SELINSGROVE — SELINSGROVE -- After months of fighting for a chance to serve in the Air Force, an 18-year-old Selingrove woman has defeated the odds and won the battle.
On Friday, Kimber Kreamer’s military recruiter called her to share the good news: The surgeon general had approved her request to serve in the military, even though for months she had been denied entry because of scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine.
“I was really surprised,” Kreamer said.
The angles of her spine were tested in December and found to be 6 percent greater than the Air Force allows.
She was subsequently disqualified by the branch’s official doctors, and the surgeon general later denied her a waiver.
“I don’t take 'no’ for an answer,” Kreamer told The Daily Item in February. “The Air Force is what I have wanted to do with my life for a very long time. It truly is my dream.”
Since then, she has gone for X-rays, regularly visited a chiropractor, and exercised diligently to strengthen her back muscles.
By July, the curvature did reduce, she said, but not enough to make her eligible for enlistment.
Kreamer was diagnosed as having scoliosis in middle school, but never believed it would stop her from having a normal life.
She has been president of the Outdoors Club at Selinsgrove Area High School since her junior year. She has been white-water rafting, and rock climbing and backpacking with a 50-pound pack in West Virginia.
Armed with two letters from physicians, recommending she be allowed to join the Air Force, Kreamer had approached military officials for reconsideration and asked Pennsylvania Sens. Arlen Specter and Robert Casey Jr. for support.
But more time went by, and she still had no word on any change.
“I had kind of given up hope,” she said.
She started working full time at her job at Best Buy.
“I was going to keep working until I figured out what I was going to do,” she said.
Now she knows.
Within the week, she plans to go to her recruiter’s office and fill out all the necessary paper work. In a few weeks, she will also return to the Military Entrance Processing Station in Harrisburg to complete several basic tests.
She expects to begin basic training in Texas in January.
Kreamer will be the third-generation member in her family to join the Air Force.
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Valley woman wins fight to join military
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