OMAHA, Neb. -- Nebraska Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Chair, Paul Cohen, a retired Air Force Brig. Gen., welcomed some 16 civilian employers to 'Bosses Day' at Offutt Air Force Base. This employer orientation tour and others like it go far to help civilian employers better understand and appreciate the military missions of their Guard and Reserve employees.
The safety and security of every American citizen rests more heavily than ever upon the wide shoulders of National Guard and Reserve Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen.
Of that there can be no doubt.
Many of the country's part-time military personnel have stepped forward without complaint for multiple deployments to very dangerous duty stations on the far side of the globe for as much as a year at a time with nary a complaint.
Deployments, while vital to the nation for a multitude of reasons, present as many challenges to the civilian employers and Guard or Reserve families left behind than to those who are deployed themselves.
Enter the organization Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR).
An under-the-radar, almost entirely volunteer agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, ESGR stands beside and behind both the civilian employers who must deal with staff absences that can be both long and frequent, as well as with the men and women who are deployed themselves.
To accomplish its mission to educate both sides of the equation and also to nurture mutual understanding between all involved, ESGR has at its disposal a multitude of trained, dedicated volunteers who offer outreach assistance in multiple aspects of this vital - yet always challenging - military/civilian dynamic.
In recent months ESGR sponsored a Boss Lift out of Lincoln during which employers rode Blackhawk helicopters and learned much about their Guard and Reserve employees' important mission to evacuate battlefield wounded by air and under fire if need be.
More recently, just more than a dozen Omaha employers spent a day learning, understanding and better appreciating all that their Guard and Reserve employees are doing for their country during absences for training or deployment overseas.
Cohen welcomed the group at its morning briefing on the grounds of Offutt Air Force Base, a military installation of some 4,000 acres where 10,000 military and civilian employees work.
"It's vital to our defense," Cohen told the Omaha bosses, "that those folks have your support."
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chris Kelmis rattled off numbers to quantify the level of reliance the United States places on its part-time military forces.
He said 2,000-plus reserve sailors are deployed "around the globe" on any given day.
The Navy includes approximately 47,500 reservists in all and so far this year has provided at least two of them to perform military honors at 21,441 veteran funerals nationwide.
Naval reservists at Offutt, he explained, have responsibility for all military burials in Nebraska. In the last full fiscal year in-state services numbered 389. So far this fiscal year the count is 227 and climbing.
The much more extensive overall mission of the Navy Reserve, he said, is, "Mobilization readiness. That's what we're all about."
In his remarks, Air Force Col. Mark A. Hopson acknowledged the country's reliance upon stand-by forces will only grow. In wars now and those to come, he said, there will be less separation between active duty and reserve soldiers.
"That's the wave of the future," he said. Already, in fact, "You can't tell the difference. We all work together."
Hopson said, "Depth of experience is what the Guard and Reserve brings."
That's a perfect complement to active duty military personnel who "bring breadth of experience."
Successfully stitching two very different lifestyles and sets of obligations together depends entirely upon both sides - civilian and military - pulling together with each other. Tugging their shared soldier in opposite directions, ESGR volunteers will quickly confirm, is a recipe for the likely failure of both.
On the military side, said Hopson, "We try to be really, really flexible. Life ebbs and flows and we know that."
Maj. Gen. Richard Evans described what he termed the "three-legged stool" that Guard and Reserve men and women must somehow balance. One leg is military, another is the civilian employer and a third is to effectively provide for the needs of his or her own family.
"The military," said Evans, "works to provide predictable schedules" to help shore up its leg of the stool.
The relationship between Guard and Reserve soldiers and their civilian bosses, said Evans, is enormous.
"There's no doubt," he said, "Individual employers affect the mission of their military employees.
The military, he said, looks to the Guard and Reserve, "As a flex force to be part-time until needed – then full go."
ESGR's one and only mission is to foster knowledge and understanding as well as to serve as the bridge that connects the disparate elements of these doubly-dedicated Americans' employment relationships.
A wealth of information and advice is available for the asking at http://www.esgr.mil/ or by calling the Lincoln office at 402 309-7303.
Inquiries about this news release are best directed to: steve.moseley@yorknewstimes.com; Nebraska ESGR Public Affairs Director
Group photo by Ryan Hansen, Public Affairs Director, 55th Wing