By Ethan Tutor
The Scene staff
Many military personnel think their battles will be over when they leave the service, but the transition back to civilian life can be challenging.
One St. Louis Community College employee, Tracy Carpenter Bond, spends her days helping other veterans return to school and get an education as districtwide coordinator of veterans affairs.
“The reason I like it so much is because it gives me an opportunity to help veterans in a way that I wasn’t helped transitioning from military service back into life,” she said. “It’s a difficult process.
It wasn’t easy for me.”
For the past three years, Bond, 51, has been fighting yet another battle. She has undergone chemotherapy, radiation and “anything they can throw” at breast cancer.
“The saying ‘live-laugh-love’ sounds dumb, but I try to live by it,” she said. “I live hard, I love hard and I try to laugh when I can. The students and people I help keep me going.”
Bond speaks about her illness matter-of-factly, as if she’s discussing the weather or her 30-year military service.
“I’m pretty transparent about it,” she said. “It’s such an ugly disease. Some people go through it in silence or embarrassment. As long as I can still help people, I’m good.”
Helping vets
Bond has been an STLCC staff member for eight years. She has an office at Forest Park but travels to all campuses in the district.
“This is the best job because I’m now helping people that (I feel like) I’ve known my whole life,” she said.
Bond was extremely busy during the first part of November, preparing for Veterans Day events.
Campus Life Coordinator Edmond Brown has known Bond since she began working for STLCC in 2011. He was president of the Forest Park Veterans Club, and she was its adviser.
“She’s been a great supporter,” Brown said. “She gets stuff done. She’s very trustworthy, a go-getter, dedicated, very driven. Overall, she’s dependable.
“She goes out of her way to make you feel comfortable,” he added.
Military family
Bond grew up in Gary, Indiana, with lots of relatives in the U.S. Navy. She attended Culver Military Academy.
“It wasn’t like a regular high school,” she said. “You live there. It’s a pretty cool school.”
Bond had been interested in singing and dancing since childhood. She joined the academy’s choir and performed in school plays.
“I’ve always been this misfit kid,” she said. “I love girlie things, but I always loved boy things, too.”
Bond earned a biomedical engineering degree on STLCC’s Florissant Valley campus, graduating in 1989.
“I’ve always been a science girl,” she said. “My desire to help people and make a difference made me a good fit for medicine. It was a marriage in heaven. I got to do nerdy stuff but also save lives. It was a pretty cool deal, not without its scars, but I wouldn’t change it.”
Bond spent 30 years in the military, beginning with 15 years in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Then she went to North Carolina to help prepare U.S. Marines deploy to Afghanistan.
Bond later spent five years in Landstuhl, Germany. As a combat medic, she was responsible for the repair and installation of state-of-the-art medical equipment.
“When deployed, it trumps everything,” she said. “In those five years, I lived a lifetime. We counted on each other. We shared our triumphs. We shared death. In Germany, I was stationed where all the soldiers came back, DOA (dead on arrival) sometimes, so it was very intense. Busy, very important stuff.”
Shoulder accident
Also in Germany, Bond was helping to load dental equipment when she had a serious accident.
“A quarter-of-a-million-dollar piece of equipment fell on me,” she said. “I caught it, but it caused me to have my shoulder rebuilt.”
Bond was discharged from the military and returned to civilian life. The injury kept her from pursuing her career goal, which was to work in the prosthetics field.
“I found myself not really knowing what to do,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, like I had no importance. I had a downward spiral of sorts, but I knew I had to do something so I didn’t become a statistic.
“So I went back to school at Florissant Valley and took anatomy classes, but I still wasn’t able to pull myself out of this dark place.”
Bond then got a job as a secretary for the Forest Park financial aid office and later worked as a math adjunct.
“I started to pull myself out of this pit when I became a secretary because it gave me purpose,” she said. “Somebody was waiting for me. I had to be somewhere.”
‘Fighting spirit’
Bond met her husband, Al, in 2000 through his sisters, who were her friends. They got married in 2003.
Al is a former combat engineer in the U.S. Army who now works as an automotive technician.
“What I love about her the most has to be her fighting spirit,” he said. “She never gives in. … Even in the face of adversity, she perseveres.”
Today, the couple enjoy traveling together.
“We just got back from a cruise,” Al said. “Before her cancer, we’d take road trips together.”
Bond also is minister of music at her Catholic church.
“She’s a real music-lover,” Al said. “She’s more likely to turn on the radio than the television. I wish I could sing so we could duet, but I always asked God for a wife who could sing, so it’s all right that he didn’t give me that ability.”
Cancer diagnosis
Bond got terrible news the day after Thanksgiving in 2016. Her doctor called and confirmed that she had breast cancer.
Bond credits her military experience for keeping her calm and clear-headed.
“I said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’” she recalls. “After I hung up, I said, ‘All right, God, let’s get this done.’ I was never in defeat mode, always in fight mode.
“I’m not scared to die. I’m just not ready.”
Bond is thankful for a strong support system, including her husband, other family members, friends and co-workers.
“She’s doing really good,” Al said. “There are times when she feels a little down, but she’s always uplifting. She lives the days as they come. When she’s feeling down, I try to be there for her.”
Staying optimistic
Bond has continued to work full time, despite chemotherapy, radiation and other treatments.
“She’s the same old Tracy,” Brown said. “It’s taken a toll on her, but she’s still dedicated. She still moves from campus to campus.”
Bond’s love for country has influenced not only the way she lives and thinks, but also the way she decorates her office. It’s filled with vintage World War II recruitment posters, an American flag and other flags with the words “Freedom” and “Old Glory’ and a collection of military novels lining a bookshelf.
Bond and her husband have two children. In her free time, she makes necklaces, bracelets and other jewelry.
Chemotherapy “is ridiculously hard,” she said. “I thought some of the stuff I saw when I was deployed was hard, but this was on another level. What chemo does is it brings you as close to death as possible without killing you. Cancer multiplies so fast. You lose your hair. Your nails go black. It compromises your immune system.”
But Bond remains optimistic.
“What a diagnosis will do is make you think of your own mortality,” she said. “There’s going to be some rough days, but I’m fine as long as I can still help somebody.”