The Pembrokes knew I came from a working-class family outside Dayton, Ohio. What they did not know was that my father, Colonel Thomas Ellis, had served in the Army for more than thirty years.
He taught me chess, discipline, and the difference between silence and surrender.
“Never waste your dignity proving yourself to people determined to misunderstand you,” he often said. “But when someone threatens those under your protection, you act.”
I had followed him into military service at eighteen. By the time I married Wesley Pembroke, I had completed command training, served overseas, and led personnel in national-security operations.