Pamela J. Devine was born September 5, 1952, in Shelby, North Carolina. Devine lived with her mother after graduation from high school due to her father’s death. Devine enlisted in 1977, at the age of twenty-four, in the United States Navy as a non-designated seaman.

After the completion of recruit training, Devine was assigned to the Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii where she served as a certified coxswain in the Water Transportation Division. While at Pearl Harbor she provided transportation around Pearl Harbor, as well as ferried tour groups and dignitaries to the USS Arizona Memorial. After serving at Naval Station Pearl Harbor for approximately eight months, following the completion of a large number of correspondence courses, Devine was designated an airman and reclassified as a Aviation Structural Mechanic, Hydraulics, petty officer third class [AMH-3] assigned to Barber’s Point Naval Air Station, Hawaii. In 1981 Devine was reassigned to Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, where she worked in the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Division [AIMD].

While stationed at Naval Air Station Ocean, Devine worked on Grumman F-14 Tomcats and Ling-Temco-Vought A-7 Corsair IIs. After AIMD , Devine was reassigned to Recruit Training Command, Naval Training Center Orlando, Florida to become a recruit company commander, where she trained both male and female recruits. Devine was next attached to VP-16 [Patrol Squadron-16] at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida. While with VP-16, she served as an aviation structural mechanic-hydraulics [AMH], and worked almost exclusively on the Lockheed P-3 Orion. While attached to the squadron, Devine was deployed to Thule Air Base, Greenland; Ascension Island, British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha; and Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland. Devine was next stationed at the Enlisted Placement Management Center [EPMAC] in New Orleans, Louisiana.

After securing special permission for sea duty, Devine was assigned as a flight deck chief in 1994 to VAW-122 [Carrier Airborne Early Warning System] aboard the USS Enterprise nuclear aircraft carrier. She did several deployments including a deployment to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. December 31, 1997, Devine secured a transfer to the naval reserve to care for her ailing mother. She retired from the United States Navy after twenty years of service as a Chief Petty Officer. Devine later took a job in Greenville, South Carolina, with the Lockheed Martin Aircraft Company overseeing maintenance.