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President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was born in Monrovia, Liberia's capital. She married right after high school and had four sons. Then, she made the difficult decision to leave her children behind to come to the United States for her education. She waited tables to pay for three college degrees, including her Master's at Harvard University.
After graduation, she returned to her family in Liberia determined to help her unstable homeland and worked in the Ministry of Finance. After speaking out against the ruling military regime, she was thrown in jail twice. When Johnson-Sirleaf was released, she was exiled to Kenya and went to work as an economist for the United Nations.
She returned to Liberia in 1997 and made her first run for President against corrupt leader Charles Taylor and lost. Then in 2003, peacekeeping troops stabilized Liberia. Johnson-Sirleaf ran for the presidency again and on January 16, 2006, she was sworn in and became Africa's first elected female leader. Her historic inauguration was a celebration for women around the world. First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice were both on hand.
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Alaska is home to more than 10,000 active-duty soldiers, about 7,000 of whom were deployed to Afghanistan over the past two years. The war in Iraq may be over, but it continues in Afghanistan, and for those families whose loved ones are still gone, life during deployment is challenging, especially in Alaska. "The Last Frontier" is an assignment the military considers as demanding as an "overseas" post because families are so far away from their hometowns and loved ones. <br><br> <i>Married to the Army: Alaska</i> follows the lives of seven women from Fort Richardson, Alaska, who are married to soldiers of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry. Their husbands deployed November of 2011, and are just now starting to return after almost a year in combat. <br><br> For the women whose husbands serve in the US Army, "deployment" is not just an abstract word heard on the evening news. It's real, it's tough, and it turns their world upside down. If they have children, they suddenly become "single parents." If they don't have kids, they are alone, spouseless...trying to make sense of who they are with their loved one gone. And since many of today's soldiers have been deployed as many as four or five times, each deployment brings a new level of anxiety. <br><br> But the sisterhood of Army wives is what helps most of them cope when their husbands are gone. The tightest of bonds are formed over fears of deployment, realities of Army life, and the emotional roller coaster of R&R homecomings and goodbyes—all set against the backdrop of the rugged, demanding and extreme conditions of Alaska. <i>Married to the Army: Alaska</i> is the first time ever The Pentagon has allowed cameras to embed in real Army families to tell these stories of resilience, strength and sacrifice—they are the stories of the heroes on the "other side of the battlefield."
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