Jen Hall of Elburn joined the U.S. Air Force to become an air traffic controller and to fly a fighter jet.

“I was told I could not do both,” Hall said. “I did both and then some.”

Originally from Ohio, Hall said her family was disappointed when she joined the U.S. Army National Guard at 18, the first step to fulfilling her goals.

“I was expected to go to college, get married and go into the family business,” Hall said. “My parents owned a tire and automotive business.”

From the Army National Guard, she joined the Air Force, and took an aptitude test for becoming an air traffic controller.

She passed and went to air traffic control school even before she went to boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

She was eventually stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, where she was an air traffic controller and flew F-16 fighter jets.

In 1998, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott cut the ribbon on a new, $6.9 million Air Traffic Control Tower Simulator at Keelser Air Force Base in Mississippi.

“They needed somebody to demonstrate it,” Hall said. “I’m like 19 years old. I said, ‘I can do this.’”

Hall met her husband, James, when they were both in boot camp. They had different assignments, a long-distance relationship, broke up and got back together.

And they got married May 3, 2003, after they both left the service.

“I got married in the Ohio church where I grew up, by the priest I grew up with,” Hall said. “My husband was not Catholic, but I wanted him to marry us.”

Hall developed a disabling spinal disease, requiring two spinal infusions, but sought out alternatives for treating pain, eventually becoming an aromatherapist.

In civilian life, she built and sold several businesses and was a social media market manager for Women Entrepreneurs Secrets of Success, eventually becoming its CEO.

Hall is also the cofounder of Ambition to Success and recently sold a group coaching business.

Her attention took a political turn when she saw that Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, one of the people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol – and whose sentence was later commuted by President Donald Trump – was to be the guest speaker for a Geneva-based group in September.

“I could not be silent anymore,” Hall said. “I knew I wanted to take on a more civic-minded role in the community.”

Hall was among those who picketed Rhodes’ planned appearance and succeeded in getting the venue changed.

Hall stood with her son, James, holding up a sign declaring: “I served to keep J6 lovers out of Geneva.”

“Politicians don’t like her because she is persistent,” James said of his mother. “She is dedicated. And when she has something set as a goal in mind, she does not stop pursuing that goal until that goal is finished.”

James said in that aspect, he takes after his mother.

“She’s a good role model,” James said.