Volunteers

Part of the program was to pay homage to selected businesses and organizations that in the past year have supported their employees; civilians become warriors that have gone off to war in far flung worldwide locations. Actually it is not only the warriors but the clerks, maintainers and those doing the thousand other essential jobs that support those warriors in the field. Required military training also takes time away from the civilian workplace for all those employees who are members of the National Guard or Reserve components.

For many of those employers cutting loose those essential employees to do their federal and state duties creates great hardship. Case in point, McCook businessman Mark Wilcox, of Wilcox Insurance & Financial Services, was recently awarded an ESGR Patriot Award. The kudos came at the recommendation of a key employee who is currently deployed to active duty with her Guard unit. Mark has only a few employees so those that remain have to work extra and fill in when their fellow is called to duty and this is the third time in the last several years.

We saw State level awards given to organizations as large as the Santa Fe Railroad to medium level organizations, Methodist hospital in Omaha, on down to a farm manager who stated that "Being as I can't go to serve my country, I support my employee in his absence so he can serve in my place!"

Such support goes even to the extent of supplementing the employee's wages to pay the differential from what the military pays and what the employee was receiving in his regular job benefits included. Most organizations go above and beyond to look after their serving members families during their absence. "Little" things such as snow removal and lawn mowing, providing transportation for visits to family members off somewhere for training, including family members in company functions, plus regular communication to just say "Hi, how ya doing can we help in any way?"

It has been an educational process for this old retired military officer that was commissioned through the Academy route. Along the way I became aware of a divide between those who enter the military motivated only to serve their country for awhile then go back home and assume a normal life verses "lifers", like me, who fully intended to make it a career from day one.

Actually I received my own introduction to the competency of a National Guard unit when my KC-135 Squadron sponsored the Milwaukee Air National Guard Unit as they were transitioning from KC-97L's to the jet powered KC-135. Through a little poor planning on the part of the Air Force several of the Guard crews had been through transition training, their airplanes just hadn't shown up for them to fly yet. Arrangements where made for those crews to travel to our base in Michigan and then fly their missions in my assigned tankers.

I discovered a whole new culture. Those pilots were sometimes regular airline pilots in their day jobs with thousands of hours piloting experience in similar jet powered airliners. Some were lawyers, accountants, policemen, you name it in their day jobs but all shared a love of flying and through the years would just get better and better at doing the job. I noted other differences for instance at the end of the work day they would gather in the day room to relax and visit about the day just passed. There might just be a two stripe female airman (girls were then just new to the active duty Air Force) chatting with the grizzled old Lt. Col. pilot that was also the unit commander about solving some maintenance problem that had just come up. One on one dialogue that was healthy and innovative and foreign to my more rigid experience was normal for those part time warriors. Right off I could see that the relaxed but deeply professional atmosphere was a good thing.

ESGR traces its lineage to the act of Congress that abolished the military draft back in 1972. That initiative placed a greater portion of the burden of the defense of this great nation on the backs of the Guard and Reserve components of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard active duty forces. To enable the participation of those full time civilians with part time civilian jobs Congress placed added burdens on the employers of those part-timers. There are codified requirements that they be allowed to temporarily leave the job to participate with their military units and then be guaranteed that they could return back to their old job in the same status and benefits as when they left.

After a few years exit interviews with persons leaving the reserve components showed that fully one third of the resignations were caused by problems with employment. At that point the ESGR developed a new charter that sent volunteers, like me and the scores of others serving throughout the state of Nebraska, out to improve relations between employees who were part timers and their employers. Mainly it is an educational process to explain the rights of both the employer and the part-time service member. However if differences cannot be resolved, cases can be referred to the U.S. Department of Labor who has the power of law suits and fines. Those cases are rare and it cuts both ways as the service member can be found at fault as well as the employer.

Fortunately resolution of disputes through the courts is extremely rare. Caring for employees who have volunteered to serve part time in the military is simply "The Midwestern way of treating people," as stated by one Guardsmen when recommending his Nebraska employer for the honor of a Patriot Award. Treating people as they should be treated is ingrained in our Midwestern way of life. We who live right here in Cornhusker country are indeed fortunate in thousands of ways.

That is the way I saw it.