WIESBADEN, Germany - As someone who traveled the world while his stepfather was in the Navy, followed by a career in the Army that ended with his retirement in Tennessee, Glenn Renna has his sights set on a retirement that might come as no surprise.
“I’m looking at doing continuous cruising,” said Renna, adding that his retirement might begin in South Carolina. “Sell everything except the pictures and things like that, put that in storage. and live out of two suitcases.”
Following his Army career working administration, Renna worked for the Social Security Administration, before joining IMCOM-Europe in January as a benefits coordinator.
“Basically, if an active duty service member dies, I work with the Casualty Assistance Officer (CAO) to get the family the benefits the Soldier earned,” he said.
Renna has teammates who take care of some other categories of decedents, such as retirees, veterans, and reserve-component service members. In his role, Renna focuses on Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, the GI Bill, and Family Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance.
“It’s nice because they don’t know that I’ve done that necessarily. They only deal with the CAO; they don’t know who’s doing this, and that’s fine with me,” he said. “I like when I can actually help people out.”
One of the challenges Renna faces in his job is the vast geographical area that his responsibility covers.
“Our area goes from Norway to South Africa,” he said. “Each country has its own set of rules. Some countries are as small as the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.”
No stranger to cultural differences his travels have taught him, Renna recalls being stationed in the Netherlands in the early 1990s and being granted time off for the holidays of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands – in addition to the U.S. holidays.
“The Netherlands is where I went first, and I have found that people like where they went first, as a comparison,” he said.
Renna, who has one daughter and three sons, is an ice cream aficionado who lists salted caramel, stracciatella, fregola, rose, egg yolk, rice among his favorites.
Having been stationed also in Italy, Turkey and Hungary, he enjoys visiting museums and churches in Wiesbaden
“I always wanted to ballroom dance,” said Renna, who picked it up as a hobby more than four years ago.
“It’s much more difficult than people think it is, and it is very popular. There are international championships,” he said, adding that his current instructor is a champion swing dancer.
“When you’re being judged, you’re not just being judged by your movement. You’re being judged by how your hands’ move; they judge where you’re looking; they judge how your clothes move. It should have been an Olympic sport before break dancing.”
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