WATERVLIET ARSENAL, N.Y. (Jan. 21, 2015) -- When Jake Peart left the Air Force in 1975, he believed that his days in the military were over. After four years of performing and then supervising the maintenance of jet propulsion systems, he simply wanted to go back home and let his hair grow ̶ which remains one of his goals today.
But 40 years later, he is still in the military and finding it hard to leave even though he has hit his personal target date for retirement. After all, he has paid his dues having amassed more than 65,000 hours of credible, distinguished work at the arsenal. But the reasons for his staying are not the same as what drew him to the Watervliet Arsenal in the first place.
"Right after I got out of the Air Force, I turned down an opportunity to work at the arsenal," Jake said. "I took a job at General Electric instead because I thought that GE was the land of more opportunity."
But what Jake learned is that in the corporate world, opportunity is often short-lived when the bottom line is influenced by shareholders. After four years of a dramatic rise at GE, he found himself cleaning buildings just trying to hang on during a workforce reduction. It didn't work. He was laid off in 1980.
For two years, Jake said he bounced around from job to job until a machine tool operator's job opened up at the arsenal in 1982. Despite his mechanical experience that he gained while in the Air Force and at GE, Jake thought that his turning down an arsenal job several years earlier would come back to haunt him.
It did not.
Jake landed the job, to which he credited to his having Veteran status. But to anyone who knows Jake, they would more likely give credit to Jake's ability to communicate.
A few years ago, an arsenal story lightheartedly poked fun at Jake as one of the best song and dance men since the great Vaudeville-era. But what many senior Army leaders have recently discovered is that Jake's passion for the arsenal, his knowledge of every manufacturing activity, and his ability to captivate audiences with his rhetoric has allowed him to tell the arsenal's story like no other.
His rise through arsenal manufacturing has given him a frame of reference that few have. From machine tool operator to apprentice to machinist to quality control inspector to production planning and control, Jake has served at almost every critical level of Army manufacturing.
In an era of declining defense budgets there is intense competition among the commercial and government manufacturing centers that make up the defense industrial base. The type of manufacturing the arsenal does is sometimes difficult to explain to those who influence the award of a govenment contract. And that is where the talent of Jake Peart comes in.
Earlier this month, there was a flurry of activity here as several senior Army leaders, from the Army Materiel Command's Gen. Dennis L. Via to TACOM Life Cycle Management Command's Maj. Gen. Gwen Bingham, made the arsenal as one of their must see manufacturing centers. These visits centered at assessing the arsenal's current capability and capacity to accept new multimillion-dollar weapon contracts.
If there was any doubt on whether or not the arsenal could handle a large influx of new workload, those doubts were left on the production floor as Jake and his briefing team told the arsenal story by breaking down complex machining concepts into simple layman's terms that even the arsenal's public affairs officer could comprehend.
The end result of those visits is that the arsenal has received a significant plus-up in workload beginning this month.
And so, why is Jake still here?
While Jake was packing his office up a few weeks ago in anticipation of a January 2015 retirement, the arsenal commander talked to him about staying for a few more months to help transition the command through the start up of a major howitzer production surge.
Although Jake said he told the commander that he needed to talk to his wife first, in his heart he already had the answer.
"The arsenal has provided me great opportunities as well as provided a good middle-class life for my family," Jake said. "I knew that I owed the arsenal more than it owed me and therefore, I feel great that before I leave I can pay the arsenal back at least something for its many years of support that it gave me and to my family."
More than 32 years ago, Jake arrived hungry for an opportunity. He will leave in the near future having filled that hunger with a strong sense of pride and passion for the Watervliet Arsenal. For his many years of support, and for responding to the commander's call of duty, Jake is well deserving of being this month's arsenal Face of Strength.
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Story: An arsenal, Army legend who at 92 still loves to talk manufacturing
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