By Linda Grace-Kobas
Fort Drum, located near Watertown in the heart of New York's scenic North Country, is home base for the famed 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), the most deployed division in the U.S. Army. Its light infantry troops can be anywhere in the world within 24 hours and have served in Operation Desert Storm and with multinational forces in Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia, as well as in relief operations in the United States.
Now its troops are being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan at a rapid rate, as the Army conducts the largest mobilization of troops since World War II for the war on terror. A new brigade is being formed at the post; about 3,000 soldiers have arrived there since June, with an additional 2,000 more to come before the end of the year. Units will be flying out to Iraq just before Christmas and again in January.
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| Volunteers and educators gathered in a community center at Fort Drum Dec. 10 to view an awards ceremony at which the Fort Drum Army Family Team Building (AFTB) program was being presented a program of the year award by the Army. Richard L. Halpin, executive director of Jefferson County CCE, kneeling, chats with, from left, Michelle Tejada, EmilieAn Kemper, Jennifer Kelly and Nguyet Borjaff, instructors with the AFTB program, and Charlene Austin, wife of Maj. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, Fort Drum's commanding general. Standing at left is Harold E. Greer, director of Morale, Welfare and Recreation at Fort Drum, who developed the Army's partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension at the base. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography |
Talk about stress -- and the need for services necessary to meet the human needs of soldiers and, importantly, their families. With 15,000 active-duty troops and their families, the rural area around Fort Drum supports a military community of close to 35,000 people.
Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) in Jefferson County is playing an important role in supporting the Army's community and family services, in a unique partnership that is the only one of its kind in the country. Extension staff provide services that range from Operation Ready, which helps soldiers, their spouses and children cope with deployment and their later re-entry into "normal" family life, to traditional extension programs like violence prevention, after-school activities and 4-H for kids living on the base. A nutrition program for overweight soldiers saves the Army money by helping retain troops who otherwise would be forced to leave the service; it costs about $40,000 per soldier to go through boot camp.
"It's been a great relationship," said Karl Reuss, chief of Army community services at Fort Drum.
Cornell's involvement in providing services to the Army began about 11 years ago, said Cathy Moore, team leader in human development. "During Desert Storm, the military found out that families fall apart without support," she said. The Army mandated that each base develop a program to provide enhanced community support, but there was a glitch, the old Catch-22 -- no additional government positions were provided. Meeting the mandate was difficult.
"Because we were working in the community, the Army came to Cooperative Extension and asked if we could be the contact point to advertise for a dietitian in a contract job," said Moore, who has been with CCE for 15 years. A trained dietitian, with a degree from the University of Connecticut, Moore filled the position herself after six months went by with no candidates.
"We contracted with the Army, and I provided a part-time nutrition-education service on the post and also documented the need for the position," she said. "After we could prove the need, the Army brought in its own full-time active-duty dietitian. That's what extension does -- identify a need, move in and help fill the need, and find long-term, sustainable ways to maintain it."
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"When we look at our mission, we really do see the Army as part of the larger community," said Richard L. Halpin, executive director of the Jefferson County Extension office, which employs about 60 staff members.
"Especially in the last recent years," Moore added, "our families are extremely stressed. These are our neighbors who are going off to war."
Fort Drum is the largest military installation in the northeastern United States, with almost 80,000 soldiers posted there annually. As part of an effort by the Army in the 1980s to enhance family life, much of family housing for Fort Drum is located off the post, in community settings. Because of the current mobilization, housing is short and some troops are being bused to the fort daily from as far away as Syracuse.
Halpin calls the off-base housing "a very unique experiment. The military families are very much the fabric of Jefferson County. We can't treat them as a separate entity."
"Half of the parents in our teen parent program are military," Moore said. "They're 19 to 20 years old, married, have an 8-month-old baby, are 2,000 miles from home and have never seen snow. They have no support except for the Army. Our programs create Army families. The whole point is to create a sense of community on and off base."
Harold E. Greer, director of morale, welfare and recreation at Fort Drum, said CCE's involvement supports core programs that "are essential to the very high state of community synergy and effective interaction that we've enjoyed here during these very difficult recurring deployments."
Greer has served for 18 years in the Army's community activities program, following a 22-year military career. He was the one who developed the concept of contracting positions with Cooperative Extension when "I wasn't getting what I wanted through the pipeline." He said he'll continue to contract out to Cornell "as opportunities arise and I see a good fit to quickly reach the right talent for the right job."
Because of CCE's involvement in U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, the bureaucracy saw extension as a federal agency and the transfer of funds was easy, Moore said. "We were very, very uniquely positioned."
But it was the follow-through that sold Greer on Cornell. On Dec. 10 he joined a gathering of community program staff and volunteers to watch an awards ceremony being teleconferenced from Greenville, S.C. Rena Tumbleson, an extension staffer who coordinates the Army Family Team Building (AFTB) program at Fort Drum, was there to receive an award on behalf of the base for a program of the year award. Also attending the gathering in the base community center was Charlene Austin, wife of Maj. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, Fort Drum's commanding general.
The national award "bespeaks of the talent that I have acquired from Cornell Cooperative Extension," Greer said. "It was a challenge to find people that had the passion, the spirit, the proactive character and undaunted willingness to just help families regardless of the hours and need."
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One of those passionate people is Greg Auffrey, family advocacy program educator and, with nine years of service, the senior Cornell staff member with Fort Drum programs.
"On an annual basis, we deal with 16,000 individual soldiers and family members, teaching stress and anger management," he said. "When units started coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq, they were requesting post-deployment stress and anger workshops." Auffrey developed a "Training Camp for Dads," a program with its own CD-ROM and training manual. The program has been so successful that the New York State Department of Corrections is adopting it for use with outgoing inmates reuniting with their families.
"Our mission is to the whole family," Auffrey said. He added that since the war on terror began, he has had to improvise to meet the needs of soldiers who are under increased stress as a result of rapid deployments; for instance, he is providing more and more one-on-one sessions at short notice.
"We've seen a consistent decreasing trend in violence in Fort Drum families, in spite of the cumulative stress of families being deployed," Moore said. "The most difficult part of deployment is actually the reunion, when the soldier comes home with so much expectation."
Lynn Williams is a CCE staffer who has seen the stresses from both sides. Married to an enlisted soldier for 17 years, she has followed him with their two young daughters to numerous posts. He's on leave from duty in Iraq for several weeks and is due to return next month. She's happy she has him home for the holidays this year.
"I can honestly say I believe the families at Fort Drum cope very well," said Williams, who has been on the Cornell staff for two years as a relocation educator. She assists military families in the relocation process, providing them with orientation sessions and emergency supplies when they arrive and with information on their next posts as they leave. "Fort Drum is a model post for the military, and a lot is because of the Cornell connection. Most posts don't have that. It allows us to expand to bigger and better things. I know it makes a big difference."
Williams and her family were stationed at Fort Drum from 1995 to 1997 and liked it so much that they requested to return -- from a post in Hawaii. She laughs when she gets the inevitable shocked reaction and is asked about the snow. "It's the perfect family environment -- the schools, a beautiful area," she responds.
Halpin noted that many military retirees who spent time at Fort Drum return to Jefferson County when they leave service, because of the quality of life.
Lori McKenna, who has physical education degrees from SUNY-Cortland and Ithaca College, runs the Climb to Fitness program that teaches soldiers how to exercise and eat healthfully. In the job for seven years, she said the major reasons soldiers get overweight are that they're sidelined because of injuries or they return from active duty and start eating home-cooked meals again. There are a small number of pregnant and post-partum soldiers, as well. The soldiers get individual attention, and 65 percent are off weight control in six months, she said.
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Sharon Jones is Cornell's newest staff member on the base, becoming coordinator of the family member employment program last August after serving as a volunteer. Originally from Louisiana, she and her husband moved to Fort Drum in January from Fort Campbell, Ky. He is serving in Iraq in a support battalion. She provides counseling and workshops to help family members find jobs. About 45 percent of her clients have bachelor's degrees or above, she said.
Becky McCarthy, director of volunteers, attended Cornell but left to get married. Her two brothers are alumni. Her husband is Maj. Daniel McCarthy, who commands the U.S. Army Air Ambulance Detachment at Fort Drum. More than 2,000 volunteers provide service to programs both on and off the base, doing everything from planting 16,000 yellow tulips in a community beautification project to raising money for a getaway trip for a woman with cancer and her husband. They staff Red Cross, boys' and girls' clubs and spouses' clubs, among many other activities.
"We couldn't have provided [these services] without these additional people from Cornell," Reuss said. "At this point we now have more Cornell employees than federal employees providing them."
"Our employees are caught in a dual identity," Halpin said. "They have to relate to the Army, its lingo and culture, since they're on the base 95 percent of the time. But it's proud and prideful work that we do there. What our extension people do with the Army people is just good work."
Thanks to staff and volunteers in community services, they won't have to spend the holidays alone but can find friends and activities at the community activities center, which is open 365 days a year. More than 2,000 volunteers provide a wide range of services throughout the year, on and off the base.
To contribute support for Fort Drum's volunteer efforts, checks can be made to the Fort Drum Installation Morale Support Fund and sent to: Mr. Harold E. Greer, Director of Morale, Welfare and Recreation, P-10720, Clark Hall, Room A2-13, Mount Belvedere Blvd., Fort Drum, NY 13602-5018.
Funds can be directed to specific volunteer programs. For more information, contact Becky McCarthy at (315) 772-2899.
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