Judge. Chairman. Air Force spouse. Navy veteran daughter. Changemaker. Cheryl Mason is all of these things (and more), but she can now claim Author as well with her new book, Dare to Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart. Long before she penned the book and led by example, she took her mother’s guidance to heart by refusing to don the cloak of invisibility — as a female, as a military spouse, as a leader. Cheri, as she is known to friends, credits her mother for her success. “I really stand on her shoulders. I wouldn’t be where I am without her shoulders,” she says.
Cheri has good reason to see her mother as a giant. When she was four, tragedy fell on the family when they lost her WWII veteran father to suicide. The community —with the exception of the veteran community— turned their back on them (some quite literally as they would turn around in the street if they saw them walking). “It was like we were invisible, because they didn’t know what to say,’” explains Cheri. Her mother, who grew up as an orphan herself, refused to let devastation consume the family.
“When my father died and she became a widow at 42 and the sole provider, she would not allow us to become invisible; she wouldn’t accept it, specifically [for] me,” Cheri shares. “Because she knew that it would impact us badly if we faded into the background.”
Despite what anyone else thought, her mother encouraged her to be bold. “She pushed me. She pushed me into everything. I knew intuitively that people were uncomfortable around me, but she didn’t care. She pushed me into everything,” recalls Cheri with a smile. Inheriting her mother’s fortitude and tenacity, she then pushed herself, first by getting a dual degree in psychology and political science from Ohio Northern University where she met her future husband, then an Air Force ROTC candidate. Now a military spouse dedicated to both her husband’s career and her own, she began law school in Dayton, Ohio, before the military took them by surprise by sending them to Nebraska. Once in Omaha, she transferred law schools and got an internship at the base legal office. She attended a military spouse brief, and shocked the room by telling them about her law school internship. After the initial collective gasp, a senior spouse told her, “you cannot do that!” Another chided her by saying she was being selfish, and that her job is to support her husband’s career. After the outburst, Cheri simply observed the rest of the meeting without offering her input.
When asked what her mother’s response was once she heard about this horrific interaction, Cheri laughs and says, “I didn’t tell my mother for a long time because when my mother visited me in Omaha, I didn’t want her looking for these women!”
Ignoring the advice of these senior spouses and listening only to her husband’s encouragement, Cheri continued with law school, found more like-minded military spouses, became a judge, and took on more professional leadership roles. But it was during this growth that she decided she would lead differently, by intentionally listening and relating to what people had to say.
“When you climb the leadership ladder, you get more distance from the people who work for you. And sometimes that can become a cloak of invisibility for leaders because for whatever reason they feel like they need to have it, they want to hide in it — there’s a variety of reasons from Imposter Syndrome to fear of failure, the list goes on and on. But leaders do take on this cloak, and I didn’t take on the cloak. Because it wasn’t who I was.” Breaking the leadership mold, Cheri eventually also broke the glass ceiling as the first woman appointed as Chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. Her term spanned from November 2017 to August 2022, including a crisis of global proportions: the 2020 worldwide pandemic. Yet she soldiered on, leading by daring to relate through listening and empathizing. “What it did was spotlight the importance of life and how work fits into life and not the other way around,” she says. “It’s about what people want, and it’s about what people need because they’re human beings, and they want to have a purpose and they want to matter. And work is a part of life and should add to that, enhance it, but not dominate it.”
Though her term as Chairman was cut short abruptly, Cheri continues to lead, whether as a writer, speaker, or public servant. Through it all, she reflects on what she has learned.
“My experiences as a child, as a suicide-loss survivor, my experiences as a military spouse… [they] taught me the importance and the impact of people,” she remarks.
As far as her own impact, Cheri has given her shoulders to the thousands of military spouses who will come after her. By standing on her shoulders —just as she did her mother— military spouses can doff the cloak of invisibility and stand in the spotlight to generate change.
Reflecting on that first military spouse meeting with senior spouses, Cheri shares her wisdom. “The problem was they wanted me in the background, but it wasn’t because of me, it was because of what they had been told. That’s what military spouses were supposed to do: they were supposed to volunteer on base and support the base. But frankly, and I say this often: Military spouses were the heroes of the homefront, and we still are. We just changed what that looks like.”
“There is so much impact military spouses make, not only within their own families but in the community and beyond. I think about all of the Executive Orders that have come out since the beginning of the Obama administration and through the Biden administration, and military spouses have been the ones pushing, writing, doing that. And that impact is huge.”
You can purchase Cheri’s book, Dare to Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart, here.