Dellinger to leave garrison command

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. -- When Col. David "Buck" Dellinger joined the Army, he had no idea he would serve long enough to become the Fort Campbell garrison commander.

On June 18, Dellinger will relinquish command during a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. at the garrison headquarters.

Those who know him express a common sentiment. During his tenure, Dellinger made an indelible mark on the Fort Campbell community and the impact of his leadership will be felt for many years to come.

His journey through military service began with one goal.

Dellinger said he joined the Army to get an education.

"I wanted the best education, he said. "So, I went to West Point just because it was a little more prestigious of an opportunity."

Dellinger had not planned to make the Army a career, but he stayed past his first five-year commitment because he liked what he was doing and he was fairly good at it, he said.

"You just want to continue doing what you're successful at, and the Army kept giving me fun things to do," Dellinger said. "More than anything … other people determine whether you are successful or not, but everything that the Army has asked me to do has been fun."

Dellinger's resume is extensive and impressive. He graduated from Special Forces Qualification and Ranger courses, as well as Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance Target Acquisition and Exploitation Course and Advanced Military Freefall Parachutist Course.

He served in 10th Special Forces Group, was the aide-de-camp for the Commanding General, United States Army Special Operations Command and served as the battalion commander of the 101st Division Special Troops Battalion, just to name a few.

After competing for an installation command, Dellinger was appointed as the Fort Campbell garrison commander in 2012.

Nothing Dellinger had done throughout his military career prepared him to be a garrison commander, he said. "You get some training after the fact to learn some language and some definitions and some processes but it's very complex and there is no real doctrine," he said. "There is no professional school that says 'we're going to train you to be a city manager.'"

"It's a busy, issue-driven job all the time," Dellinger added. "The first year you are learning to play checkers, the second year you are learning to play chess and the third year you are a chess master."

Best Soldier and Family experience

After adapting, and figuring out how the job worked, Dellinger wasted no time implementing changes to benefit Fort Campbell. Of all the accomplishments during his tenure, Dellinger said changing one of the Fort Campbell brands from "World Class Army Home" to "Best Soldier and Family Experience" was the most significant.

"We did that because we really wanted to improve customer service and improve the way people feel about their job, and about their interface with the community and the Soldiers and Families," he said. "If that is our goal … regardless of money and resourcing … everybody can still be friendly, you can still be supportive, you can still listen."

The brand change also was focused to make the Fort Campbell experience something Soldiers and their Families would want to return to during their military career, as well as after they had completed their commitment to the military, he said.

"We want people to go away and say 'the best place I ever served was Fort Campbell and if I could, I would go back there and I might live there even after I retire,'" Dellinger said. "So that was our end state objective."

Workforce development

After taking command, Dellinger's orientation included a brief by Workforce Development about ongoing individual and organizational professional growth and development. He realized the installation had an important responsibility to provide a high quality of life through customer service and base operation support services, which are essential to Soldier and Family resiliency. And the civilian workforce is key to accomplishing that mission.

"He started finding where his influence as a commander could help the workforce," said Duane Soumis, Workforce Development program manager.

Fort Campbell had many developmental opportunities with limited resources and Dellinger knew for the workforce to be highly competitive and successful the core competences had to be addressed, Soumis said.

"He provided those resources through means that normally wouldn't have been available," Soumis said. "Every idea we had about how to support or how to gain competencies for the workforce … he supported."

Soumis said Dellinger believed if the civilian workforce was taken care of then the mission would get done. He initiated this concept by welcoming every new civilian employee to Fort Campbell.

"He comes and talks to the new employees," Soumis said. "He explains to them why they are so important to our workforce and for him to take the time to do that is admirable."

Dellinger also realized there were things the military did that the civilian workforce didn't do, so he began to incorporate those into his policies, Soumis said. An example of this is the workforce satisfaction survey.

The survey gave garrison leadership direct feedback from federal employees across the installation and insight into strengths and weaknesses within the organization.

To enhance the workforce, Dellinger recognized that supervisors are critical because they drive the culture of an organization, so he developed the Human Resources for Supervisors course.

With almost 2,000 employees at Fort Campbell, Dellinger said the change will not happen quickly, but the program has completed two courses with the third course coming soon. About 70 people have completed the course.

Health and wellness initiatives

Dellinger encouraged health and wellness initiatives that improved the lifestyle and well-being of Fort Campbell's civilian workforce and their Families. Among them, the Civilian On-Duty Wellness and Fitness Program that encourages civilian employees to improve health and fitness through exercise.

Soumis said, the program offers civilian employees the opportunity to participate in events that focus on the performance triad -- activity, nutrition and sleep.

"The Civilian On-Duty Wellness Program grew and our statistics went into the green metric-wise," he said. "People started getting interested and that had a big impact."

Soumis said, something else that had a big impact … was when Dellinger took the Army's Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program to another level by developing the Eagle Challenge Fitness Tour.

Going into its third year, the ECFT was designed to promote healthy lifestyles for all fitness levels, Dellinger combined Morale, Welfare and Recreation events on Fort Campbell with events in the surrounding areas to provide opportunities for people to get fit and receive a Commander's Gold, Silver or Bronze Medal from the commanding general, said Schaffner.

The program was created to be wounded warrior-capable and kid-friendly, as well as appealing to the competitive nature of those looking for something more challenging, Dellinger said.

"[Dellinger] was instrumental in saying we were going to do this thing. We have this idea and we are going to make it happen," said Morale, Welfare and Recreation marketing director Melissa Schaffner. "Don't tell me how you can't, tell me how you can [he would say]."

Soumis, an ECFT event participant, said the program embodied the five dimensions of strength: social, emotional, spiritual, physical and Family, and Dellinger led by example through the Family dimension of strength by always bringing his Family with him to the events.

"What I saw here was the commander in the top position in the garrison showing us that there is a work-life balance and his life balance included his Family," Soumis said. "[Dellinger] was the spearhead that showed how you could take your life and work, combine the two and be very successful at it."

Energy savings initiative

With more than 36,000 Soldiers and civilians employed on the installation, Dellinger made saving energy a priority with the Garrison Commander's Energy Management Program.

"We presented the health of the energy program to him via a "bi-monthly" update," said Rick McCoy, chief of the Business Operations and Integrations Division for Fort Campbell's Directorate of Public Works. "As new concepts were developed, we were guaranteed the colonel's support provided the projects were proven viable. He's a quick study and readily understands projects that add value to the post."

Fort Campbell leadership does everything it can to make sure energy is used efficiently because if the installation exceeds 65 megawatts, it suffers penalties. "We have an enormous utilities bill. World War II buildings, relocatable buildings are energy hogs," Dellinger said.

"Exceeding megawatt usage is a catastrophic budget killer," he added. "We cannot afford to bust our cap on utilities."

On a normal day, the installation uses between 38 and 45 megawatts, and in order to continue the saving energy initiative, bad buildings must be taken down and people need to be placed into energy efficient buildings as well as looking for alternate, energy efficient utilities, he said.

"The LED lights going in, the solar panels going in, the gasification biomass plant that is going to be built in 2020, all of these things give us energy security," Dellinger said. "When we save money in energy we are able to pay for those unfunded requirements that we have in our budget."

The projects developed under Dellinger's watch include the 5MW Solar Array, Post Exterior Lighting Upgrade, the Central Energy Plant Upgrade and numerous initiatives with Oak Ridge National Laboratories such as the Utility Command Center, Command's Digital Dashboards and the Commander's Cup, McCoy said.

"These additions to Fort Campbell save millions of dollars annually while improving the quality of life for the post occupants," he said.

Leading through sequestration impacts

In 2013, Fort Campbell faced budget and service cuts to military Families, civilian personnel and retirees. Dellinger held civilian town hall meetings to inform the civilian workforce about the cuts and impacts, and encouraged personnel to seek answers.

"We gave classes, we went out and we were glad to see the credit unions and local banks were giving small no interest loans for those who were reaching into their savings or getting put at risk during the furlough period," Dellinger said. "We did try to prepare people for the loss of 20 percent of their paycheck for six weeks."

Other than encouraging the flow of information, Dellinger said, he tried to stay connected with those being affected so they could voice their concerns and talk them through it.

"Leading the organization through the furlough to stay committed to providing services was the biggest challenge," he said.

From sequestration came the Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment completed in April 2013, which assessed the impacts of reducing the Army force structure from 562,000 to 490,000.

"The Budget Control Act of 2011 was dictating there was going to be troop reductions across the Army and the first step was to do the PEA," Dellinger said.

Dellinger said this month the installation will find out if Fort Campbell will lose Soldiers over the next two years.

Looking forward

"Sequestration is an impact of the budget control act of 2011; it is a 10-year law that gives projected downward cuts to the discretionary fund portion of the budget," he said.

Because every year the spending target drops, Fort Campbell and the military as a whole could face additional cuts until 2021 but anything could change, he said.

"I think the community will be very energized just like they have over the past year to protect Fort Campbell because it is such a strategic, unique and exceptional place and a best value to house, train and provide for a Soldier and their Family," Dellinger said. "It's one of the best, if not the best in the nation."

Dellinger will remain on active duty at Fort Campbell. He has been selected and appointed to be the 101st Airborne Division Chief of Staff.

Editor's note: Garrison Deputy Public Affairs Officer Brendalyn Carpenter contributed to this article.

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