Kevin Cheek This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Lebanon Daily Record

   www.lebanondailyrecord.com/dis - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/18/2003   Last Visited: 1/18/2003

   Kevin Cheek, the post's mobilization officer.
   
   Cheek described his job as one of "facilitator."
   
   "I'm an intermediary between the units that come in here and the installation staff," he said. "I kind of orchestrate all of the things that need to occur to allow for a smooth transition of the unit onto active duty."
   
   He said the fort is the mobilization station for several Army National Guard and Army Reserve units.
   
   "Every reserve component has a period of training that is needed before they can deploy to a theater in support of an operation," Cheek said. "Every unit is assigned a mobilization station. Generally, it's within the geographic area. For example, for a lot of units that are in Missouri, Fort Leonard Wood is their mobilization station. When they're mobilized they come here to train."
   
   He said some of the mobilized units will spend more time at the fort than others, depending on their mission and how quickly their deployment is needed.
   ...
   "But, there's some standard training that they all have to accomplish," Cheek said. "They'll come in and we'll do some of what we call SRP, soldier readiness processing. We'll run them through various stations. We double-check to make sure that they have their wills and powers of attorney in order. We do other personnel processing to make sure their pay is squared away. They go through some mandatory briefings and then they do some individual training -- kind of refresher training to make sure that they're good to go on all those things every soldier is supposed to know. And then they dive into their actual mission (training) and it gets evaluated.
   ...
   Cheek said the mobilization organization has been determining which units would come to the fort if they are called up and what can be done to enhance the support of these units.
   
   "We have the responsibility to ensure that we've done everything we can before we send them off and that's what everybody here works to do to make sure we've trained them the best we can, we've equipped them the best we can and that they're ready to go," he said.
   
   Copyright 2003 Lebanon Daily Record
   
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