JBER civilian wins national award for work with families

  • Published
  • By Chris McCann
  • Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  The military can look, especially to a new recruit or a spouse, like a labyrinth of foreign words and ideas.

The chain of command and noncommissioned officers can seem impossible to understand; there are programs and briefings for so many things, and getting such a huge organization to change appears impossible.

Sometimes, it takes someone who can help slice through the confusing acronyms and get things done.

For her role in this, Frederica Norman, a civilian Department of Defense employee on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, recently received the Association of the U.S. Army's DoD Civilian of the Year for the Pacific Region award.

"She's the best of the best of the best," said Marvin Dickerson, Army Community Service officer. "I've been working with ACS since 1995 and she's the strongest Army Family Action Plan and Army Family Team Building manager I've ever seen."

Since the merger that created JBER, it has been the Joint Army Family Action plan, said Norman. The Army is the only service to have the FAP, although they coordinate and format requests for all other branches of service.

Norman has worked, first on Fort Richardson and now at JBER, for three years in her current position. The transition was tough, she said.

"It was rewarding," she said. "I thought it was awesome. It was challenging, but worth it."
The tough part, she said, was that she was now responsible for almost twice as many service members who needed to be involved with the programs - and while 'Army' is in the names, they include the Air Force as well.

She revitalized the AFTB program - a series of volunteer-led instruction exercises primarily for new families.

"We had three volunteers when I started. Now we have 28. They teach people about the military, the norms, the ranks, protocol - everything."

To get the volunteers engaged, she networked, used word of mouth, and marketed - a lot.

"We get them at the classes," she said. "They have to want to do it. But they see the value of the program and they want to help out."

The program is made up of 60 modules in three levels, and just to learn it for the sake of teaching classes is no small task.

Norman took it upon herself to re-draft all the modules, bringing them up to date and making them joint-base friendly. As she finishes a module, she distributes the information as soon as she can.

"When the emcee spoke of her rewriting the 60 AFTB modules, even he was flabbergasted," said Rundy Galles, president of the local AUSA chapter. "He said it was a darn near impossible undertaking and said he was glad he wasn't responsible for accomplishing that task."

The modules cover everything from the rank structure and protocol to how to read a leave and earnings statement, stress management, and what family readiness groups can do for spouses.

The Army Family Action Plan is a year-round program and conference, she said.

When a quality of life issue is brought to someone's attention and it's a whole-Army concern - for example, wanting to change the provisions of the GI Bill - the issues are brought to AFAP coordinators and then taken up to the congressional level, where they can be resolved.

"The Post-9/11 GI Bill was once an AFAP issue," Norman said. "They went from the installation group to the region, then to the Department of the Army."

Requests are submitted in a non-service-specific format, she said.

"It's not 'The Army needs...', it's 'Families need...,' she said.The increase in Servicemember's Group Life Insurance coverage from $200,000 to $400,000 started out as an AFAP issue, as did changes in Tricare coverage that provide insurance for dependent children up to age 26.

Norman had to learn the culture of the Army, and when JBER was created, she became an Air Force employee.

"I had to think - now the people I'm responsible for have doubled. There were also the little things, like 'What's a squadron?' Learning Air Force culture was very challenging," she said.

She credited leadership on JBER with making it easier.

"(Air Force) Col. (Robert) Evans is awesome," she said. "He adopted and took our programs, and he learned them. Command buying in and taking joint basing seriously made my job easier."

In the future, she said, she wants to make sure that Army and Air Force cultures understand one another.

"We're not turning Soldiers into Airmen or Airmen into Soldiers," she said. "We're just working on the same missions. Families have the same needs."