FORT DETRICK, Md. -- The secret to success for Wesley Ladlee’s military career? Never shy away from the hard jobs.
“Those are the positions that will advance your career,” he said. “People shy away from the tough assignments -- first sergeant, platoon sergeant, drill sergeant. It’s not about the location, it’s about the position. The tough assignments are the ones that you need to take.”
Ladlee, a native of Newburgh, N.Y., used that same mentality to find success in the medical maintenance and logistics fields over his 22-year Army career. He recently retired at the rank of master sergeant.
In his last assignments at U.S. Army Medical Logistics Command, he served as a senior noncommissioned officer and leading enlisted voice in the medical maintenance field, helping to shape and reform sustainment practices as a part of AMLC’s Integrated Logistics Support Center.
As noncommissioned officer in charge for the ILSC, Ladlee helped develop improvements to medical materiel processes and procedures to better align with the way the Army views, plans and accounts for other commodities.
“I absolutely think we’re heading in the right direction,” Ladlee said, adding that sustainment practices for medical devices in the past were often overlooked compared to the other commodities.
Sustainment being considered from the start of life cycle discussions for medical materiel enables more deliberate actions to account for logistics, planning, funding and system maintenance across the enterprise, he said.
“Having a voice at the table and more people understanding sustainment has allowed us to grow professionally and it will provide huge benefits in the end to the Army,” Ladlee said.
While his work at AMLC was fulfilling, it was another of those “tough” jobs -- first sergeant at the Advanced Individual Training school for 68As, or biomedical equipment specialists -- that Ladlee said he will remember as his most rewarding.
“Those two years, being that first sergeant, were the most stressful, but meaningful thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “I think that was the greatest experience. That would probably be the only job to this day that I would consider pulling my retirement packet to go back and do.”
Also serving as the 68A senior enlisted adviser to the Army Surgeon General, Ladlee led the program charged with “trying to turn a teenager or young adult into a Soldier” trained and ready to deploy, do their job and uphold the highest standards of care to support Soldiers on the ground.
“At the end of the day, people’s lives are going to depend on it. They must uphold that standard and I had the responsibility of ensuring that when a unit received a 68A or 68J (medical logistics specialist) they had to be the best,” he said. “You didn’t have to worry about their competence and professionalism. Those Soldiers went on and have done great things -- during COVID, the Afghan drawdown. Those were all our MEDLOG Soldiers.
“I was really proud to see … not only was I there for those missions, coordinating at the strategic level, but to watch them be successful, that made me proud.”
Ladlee grew up in upstate New York, a short distance from West Point and about 60 miles north of New York City.
As a then-17-year-old and recent high school graduate, he remembers the events of Sept. 11, 2001, well and largely attributes that to his decision to join the Army in 2002.
“I had neighbors who were killed in 9/11,” he said.
Ladlee initially joined the Army Reserve and served as a biomedical equipment specialist in a civilian hospital for a few years before he joined the active duty ranks in October 2004. His first assignment with the 2nd Infantry Division took him to Camp Casey in Korea.
From there, Ladlee has served in a variety of leadership positions, from squad leader to first sergeant at different organizations across the United States. He also completed three deployments -- one to Qatar and two more to Afghanistan.
More recently, during his time at AMLC, he supported the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 responses in New Orleans and set up medical operational supports at Fort Lee, Virginia, for Operation Allies Welcome following the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Despite retiring from the active ranks, Ladlee and his decades of expertise aren’t going anywhere. He has started in a contract role supporting the Medical Maintenance Management Directorate, or M3D, at the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency, one of AMLC’s three direct reporting units.
“Thankfully, his valuable skill set is not lost; he’s merely changing his work attire,” said Reginald “Reggie” Burrus, a retired chief warrant officer four currently working as an AMLC civilian with the ILSC. “It is awesome he will continue to provide the Army with his contributions as an Army contractor.”
It helps that his new setting is already populated by many familiar faces, many of whom he’s served for or alongside during his time in uniform, like M3D Director Jorge Magana.
Ladlee was Magana’s NCOIC for medical maintenance during their time serving together in the 6th Medical Logistics Management Center.
Ladlee has been “instrumental” to the medical maintenance sustainment programs, Magana said, as significant changes continue under AMLC as the life cycle management command for medical materiel.
“I am super excited that we get the benefit again to work with Master Sgt. retired Ladlee,” said Magana, who retired from the 6th MLMC in 2020 as a chief warrant officer four. “His vast amounts of strategic level experience as well as his expert tactical knowledge of Army medical maintenance are a perfect fit to the U.S. Army’s only sustainment medical maintenance program.”
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