Helping others to feel comfortable, authentic and connected, in part through their own openness, is something Vermooten now strives to do at work and outside of work.

“I feel like there is something very powerful about showing up in a space exactly as you are,” they said.

Lucio is also familiar with the complexities of exploring and expressing identity.

Growing up as a member of a Mexican American family in Harlingen, Texas, near the U.S.–Mexico border, she was surrounded by people who knew and understood her.

When she arrived at the University of Houston to study journalism, however, her lack of Spanish fluency was perceived by certain students as somewhat of a curiosity.

“There was a different understanding of who I was because I was no longer surrounded by people who just accepted who I was,” she said.

As a result, she sometimes felt like she was stuck somewhere between belonging and not belonging.

Lucio was able to navigate the experience, and in the process became inspired to help others engage in advocacy and awareness of different backgrounds, viewpoints and lifestyles.

As a residential assistant, for example, she completed an LGBTQ ally training, putting the designation on her dorm room door to let other students know she was a resource, and that they weren’t alone.

When she later accepted a position as a public librarian, after obtaining a master’s degree in library science, she was able to leverage the role to learn more about — and promote — diversity and inclusivity.

“Working in a library, you see how many books are written about [cisgender] white people,” she said.

Through library diversity trainings, she realized that many novels geared toward young people in the LGBTQ community focused on romance. As a result, there was often a sense among readers of “Why can’t we be heroes in an adventure or sci-fi?”

“I want to keep furthering the conversation,” Lucio said.

She added that she loves seeing members of the LGBTQ community represented in books as well as in the Army, which she described as having an “exquisite — and devastating to some degree — history of LGBTQ Soldiers who wanted to serve, even when ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was in place.”

It came as a somewhat natural step then that Vermooten and Lucio would feel inspired in the spring of 2021 to help spearhead AFC’s first-ever Pride Month observance.

“We had been tracking a lot of these cultural celebration events [at AFC], which were phenomenal,” Vermooten said.

After inquiring whether anything was being planned at AFC headquarters for Pride Month and realizing an event had yet to be planned, Vermooten and Lucio decided to lend their support to the effort.

“We just put our heads together and said ‘let’s do this, let’s find a way to make this happen,’” Vermooten said.

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AFC headquarters held its second annual Pride observance on June 24, 2022.

https://www.army.mil/article/258010/

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