BATESVILLE — Fredricka Tabor of Batesville thought she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. She said she had scholarships to attend college, but when she met a Navy recruiter during her senior year of high school, she was intrigued at the idea of seeing the world in the military and knew in her gut that was the right choice for her.
So despite school officials and her family trying to talk her out of joining the Navy, Tabor said she was determined to enlist.
“I was curious to see what the Navy was about,” she said. “I was the kid outside exploring everything.”
Fifteen days after graduating from Oak Grove High School in Little Rock in 2008, she was in boot camp. Tabor said she was self-disciplined and motivated, but it was still intimidating, adjusting to the Navy’s fast pace and learning all its terms.
Tabor trained to be an engineer and had her pick from three locations to serve, and she chose Japan, thinking that would be about as different as she could get from Arkansas.
“That was the first time I realized how privileged we are as Americans,” she said. “We were ambassadors to their country, and that holds so much honor. Before they see me as Black or female, they see me as an American, and they feel secure because we’re there for their protection,” she said, explaining that she was proud to present a positive association with the United States.
It was in Japan that she met her California-born husband, Juadon Tabor. “I was actually training him. We worked in the catapult shop, and we used steam to launch off aircraft,” she said.
In 2011, Fredricka Tabor said, there was an earthquake and a tsunami that caused the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant reactor in Japan to explode.
“I was on the ship at the time, and it was crazy, Tabor said. “We lost communications.”
She recalled how the huge cranes on top of the carrier she was on began swaying; then the ship started vibrating.
“We knew something was wrong, that it wasn’t safe,” she said.
A dive coordinator at the time, Tabor was clearing tags for divers in the water. Tabor said she worked tirelessly, at one point going for three days with no significant amount of sleep, preparing the ship to move away from the chemical/biological radiation. The radiation levels were high, even in the water, she said.
“I never thought about fear. I just thought, ‘Let’s get everybody safe.’ There were so many people who didn’t know what to do,” Tabor said. ‘There were kids and families on bays. My job was to make sure the equipment was ready so if we needed to, we could bring the whole town with us on the ship. We didn’t know if we were coming back or not — there was so much radiation, and there were so many people trying to leave Japan.”
She said she barely had time to pack a bag from the base, and everyone on board her ship had to leave everything else behind, not knowing if they would be allowed to return to the base.
Following the Fukushima disaster, Tabor was honored with the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for “exceptional professionalism, unrelenting perseverance and loyal devotion to duty,” but about a month later, Tabor said, she started feeling the effects of radiation sickness, and she wasn’t alone.
“A lot of my friends were having colon issues,” she said.
In 2014, Tabor had a colon obstruction and surgery to treat the condition. Part of her colon was removed, and she was eventually discharged from the Navy.
Tabor said she doesn’t tell a lot of people she is a disabled veteran because she doesn’t want them to look at her differently.
“Instead of the sympathy, I would rather them see the courage or the strength in me,” she said.
Tabor, who also worked in the Navy’s Auxiliary Division as a firefighter, was honored as No. 1 Fireman in the division, not only for her superior performance, but also for how she “consistently dedicates her time to ensuring her work is completed efficiently and skillfully. She never gives up on a job.”
“A lot of people don’t know I’m a disabled vet, she said, adding that for many years, she did not say anything to people about it and didn’t feel like she even qualified as one.
“People can’t see my scars, so they don’t really know what I really went through.”
Tabor said she was in Japan for six years — five years of active service and one year as a military spouse. She said being a spouse was much more stressful than active service.
“There’s a lot of unknowns. Half the time, I didn’t know when he was pulling into port,” she said. “My husband’s last deployment, they had a soldier [die by] suicide. It was agony waiting to know who it was.”
“She’s a very supportive wife,” Juadon Tabor said. “She’s been there for me, especially when we had some tough times when I was on deployment. She was there by herself.”
Fredricka said she lost more than one friend in the service to suicide, so after leaving the Navy, she decided to go into the mental-health field. She graduated magna cum laude from Arizona State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in family and human development in 2018.
“I’m trying to get summa cum laude this time for my master’s degree,” she said with a laugh, explaining that she is enrolled in Harding University’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling program to earn a Master of Science/Education Specialist degree and become a licensed professional counselor.
While studying for her master’s degree, Fredricka is completing her clinical practice with White River Health System in Batesville in White River Medical Center’s psych and geriatric units.
“I learned a lot about the way the brain functions, and it really started to click,” she said.
When someone close to her struggled with their own issues, she said, she saw there wasn’t a lot of mental-health support or even real knowledge about the issue.
“There’s a stigma surrounding it, but it’s felt so much by those serving,” either directly or through a friend, Fredricka said.
“In the military, you eat together, you sleep together, you hang out together,” she said.
Juadon agreed: “You suffer together, you share working hours — and everyone can relate, so it’s not like you’re by yourself,” he said.
“You have no internet or communication with the outside world most of the time. You give up a lot,” Fredricka said. “I think a lot of people don’t really appreciate the sacrifices you made, so when you come back, they expect you to be the same person you were when you were 18.”
Tabor and Juadon have two children — Adriana, 3, and Julian, who will be 2 in August — and are expecting a third child in September.
Fredricka said the couple foster independence in their children and love to watch them explore.
“We want them to do what they want to do and follow their dreams — we did,” she said.
“In the military, you miss Fourth of Julys, you miss Christmas, you miss Thanksgiving, and it’s so easy to feel alone and not connected,” she said. “We went through all that, and you miss 10 years of family vacations and family cookouts. We’re so happy we’re back because we get to see fireworks with our family and make memories. … I’m happy I was able to serve my country, and now I’m happy to serve my community.”