In 1995 The United States Air Force adopted its core values of “Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence In All We Do.” Senior Airman Ashton Lynn Marie Goodman was an embodiment of those core values. She was also a writer, fond of creating her “little stories” that eventually made their way into the hands of Melissa Pritchard who then had one of the stories, “Reflections in Brass” published in Issue 50 of Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Due to the “Reflections in Brass” being published posthumously, this interview was conducted with Melissa Pritchard, an author, journalist, and close friend of Ashton’s.
From Editorial Assistant Ryan Hopkins: You mention Ashton’s military bravado as a veneer, “cultivated for survival in a military culture,” and from my own military experience, I can attest to this. In the military, there are many different avenues service members take to protect themselves emotionally from the rigors of military service. As you saw, one of these methods is cordoning off our personalities, and like Ashton adopting Senior Airman Goodman, I used the façade of Petty Officer Hopkins to keep Ryan safe. Another way we protect our inner selves and process our military experience is through artistic expression. Again, you saw this in Ashton’s “small stories,” and we see it in “Reflections in Brass” where a young, female soldier muses on how she’s been trained in the art of killing and wonders what it may be like, and how she may react when the enemy is real and practice turns to performance. It is a grappling with the emotional burden of warfare, and a stark realization of the seriousness of her situation.
My first question is, why did you choose to publish “Reflections in Brass” over her other stories, and what did the posthumous publication process involve?
Melissa Pritchard: I chose "Reflections in Brass" because it was the strongest of the several pieces she sent me. Why the strongest? Perhaps because it so honestly reflected her personality and her role as a young female soldier in the Air Force. She had permission to kill the enemy, yet she had never killed. She had doubts, she worried, she was afraid, perhaps, yet she had great courage and resolve. The other pieces she sent were non-military, lighter in tone. She showed definite promise as a writer, and I planned to mentor her as far as she wanted to go in her ambition to write and to publish. This piece, "Reflections in Brass," was so powerful because of its raw honesty, its vulnerability, the unwavering voice.
As for the posthumous publication process, I believe the editors at Hayden’s Ferry Review, Laura Ashworth and Kent Corbin, would have had to obtain permission to print her work from Ashton's family. I'm certain I wrote to them as well. After we received permission, the publication process proceeded. When I saw Ashton's piece in print, I only wished she could have seen it, held the magazine in her hands, shared copies with family and friends. She would have been proud of this validation of her gift and, I like to imagine, inspired to write more.
RH: In your introduction to “Reflections in Brass” you mention Albert Camus, another great writer who we lost tragically and all too soon. And while we have a collection of Camus’ work to be read and shared for generations, we only have one story of Ashton’s. Are there more of her stories and will they be published?
MP: There are no more stories that I know of. She was shy about showing her work, her "little pieces." I had to coax her to send them to me, but as I read each one, I saw plenty of promise in her work, an unflinching honesty and a humble eagerness to learn the craft. These qualities bode well for a young writer; I thought we might be connected in that way, through her writing, for years to come.
Ryan Hopkins is a fiction writer from Red Lion, PA. He is a senior in the BA in English Literature program at ASU, and interned as an Editorial Assistant at Hayden’s Ferry Review.