Prolific Art Concepts
by Jeffrey A. Nord, Sergeant First Class (Retired Reserves)
On 18 November 2000, I transferred from the 842nd Engineer Company to Joint Force Headquarters – South Dakota at Camp Rapid in Rapid City. At that time, JFHQ-SD was called “STARC-SD” or “State Area Command – South Dakota”, but became JFHQ – SD (Joint Forces Headquarters – South Dakota) in 2003, following transformation of the National Guard’s organizational structure.
I began working full time as the OAC (Orders, Awards and Clearance) Manager for the SDARNG in the DCSPER (Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel) office. At that time, it was called the “MILPO” or “MILitary Personnel Office, but was renamed DCSPER (Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel) in 2003 when STARC became JFHQ.
I had several bosses, to include SFC Janet Sargent, MSG Neil Harris, LTC Craig Johnson and COL Charles Gray. I was very lucky, because they were all a pleasure to work for, especially MSG Harris who I consider, along with SFC Johnston of the 842nd EN Co, to be one of the best bosses of my career.
Right after I started, I told the big boss, COL Gray, that my mission was to make him wish he had hired me the first time (when I interviewed in January 2000). I later asked him if I had accomplished my mission and he said “yes”.
I spent the first few weeks learning as much as I could about the job. One of the first things I discovered was how glad many people were that my predecessor was gone. I received a lot of feedback from POCs of subordinate units around the state about a negative attitude and poor customer service. Because my predecessor set the bar so low, they were very appreciative of me being there and of my efforts to assist them.
I inherited a huge stack of over 100 personnel security clearance requests that had been sitting on the desk for several months. I inventoried every case in my workstation to identify what actions were in process that needed completing. I also had to determine what was needed, if anything, to complete processing. A few had been started, but needed further processing or follow up. Most hadn’t been touched at all and needed to be started.
I could tell this would initially be a challenging job, but that it would probably get easier after I cleaned up all the mess.
END OF CHAPTER 4
In the fall of 2000, the 842nd finally received my OMPF (Official Military Personnel File) from my old Army Reserve unit, the 481st Transportation Company. It had been well over a year since I left that unit. I was amazed how it could take so long for them to send my record.
In my file was an order promoting me to Sergeant, effective 26 February 1999. The mystery behind why I was getting E-5 pay was finally solved. I thought it was interesting, and a little disappointing, that no one from the 481st ever told me about my promotion before I left them. It would have been nice, because, for over a year, I had been walking around with Specialist rank, when I should have been wearing Sergeant Stripes.
I don’t blame the unit, but do blame the 481st’s unit administrator. In the fall of 1997, he failed to submit my promotion packet to higher headquarters in time for the promotion board, resulting in me not being considered for promotion.
Had he done what he was supposed to do, I would have been a SGT/E5 in early 1998, because my score was much higher than the promotion cutoff score. In my mind, there was no excuse why he didn’t submit it on time, other than procrastination (bad time management) or contempt (bad attitude).
This was one of a series of customer service nightmares and promotion snafus I experienced throughout my career. Administrators’ failures to do what they were getting paid to do cost me thousands of dollars. What I considered “grave injustices” left me with a bitter taste of what bad customer service is and I vowed, as a former Personnel Administrative Specialist, that if I ever worked that job again, I would always make sure to treat Soldier’s actions as if they were my own and always do whatever it took to NOT let them down. To me, letting a Soldier down would be like letting myself down. It would be disrespect to that Soldier and bring total dishonor, shame and guilt upon me - three things I did not want to experience.
11 May 1999 - 17 November 2000
842nd Engineer Company (-)
Spearfish, South Dakota
ARMY NATIONAL GUARD
18 November 2000 - 17 February 2005
Joint Force Headquarters - South Dakota Army National Guard
Rapid City, South Dakota
ARMY NATIONAL GUARD
11 MAY 1999 - 17 FEBRUARY 2005
Chapter 4
SDARNG, 842nd EN Co, Spearfish, SD
SDARNG, JFHQ, Rapid City, SD
On 11 May 1999, I enlisted, once again, into the South Dakota Army National Guard; this time, as a 62E Heavy Construction Equipment Operator in the rank of Specialist for the 842nd Engineer Company. Our armory was located on the Black Hills State University Campus in Spearfish.
Below, I'm swearing the oath of enlistment on 11 May 1999. SFC Todd Otterburg was my recruiter (not pictured).
In June 1999, on our way to summer camp, I rode in the back of a 5-ton cargo truck from Spearfish to Custer State Park. We stayed at Custer State Park for almost a week and I spent most of my time in the prone position in the grass on our perimeter defensive line, waiting to get attacked, but never saw any “action”. At the end of the first week, my platoon convoyed from Custer State Park to an area just north of the Pierre Regional Airport. While there, our mission was to construct an EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations Course) for the South Dakota Department of Public Safety.
During this time, I had the opportunity to run a scraper, a dozer and a grader, earning valuable experience on all these earth movers. My platoon slept in a GP medium tent at the EVOC site.
One night, several young platoon members held an informal party in the tent, while I tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep. They got pretty loud and a little rowdy. Eventually, two guys got into a pretty intense scuffle. Realizing the obvious (that I wasn’t going to sleep for a while), I quickly jumped out of bed and held one of them back from hitting the other. Eventually, they both settled down and I finally got to sleep.
CUSTER STATE PARK
RECLAMATION PROJECT
LATE JUNE TO EARLY JULY 1999
After summer camp, I volunteered to work for the Guard an additional two weeks to assist with Custer State Park reclamation operations. This involved grading all gravel roads at Custer State Park, smoothing out ruts and holes in the fields (caused mostly by military vehicles driving over muddy terrain during annual training), and planting wild grass seed over disturbed soil. We also built a new road while we were there.
My first week of reclamation operations was mostly spent grading gravel roads in Custer State Park, although I did get to operate a road packer and planted wild grass seed.
I really enjoyed operating the grader, but the only thing that kind of bothered me was how stiff my knees got after pushing the pedals (clutch, brake and gas) all day. At the end of the day, it hurt to straighten my legs and I felt like I had to walk with my knees bent, for at least a half hour or more, before they went back to normal. Weird, I know.
After the first week, I celebrated the 4th of July weekend with my dad and sister in Salem, SD. My brother-in-law took me to a gravel road a mile west of town to shoot off fireworks. We had a great time, until I felt my left knee pop after lighting a bottle rocket. It had popped plenty of times before, especially while operating the grader, but this time, the pain didn’t fully go away.
Upon returning to Custer State Park after the 4th of July weekend, I talked to my crew boss, the same Lieutenant that swore me in for my enlistment. I told her about my knee pain, but said I could still work. I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but she pulled me off the project and sent me home.
BLACK HILLS STATE UNIVERSITY
FALL 1999 SEMESTER
In the fall of 1999, I began attending college at Black Hills State University, using my GI Bill to help with expenses. My major was called “Technology”, which I thought was a misnomer, because it was really just “Industrial Arts”.
About the same time I started school, I also got a part-time, work-study job as a programmer’s assistant at the campus computer center, working about 25 hours a week. It was an interesting job. I wrote and implemented computer programs into the university’s data processing systems and uploaded/downloaded data to and from the intranet, using Excel, Access and Word.
I completed my first semester with very high marks, making the Dean’s List for the first time ever.
KNEE SURGERY,
REMODELLING
AND LOVE TIME
During our April 2000 drill, the 842nd Engineer Company went on a weekend field training exercise in the hilly forest area southwest of Ft. Meade, SD. We did common Soldier tasks, such as administering first aid, reacting to contact, NBC, etc. On one of the exercises, we had to run down a hill. When I did, my knee started hurting pretty badly, so I decided it was time to get it fixed.
On 2 May 2000, I underwent orthoscopic surgery to repair the meniscus tear in my left knee. Because of my knee problem, I was reclassified from my position as a 62E Heavy Construction Equipment Operator to serve as a 92G Food Service Specialist.
After a few weeks, I felt well enough to do some work on my trailer house. I remodeled the bathroom and replaced some fiberglass insulation in the undercarriage below the bathroom. For anyone who has ever worked with fiberglass insulation under a trailer house, you know how nasty that job is.
From May to August 2000, I performed a lot of “love time” at the unit orderly room, assisting SGT Frank Bartlett, the Administrative Sergeant there. I also organized and updated my unit personnel file with all my military records from every enlistment, finally making my record current.
While going through my records, I noticed on my LESs (Leave and Earnings Statements) that I was getting paid as a Sergeant, instead of as a Specialist. I told SSG Dave Burr, the Training Readiness Sergeant who handled our unit’s pay. He did some checking and confirmed that my pay was correct. We could not understand how that could be. He didn’t seem too concerned, but I was a little worried I might have to pay some money back to Uncle Sam later.
PROMOTION -
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
RAPID CITY POST OFFICE
JANUARY TO APRIL 2000
In late December 1999, I received a letter from the U.S. Postal Service telling me I was selected for a job as a Mark-Up Clerk at the CFS (Central Forwarding Service) in Rapid City’s Main Post Office. I didn’t have a warm fuzzy about the job (call it intuition), so in the interim between when I received the letter and when the position actually started, I applied for a full-time job as the SDARNG Orders, Awards and Security Clearance Manager, but was not selected.
In January 2000, I did not attend Spring Semester classes at BHSU, but chose to work at the Rapid City Post Office instead.
My work hours were from 11 pm to sometime the next morning, ranging from just a few hours to eight hours each night, depending on the workload. Unless I had Guard drill on the weekend, I always worked six days a week (Monday through Saturday) and usually ended up with about 40 hours during that period. Between the Post Office and the Guards, I only had 3 days off per month.
From January to April 2000, I commuted 100 round-trip miles from Spearfish to Rapid City six nights a week during the snowiest part of winter, when road conditions and visibility were often poor.
Aside from driving at night in blizzard-like conditions, the worst part about the commute was the early morning “crawl” from Rapid City to Spearfish. After being awake all night, I had to fight to stay awake on the drive home, especially when I could only drive about 20 miles/hour behind slow semi-trucks, after road construction began on Interstate 90 that prevented any passing for about 10 miles.
My work at the post office involved typing code into a computer to redirect mail with yellow change of address labels which the machine affixed to each piece of mail. The standard processing rate was 900 letters and flats per hour, but I could only maintain a maximum of about 750 per hour. As a result, I did not pass the 90-day probationary period and wasn’t actually fired, but was terminated in April 2000.
It was probably for the best, because two out of the four people I worked with in the CFS were angry, unapproachable grumps who were very rude. They were the total opposite of people-persons. Between the grumps, the graveyard hours, the lack of free time and the long commute, I actually felt relieved when my supervisor told me to stop coming to work.
Not very long after I left, possibly within a year, I heard that the CFS moved from Rapid City to Sioux Falls. So, it all worked out great, because I would not have been happy moving to Sioux Falls to work graveyard shift six nights a week with a couple of grumps.
Due to its location in the Black Hills, living in Spearfish offered many sightseeing and recreational opportunities. I got to see many attractions, including Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument and Custer State Park.
At some time during the winter of 1999, I purchased a used snowmobile and trailer from Outdoor Motorsports in Spearfish. I had a great time riding the snowmobile trails and saw a lot of beautiful scenery. There was a snowmobile trailer parking lot just three miles south of Spearfish that was very convenient, but because it was lower in elevation than any of the other snowmobile trailer parking lots, I couldn't always use it, only when there was a good deal of snow.
Below are some pictures of my sightseeing adventures and fun in the snow.
BLACK HILLS
SIGHT-SEEING AND RECREATION
FOOD SERVICE SPECIALIST
COURSE AND MESS SECTION
From June 18 to 1 July 2000, in lieu of annual training, I attended the two-week 92G Food Service Specialist Course at Camp Parks, CA, becoming qualified as a 92G Food Service Specialist.
I really enjoyed my new part-time position in the Mess Section. The Mess Sergeant, SFC Tim Johnston, was a great boss. In my entire 33-year career, he was among the best leaders for which I have had the pleasure to serve. He always led by example, treated everyone with respect and motivated subordinates in a positive way.
GOLD DUST CASINO
DEADWOOD, SD
After returning from Camp Parks on 1 July 2000, I spent most of the rest of summer working full time as a Gaming Hall Host (Security Guard) at the Gold Dust Casino in Deadwood, SD. To me, it seemed the Gold Dust was the nicest and biggest casino in Deadwood.
The restaurant served gratuitous roast beef every night on a table in the corner of the gaming hall floor. A chef carved it on the spot for each patron who was next in the waiting line at the table. I tried it a few times, but it seemed pretty tough for me to chew.
I really enjoyed the all-you-can-eat crab and prime rib buffet every Friday night. At that time, I think it cost about $19.99 or less. The Silverado Casino had the same kind of deal across the street, but the Gold Dust crab seemed a little softer and easier to get out of the shell.
My primary role as a Gaming Hall Host was to make sure underage patrons were accompanied by an adult, because of state law prohibiting unaccompanied minors in casinos.
My supervisor and all my coworkers were all good to work with. I really loved the job, because it was a happy place with a lot of happy people.
However, I also hated the job, because it was VERY boring, with nothing to do, except walk around the casino like a zombie for eight hours a day. It really seemed like it took forever for my shift to end. It was not good for my knee and I eventually quit in late August, right before the Jasper Fire.
SPEARFISH MICROBURST
On the evening of 1 August 2000, a very strong thunderstorm came from the northwest, hitting Spearfish with a powerful blast of downburst winds estimated at around 100 mph. It really seemed like a tornado when it came. There was no prior buildup of wind or rain to indicate anything like this was coming. It just hit all of a sudden. The extreme change in pressure closed my bedroom door so hard, that it jammed the door handle mechanism, locking it shut, even though the door handle didn’t have a lock. I had to break the door in with my shoulder to get it open.
The next morning, I went outside and saw a huge tree had fallen down, directly between my shed and my trailer. I was VERY lucky, because it missed hitting both by inches. If the wind had blown in a slightly different direction, either my shed or my trailer would have been severely damaged. Several other trees in Bicentennial Court had fallen down as well.
I owned a chainsaw at the time, so I thought I would build some good karma with my landlord by cutting the fallen tree in my yard, as well as some of my neighbors’ fallen trees. My landlord, who lived across the street from my trailer house, spent about a week or two cutting tree limbs and cleaning up the mess. He seemed grateful for what I was doing to help him.
Due to the large volume of downed trees and limbs, he hired a logging company, with trucks equipped with booms and trunk grabbers, to get it all out. They made several trips over two or three days to pick up and haul off all the debris. My yard alone required two truckloads.
In the city of Spearfish, over 100 mobile homes were damaged, with at least 10 destroyed, including SSG Burr’s trailer house. He lived in the Mountain Shadow Estates trailer court, on the east side of Spearfish, where the majority of mobile home damage occurred. Also east of town, over two dozen planes at the Spearfish airport were damaged, with seven totally destroyed. Seven hangers there were also damaged or destroyed.
There were so many fallen trees and branches in Spearfish that it seemed like it took months for the city to clean it all up.
August 2000 - Spearfish, SD - A logging truck picks up the remaining branches from my yard. The guy perched up on the hydrolic boom grabbed branches with the trunk-grabber and swung them around into a dump truck (not shown). In the background, you can see the narrow gap between the shed and the trailer. How the tree missed both is a miracle.
In Late August 2000, I volunteered to serve on SAD (State Active Duty) to support the SDARNG’s efforts to battle the Jasper Fire, located in the Hell Canyon Ranger District near Jewel Cave National Monument in the Black Hills. State Active Duty, or “SAD duty”, is when the governor activates the National Guard in response to man-made or natural disasters and homeland defense missions.
I served as a Food Service Specialist on an MKT (Mobile Kitchen Trailer) in the firefighter’s camp four miles west of Custer. At any one time, there were as many as 1,200 firefighters residing at the Jasper Fire Camp. To serve food to so many firefighters, there were three or four MKTs on site, with a staff of about seven or eight on each MKT. We worked from 5 am to midnight for about a week. What little sleep I got was in my sleeping bag in the back of a 5-ton cargo truck.
Most of the time, I washed dishes and cleaned equipment, but also cooked and served food. Dishwashing involved carrying the dirty dishes from the MKT to the wash site about 30 feet away, washing them in boiling hot water in garbage cans (heated with M-67 Immersion heaters), carrying the clean dishes back to the MKT and then hanging them up to dry.
The Jasper Fire burned over 83,000 acres of timber and grassland in the Hell Canyon Ranger District, making it the largest fire in recorded history of the Black Hills. The cause of the fire was arson.
STATE ACTIVE DUTY
JASPER FIRE CAMP
CUSTER, SD
My short stint as a qualified “spoon” (Army slang for “cook”) only lasted a few months. Ironically, before completing the Food Service Specialist Course, I spent a combined total of about three years working informally as a non-qualified cook for both the 842nd Engineer Company (July 1999 – April 2000) and Battery B, 1/147th Field Artillery (August 1981 – September 1983).
In November 2000, I applied for the same SDARNG Orders, Awards and Security Clearance job that I was not selected for earlier in the year. Apparently, the previously hired individual, who had worked there only nine months, moved to another position on Camp Rapid, leaving the vacancy. This time, I got the job.
TRANSITION FROM SPOON
TO CHAIRBOURNE RANGER
July 2003 - Camp Parks, CA - Last phase of my Basic Non-Commissioned Officer's Course. One of the students came up with the slogan, "Doing time for a 1059" The "1059" is a DA Form 1059 Service School Academic Evalatuion Report. We had to say it in formation several times a day. I didn't like it. It didn't rhyme and seemed to imply that we were just doing the bare minimum to pass the course.
15 August 2002 - Mount Rushmore - I had a wonderful photo opportunity with Senator Tim Johnson following President George W. Bush's speech at Mount Rushmore, the Shrine of Democracy.
Spearfish, SD - 11 May 1999 - I'm swearing the oath of enlistment. SFC Todd Otterberg was my recruiter (not pictured).
After the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush’s call for military action against Iraq led to over 20 units from the SDARNG being deployed from 2002 to 2005. It was a very busy time for me. I did a lot of love time, working many late nights and weekends without pay to create individual and unit mobilization orders, orders registers, mobilization annexes and NATO orders in Word documents for over 2,500 Soldiers deploying to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Noble Eagle.
Due to the large amount of data needed for each order, the most efficient way to publish them at the time was to run a query from the SIDPERS database of all required data for each Soldier, copy it, paste to an Excel spreadsheet, review all the data, making corrections as necessary, then merge to Word documents, using the Mail Merge function in the MS Word program.
MSG Harris and I spent countless hours reviewing multiple-page Excel spreadsheets to verify all data fields were correct. Having accurate data was critical, because orders published with errors would require me to have to create amendment orders or revoke the erroneous order and re-publish the correct one.
Not only did I have my hands full with processing orders, I had to process hundreds of interim security clearances for Soldiers who needed them for deployment. The mobilizations also generated a significant increase in the amount of award recommendations I had to process. So, in essence, the deployments hit me from all aspects of my job and significantly increased my workload.
In addition to the increased workload, I served on the SDARNG Honor Guard Team (or Color Guard Team, as it was called then), performing funeral honors and presenting the colors at various sporting events, parades, ceremonies and conventions.
I also volunteered to serve on State Active Duty to support fire-fighting efforts for the Grizzly Gulch, Little Elk Creek and Battle Creek fires in the Black Hills.
I felt good about supporting our Soldiers. I prided myself in being able to accomplish a lot of work in a short time to ensure everything was complete before each unit deployed for war. The only thing that bothered me a little was that I did not deploy myself.
During Desert Storm, even though we had no TV or internet in the desert and I didn’t know much of what was happening outside our perimeter, I still felt like I was a part of history in the making. During Operation Enduring Freedom, it was the exact opposite. This time, even though I was helping the war effort, I still felt like I was missing out, because I wasn’t deploying myself.
MASS MOBILIZATIONS
After returning to Camp Rapid from the security conference, I focused my efforts on eliminating backlogs, organizing my workstation and creating new systems or enhancing existing ones to improve operations.
Within a few months, I established accountability of every action and eliminated all 100 of the backlogged security clearance requests. I then had breathing room to become proactive and get ahead of the power curve, so I:
1. Ensured I had all available references (regulation, directives, guidelines, policy changes, etc.) and updated the reference library for all my areas (Awards, Orders and Personnel Security Clearances).
2. Created processing procedures for awards and personnel security clearance, posting them to the DCSPER (Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel) “Greenbook” (a procedural guide) and briefing to unit leaders and full-time administrative staff throughout the SDARNG.
3. Improved the awards supply system for medals, ribbons and accoutrements. Previously, units submitted requests to the OAC Manger via email, memorandum or phone call. I created a standardized order request form, using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which listed items in the same order I stored them, posting a blank spreadsheet for each unit on the Intranet, so the POCs could fill it out online, then call or email me to let me know their order was ready for me to fill. This eliminated confusion and made my job of resupplying the units so much quicker and easier.
4. Initiated funding for police record checks and streamlined security clearance paperwork, including electronic submission of forms.
5. Assisted in the implementation of the MILPO Orders Program, an automated and integrated system for processing administrative orders. I also supplemented gaps in the program by publishing orders in Word documents for formats that weren’t supported by the program. At the time, there was no other way to do it.
6. Implemented a system to track OCS (Officer Candidate School) candidates and MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) recruits for security clearance requirements, ensuring they all held minimum required interim clearances needed for attending their schools.
7. Researched procedures for processing a new award, the Cold War Certificate, and submitted, tracked and distributed these to hundreds of eligible SDARNG members.
8. Kept a log of every action I performed, including pertinent information, such as name, rank, unit, type of action, current processing status, location of action, priority level, follow-up dates, suspense date and remarks, to assist me in ensuring completion.
AFTER THE CONFERENCE -
TIME TO GET TO WORK
SECURITY CONFERENCE -
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
From 26 November to 2 December 2000, only two weeks into my new job, I attended the Department of Defense Personnel Security Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. Going to the conference was a good experience, because it was a chance to network with others and learn a little about the personnel security aspect of my job. Although, the acronyms and jargon they used in the conference were a bit overwhelming.
During my three-day stay in Baltimore, I took the opportunity to visit Washington DC after each day’s conference ended, catching a train to DC, then walking around to as many attractions as I could find. I saw the White House, the Capitol Building, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, WWII Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Something I found very interesting and disappointing, at the same time, was how dirty the city was, including the air, which made my skin feel grimy. When I see images of President’s Park (the National Mall) on TV, it looks like a pretty nice place. But, when I first saw it in person, it was littered with trash everywhere. It made me glad I didn’t have to stay there and I wondered how the politicians liked working there. Perhaps they get used to it, I don’t know.