Lorraine K. Potter, a trailblazer in civilian ministry and military chaplain leadership for over thirty years, was the first woman ordained by the American Baptist Church of RI (1971). She was the first woman commissioned as a chaplain in the United States Air Force in September 1973; and, she retired as the Chief of the Air Force Chaplains in the grade of Major General, then senior chaplain in the Department of Defense, June 2004.