‘The best part is the satisfaction of taking care of military families’

WIESBADEN, Germany – If you are an Army family member who has come to Germany in the past few years, Debi McGlothlin has met you or taken care of you along the route that brought you here.

“All Army families coming over to Germany have to be approved for travel through my office,’ said McGlothlin, the family travel program manager, who has been with IMCOM-Europe since 2015.

“The best part is the satisfaction of taking care of military families. I’ve got over 41 years of doing it,” she said, noting that she also served as a Soldier in the 1970s.

“We didn’t have maternity uniforms,” she said with a laugh. “We wore civilian clothes and put our name tag and our rank on our civilian clothes.”

After her active duty service, as well as stints as an Army librarian and commissary employee, McGlothlin walked into the job of her dreams in February 1985 at Fort Campbell, where she has spent the vast majority of her career.

“I remember walking in as a GS-3 and started doing what I wanted to do, in personnel,” she said. “I went to the ID card section, and my heart never left it.”

McGlothlin has also worked in-and out-processing, retirements, assignments, separations – but the roads always led back through the ID card section, which she supervised for 20 years at Fort Campbell.

“Every assignment has been my favorite, because I’ve connected with the Soldier or family, one way or the other. I either took care of a Soldier, a spouse, a retiree, a widow, a Medal of Honor recipient. It didn’t make a difference,” she said.

Among the most memorable and important of her assignments, she said, was working casualty affairs at Fort Campbell following the 1985 plane crash in Gander, Newfoundland, when all 256 people, most returning home to Fort Campbell, perished.

“It’s always about taking care of the individual,” she said.

During her time with IMCOM-Europe, McGlothlin has been the recipient of the 2017 Frederick Vollrath senior civilian award from U.S. Army Europe and the 2018 John J. Dinnien Senior Civilian Award from the Adjutant General Corps at Fort Jackson, S.C.