YUMA PROVING GROUND, Arizona - U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground is of vital importance to the national defense for its testing of virtually everything in the ground combat arsenal.
The proving ground's reason for existence, however, makes it especially challenging when it comes to personnel willing to brave Yuma's intense summers, where daily high temperatures usually surpass 100 degrees Fahrenheit by the first week of June and stay there until the end of September.
The parched desert climate won't be an issue for new recreation director Tina Wills, however, who has spent years in some of the world's most rugged places.
Though her previous Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) job was in Kuwait, Wills has spent years on the African continent, first in the Peace Corps and then working at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. It was a long way from her youth in State College, Pennsylvania, where she attended local schools and then Pennsylvania State University.
"As a kid I was always planning activities for clubs and friends. I was the group organizer and when I got to college I was guided into parks and recreation management."
Her first experience with the Army was a MWR summer internship as a camp counselor in Germany while still pursuing her degree.
"I fell in love with it," she said. "MWR is such a great organization: we're here for the service members, and I love that."
When she earned her degree, however, there were no positions available within the Army. She ran a municipal parks and recreation summer camp program in Polk County, Florid,a for five years before taking the plunge into a lifelong dream of joining the Peace Corps. A two year commitment, she sold all of her belongings and after a three month training program found herself assigned to the North African nation of Morocco.
"I lived in a very small, remote village in the middle of the eastern High Atlas Mountains. I'm an outdoor type of person and enjoy roughing it, and the Peace Corps was roughing it. There was no running water or electricity in the village when I arrived."
She lived in a home with a mud roof, cement floors, and uncovered windows, and spent her first six months getting to know the people in the community.
"It was very fun and challenging," she said. "I drank a lot of Moroccan mint tea that summer."
She also became conversant in the local Berber dialect, Tamazight.
"I could go into the village and order all my fresh vegetables from the souk or order something in a restaurant. I could talk with most people in my village."
During her two years there, she worked on a variety of projects, from successful grant-writing efforts to bring utilities to the community to volunteer work at the local school, which included painting a large world map mural on one of the exterior walls.
"They say the Peace Corps is the toughest job you'll ever love. That's pretty accurate."
Her two years in the Peace Corps completed, Wills was enthused to find a MWR job available as an assistant MWR director at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. After a year there, however, she was intrigued by a job listing for a recreation specialist position at Camp Lemonnier. A Navy base in Djibouti, Lemonnier is eight miles from the border with Somalia, a war-torn nation widely considered one of the most dangerous in the world. Despite the locale and the fact the living conditions--a converted Connex container-- would be Spartan, she wasn't fazed.
"It wasn't far away from my Peace Corps experience," she said with a smile. "I was like, 'I could do that. I've done that--I lived in a mud house in Morocco.'"
She was hired for the job. The security situation was such that personnel weren't allowed to leave the confines of the camp, but she still organized several popular bimonthly MWR trips for Soldiers that toured sites in neighboring nations like Uganda, Egypt, and Seychelles, a complicated task that required coordination with the American embassies in each country. Though it was sometimes a challenge to keep groups of upwards of 40 people on schedule as they toured pyramids or sailed the Nile River, there were no problems in these sometimes volatile areas.
"The Peace Corps does a very good job of teaching their volunteers to blend in with local surroundings and adapt, as well as respect cultural differences."
In her present job, Wills manages the fitness center that YPG's Soldiers depend on, as well as the swimming pool, post library, auto skills center, and the Howard Cantonment Area car wash. She scuba dives and hikes in her spare time, and plans to begin a Master's degree soon, which should keep her in Yuma for the foreseeable future.
"Yuma is beautiful. I'm taken away with the sunsets and breathtaking views," she said. "The mountains are gorgeous."
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