Army Veteran Toni Lavery: Resilience, Vision Loss & Service

**Toni Lavery** (0:00)
Nobody knows me, I'm nobody to these, like to anyone really, like who am I? And then I realized like, oh, it's because I'm the only girl who just jumped.
That's what's going on. And there's ladies giving me babies. And then there was like women up to like their 90s, just crying. And you know, to me, what it said was that they needed to see women doing non-traditionally women things and that they could basically do whatever they want in this world if they just put their mind to it. Like you could be a parachutist if you want in a time when women weren't even allowed to serve in the military, really, you know?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
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**Richard Taite** (1:12)
Today on Were Out of Time, we have an incredible guest joining us. US Army veteran, Toni Lavery served our country for more than two decades with multiple combat deployments. And today, she's taking everything she learned through service, trauma, resilience, leadership, and even motherhood and using it to help others. She's the founder and executive director of Fox Force, a veteran-led organization helping women become stronger, more self-reliant leaders through mentorship, self-defense, and community. But Toni's story goes even deeper. After decades of military service and multiple deployments, she faced a life-changing challenge, learning she was losing her vision and beginning a journey towards answers and healing.
And now she's making history, leading the first ever all-women commemorative D-Day jump into Normandy. Toni, welcome.
Hi.

**Toni Lavery** (2:16)
Good morning. So good to be here.

**Richard Taite** (2:18)
Yeah. So let me ask you a question. It's called, it's called Fox what?

**Toni Lavery** (2:23)
Fox Force. Fox Force Foundation is the full name, but I know it's a mouthful, so we just say Fox Force.

**Richard Taite** (2:29)
But when I was reading it, it was, and it was all women, I started calling it by accident Foxy Force. Is that what it is?

**Toni Lavery** (2:39)
I'm sure some of the ladies in the group would love that compliment, so you can call it Foxy Force if you want to. That's totally fine.

**Richard Taite** (2:46)
Is that why you call it that? Because they're all women?

**Toni Lavery** (2:50)
No. Actually, you might think this is funny. Not a lot of people know this. When we had this group that we knew we wanted to mobilize into some type of a business or just an enduring thing.
I was bouncing some ideas off my husband, and he said we should be called Fox Force 5, from the movie Pulp Fiction, if you ever saw that.

**Richard Taite** (3:11)
Wow.

**Toni Lavery** (3:12)
Yeah. He just started calling it that just because we reminded him of that.
As Uma Thurman describes it in the movie, she's like, I was mildly an actress in this one TV show, and it was called Fox Force 5, and there were five of us, and everybody had their own unique capability. Somebody could see the future super fast, whatever. And then her specialty was telling jokes, and she was so mad about it. But that's our group, right? We're all a little bit goofy. Some people have these super unique and useful talents, and then some people have these like crazy off the wall, like I can remember weird facts, and like you're like, why would that ever matter? But at some point it ends up mattering and being useful. So that's the genesis of the name. And then over time, it's just evolved into Fox Force Foundation.

**Richard Taite** (4:02)
I like it.

**Toni Lavery** (4:03)
But yeah, that's where it came from.

**Richard Taite** (4:05)
You spent more than 20 years serving our country with multiple deployments, but today you're also a wife and a mom of two.
What has been harder? Combat, motherhood, or trying to balance it all?

**Toni Lavery** (4:18)
Oh man, that's a good one. Definitely motherhood because, you know, combat, the rules are pretty much, it's pretty black and white. I mean, you have to use a lot of, there's a lot of gray area too, but for the most part, you know the rules, you can kind of predict what's going to happen. You know, your weapon systems and all these other systems and processes that we use.
Motherhood is a whole other ballgame and it's black, white, apples, yellow, like it's everything all at once. And ultimately, you're responsible for humans that, you know, you want to invest in to be thriving members of society and that's a lot of pressure. You know, balancing it is tough, but at the end of the day, the toughest thing is making sure that your kids are taken care of and they have what they need. They feel secure in their relationship with their parents. Am I raising my kid right, so I'm not going to mess them up for life the way I see other people do? You know, like you could be a huge detriment to them with one simple thing. That pressure is immense and intense for sure.