JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- There’s only one schedule on a dairy farm: the cow’s. The staff wakes up at the cow’s leisure, feeds the bovines on a specific schedule, and works until the cows put their day’s work in to get milk out as quickly as the animal can produce it. Some days are longer than others, and there are no breaks or holidays.
For a 16-year-old high school student working on a farm in a town with more cattle than people, cows made pretty good life coaches. Between his three years on the dairy farm and his parents’ blue-collar work ethic, 673d Air Base Wing Command Chief Master Sgt. Garry Berry wasn’t too nervous about hopping on his first airplane and joining the military under President Ronald Reagan.
He enlisted in February of his senior year – and broke the news to his parents that September.
“I had no stripes and no guarantees,” Berry said. “I just wanted to do something new. I figured I’ll join the Air Force, education’s there if I want it, and I’ll learn a craft I can transport to the outside in four years. I was selected as a civil engineer equipment operator – affectionately referred to as a dirtboy. I was thrilled.”
Berry had grown accustomed to waking up at 4 in the morning – when he wasn’t in school – to clean the barns before breakfast, so the famously punctual 5 o’clock wake-up calls of Air Force Basic Military Training didn’t phase him. He spent the first week learning his expectations, and then spent the subsequent five weeks fulfilling them.
“I had no cows, but the hours were about the same, and I still had to do things at a certain time, so it came pretty natural to me,” Berry said.
Armed with the life experience of a farm hand – which set him a couple years ahead of the expectations of an average 18-year-old – Berry began work as one of the Air Force’s Dirtboyz.
“I wanted to know what the right and left limits were, and how I can leverage that to get to where I wanted to go,” Berry said. “I definitely wanted to learn my job, I liked doing it. Most of the people around me liked doing it as well, but I was always the guy who said: ‘I’ll go try that.’”
The more things he tried, the more he learned, and soon he’d established a reputation among his leadership as the go-to Airman when something needed doing. This expertise created leadership opportunities even as an airman first class and soon he was leading small teams of Airmen, Berry said.
“I’ve always been one to listen before I speak,” Berry said. “I would watch people who I knew were successful and take lessons from that. I did a lot of observing. I’d think about the things I did – not everything – and tried to come up with ways to do it better.”
When Berry made master sergeant on his second station at Kadena Air base, Okinawa, Japan, he found a way to export that dedication for improvement to his unit and quickly became a voice of leadership for the civil engineer squadron there.
“Good leaders don’t tell people how to do the job,” Berry said. “You just tell them what needs to be done and let them figure it out. That’s very much what my leadership did with me while I was [at Kadena.]”
Before long, Berry wasn’t investing his time in technical development, but rather investing it in relationships with other Airmen as a senior noncommissioned officer – a skill that is increasingly demanded as the Air Force continues to do more with less.
That mindset doesn’t just create good working relationships with other squadrons however, it garners genuine respect from subordinates in a different kind of relationship – that of a mentor and protégé.
“For those that don’t know chief, he’s super meticulous,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Amy Lacewell, commander’s executive for the 673d Air Base Wing. “Every day I’ve been here, I pay a little more attention to things that come in than I would have in the past. He’ll sit down with me and go through with why things are the way they are. Gaining that insight from his strategic level has gone a long way to help prepare me as a future leader. He’s involved me in any type of process I’m able to be a part of.”
For the past three years, Berry has served as the command chief of the 673d Air Base Wing, where he’s used the relationship skills he’s developed as a senior noncommissioned officer and used them to direct the wing toward one effective mission.
“As a command chief, you don’t control anything,” Berry said. “You have a vision, and you try to build relationships with people to get them all going down the same path.”
Through three decades of service, Berry said he has been able to rely on the principles he learned on the farm.
“My parents built these values into me before the Air Force had them,” he said. “I understood the Air Force’s needs came before mine, and long days were a non-issue for me.
“My wife might beg to differ on that,” Berry said with a knowing chuckle, “But she understands I love what I do and, at the end of the day, it was about taking care of the Airman’s and the nation’s business.”
July 14 will mark the end of Berry’s 30-year active duty Air Force career, but his legacy will live on in the hundreds of people he’s mentored along the way.