EVANSTON — If there’s one thing Army veteran Jenna Pitman wishes people would keep in mind regarding military service and honoring veterans, it’s that people are still being deployed in dangerous situations at the present time, even though it may not get much attention in the media.

“I’ve never been a real political person,” she said, “but to see how things are perceived compared to the reality really opened my eyes.”

Pitman is a relatively new member of the Evanston community. She and her family — her husband Jason and three children — relocated in 2017 when she began working as a physician assistant at Evanston Community Health Center. Raised in the small town of Midland, South Dakota, Pitman’s military service in the U.S. Army extended from 2007 to 2014 and included an eight-month deployment to Afghanistan that began in late 2012.

Pitman said her military career began while she was attending college at the University of South Dakota, during which time she enjoyed participating in field training and became involved with the ROTC program. After graduating college, she was commissioned into the Army as a medical service officer and was stationed in South Korea for a year.

She had known she wanted to be involved in the practice of medicine since her early teens and the Army’s Interservice Physician Assistant Program afforded her the opportunity to pursue her passion and serve her country. Following her time in South Korea, she began the PA program in San Antonio and earned her MPAS (Master of Physician Assistant Studies) from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2011.

Pitman then served as a battalion provider at Fort Bliss in El Paso, earning the rank of captain, before her deployment in December 2012.

In Afghanistan, she served as an officer and medical provider for a small company outpost of about 100 people in the lower part of the country. Pitman said they were fortunate that their outpost wasn’t directly fired on and they didn’t have to deal with any major traumatic injuries during her time deployed — her work primarily involved caring for illness and minor injuries, including those suffered by local area children at times, as well as training medics.

The absence of significant combat does not mean an absence of sacrifices, however. Pitman said her outpost was remote and very simplistic. At least part of the time, it was bitterly cold, and pipes would regularly freeze.

“I grew up in South Dakota and was used to cold, but even I wasn’t expecting just how cold it got,” she said.

The most difficult aspect of her deployment and most significant sacrifice, however, was the lengthy period of time away from her son, who was only 1 when she deployed. Pitman said phone service was sketchy, at best, so there could be lengthy periods of time with no contact with home. Although she did have access to email, that certainly didn’t provide her with any meaningful connection with her toddler son.

In fact, he didn’t recognize her at all when she did return home in August 2013. That time away from her son was the primary reason she opted to leave the military in the summer of 2014. “When you enlist, you know you’re going to be deployed and you understand that, but I just couldn’t see doing it again with a child that young,” Pitman said.

If not for her motherhood, she said she likely would have simply transitioned into the National Guard.

Her husband Jason also served, although he was deployed multiple times and served in the Army infantry. “We sometimes joked that he was trained to do the damage and I was trained to fix it,” she said with a laugh.

With her upbringing in South Dakota and her husband’s in Idaho, the couple began to look around for communities in the same part of the country and settled upon Evanston, where they’ve felt very much at home.

Pitman said she does miss some aspects of her military service, particularly the structure and the work ethic, which she said is just very different in the general public.

She said her time serving has given her a deep and abiding appreciation for the sacrifices made by those serving, both now and in the past. She finds it troubling that those currently serving don’t receive much attention.

“There are still people dying and still people being shot at,” she said.

One of the things she appreciates about Evanston is the level of patriotism she sees and the number of people standing for the national anthem.

“I’m almost tearful to see people coming together and showing their appreciation,” she said.

While Veterans Day, said Pitman, is a day specifically designated to show that appreciation for the service and sacrifices of those who serve, she would like to see that reflected every day. She’d also like to see appreciation and recognition of the experiences and scars that people who served carry with them long after that service has ended.

“We should take time to recognize those who made sacrifices and may still have issues they’re dealing with due to events and situations they went through for our country,” she said.