Subscribe
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - "I just stumbled upon the position really. I saw a job posting three years ago. I heard there was an opening here in GTMO, so I put in my resume and here I am."
With the ushering in of a new year comes the dawning of a new era in entertainment for the community of U. S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. The past three years have been a period of advancements and improvements to entertainment facilities as well as some of the biggest acts the island has seen.
Stephen Pretesater, the MWR Communities Activities Coordinator, has made it a personal mission to see through the MWR mission of making the deployed environment as entertaining and comfortable as possible. He’s helped bring ever larger names from the entertainment industry and revamp equipment to give the GTMO community a better entertainment experience.
“I just stumbled upon the position really. I saw a job posting three years ago. I heard there was an opening here in GTMO, so I put in my resume and here I am,” Pretesater said.
“Since I’ve been on island we’ve had a total of 86 performances; we’ve done roughly 48 special events ranging from bringing in “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” Jonathan Goldsmith to sponsoring the holiday parade. We put on one of the biggest concerts GTMO has had in decades, GTMO Palooza, which was five bands on island … a first.”
Coordinating some of the biggest acts the island has seen is only the beginning. Pretesater said he believes that a show is only as good as the effort put in to presenting it, so he set out to build presentations fit for kings. As well as completely revamping all of the islands sound and lighting systems, Pretesater helped redesign and upgrade the community movie theater to a more modern digital presentation system, with superior sound.
“I [don’t know] … I’m one of those people [who is] never really happy with ‘it's good.’ If you say it’s good, to me it can be better – the lighting systems for instance. We’ve always had lights, and they turn on but that was never really good enough for me. So, I became a lighting designer,” he said.
“It’s a lot of time and dedication, but I think it’s important for the community to have something, to know that when you go to an event or a high school dance that some one cares to put on a good event for you. For me it has been nice knowing that I was the guy [who] got to do that for people. I was the guy behind the scenes [who] really made things happen. Me and my team are always trying to one-up the last show.”
With entertainment outlets making proposals to the largest venue in a region to determine the entire region’s likelihood of receiving a tour and U. S. Naval Station Guantanamo being the largest military venue in the region, Stephen’s dedication to entertainment is felt by not only the local GTMO community but the entire hemisphere., A responsibility he takes to heart.
“If we don’t say yes a lot of times the tour may not go out to other destinations in the area, so for me it is always a mater of not thinking about myself, not thinking about just GTMO but thinking of everyone else too. So, we accept as many tours as possible,” Pretesater said. “Even if I have to work seven or eight weekends in a row, I’m going to say yes just so not only GTMO gets great entertainment but also the other installations in the Western Hemisphere here in the Caribbean.”
All good things must come to an end though, and Prestesater’s time bringing entertainment to GTMO and the rest of Caribbean is soon ending. However, his entertainment legacy will live on with his replacement, Jon Gilligan, who Prestesater said he believes will pick up the torch and run with it.
| Date Taken: | 01.02.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 02.23.2015 14:32 |
| Story ID: | 155141 |
| Location: | CU |
| Web Views: | 40 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, The show must go on, by SSgt Christopher Moore, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
