But because of her construction experience and since she already had a Commercial Operator's License, she was quickly assigned to community service projects operating a D-8 front end loader.

For her Reserve two-week work project, Stierwalt got the opportunity to operate a floating crane. The task required moving steel bulwarks onto a ship being retrofitted to create separate female quarters, since women were being assigned to the ship.

After her first two days of work, the Executive Officer ordered Stierwalt to follow him and led her to an office.

Stierwalt said, "When I walked out of that office, I had a Floating Crane Operator's License. That made me the first female Floating Crane Operator-he told me that as we were walking back."

Stierwalt attributed the promotion to her careful, fluid maneuvering of the crane. She explained that when the crane is mounted on a flatboat on the water and the operator starts moving a load, the motion causes the whole flatbed to sway and undulate. She said, "When I was moving it, everything just moved with. I didn't hurry it, I just slowly moved it."

When her two years as a Reservist were over, Stierwalt resumed her regular jobs, though she eventually transferred from driving the school bus to working floor maintenance for the school district. Primarily the job entailed laying carpeting or putting in tile flooring. From there she moved to the paint shop, still in the same school district.

However, Stierwalt said, "The heat in Vegas was slowly killing me."

After she retired, she and her husband searched for a cooler place to live. In 1999, the mountains drew them to Seeley Lake.

Stierwalt's children have grown, multiplied and spread out. Asked how many grandchildren and great grandchildren she has, Stierwalt said, "Too many to count."