Photo By Staff Sgt. Jacob Skovo-Lane | U.S. Air Force Chaplain (Capt.) Stacey Pickering poses for a photo August 22, 2017, at...... read more read more
OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea -- When Capt. Rich Moritary, who traveled from Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, arrived at Osan Air Base, at 1:00 a.m. on August 12, he was exhausted. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and said to himself, "Well, after 18 hours of traveling, sleeping in a tent on a cot doesn't sound THAT bad."
Moritary dropped his bags outside of the common area, and the first face he saw before his in-processing briefing was Capt. Stacey Pickering's. Pickering gave him a good firm handshake and told him he was glad to have him there.
"He has to be from the South," Moritary thought.
In August 2017, instead of running the largest governmental auditing service in the state of Mississippi, Pickering was asked by name to serve as chaplain to more than 520 service members in the Life Support Area (LSA), nicknamed "tent city". Service members in tent city had been tasked to support Operation Ulchi Freedom Guardian 17, at Osan Air Base.
For roughly 3 million people in the Magnolia State, Pickering serves as their state auditor. The folks at tent city, Pickering said, had no idea that he holds one of the highest offices in his home state, nor do they really care. This month, he was just "Chap".
Pickering, a guardsman with the 186th Air Operations Group at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Meridian, Mississippi, filled the slot as chaplain on the Base Operating Support Integration team (BALSI) for Seventh Air Force at the LSA. He was one of 30 Air National Guardsmen from Key Field who was tasked to support the exercise. There were approximately 17,500 total U.S. service members who participated, with approximately 3,000 coming from outside the Korean peninsula. This year, with tensions high in the area, the role of the chaplain was vital.
"No one knew how this exercise was going to go," Pickering said of the exchange of words that was being played out between the United States and North Korea in early August as everyone arrived. "The building may not have been on fire, but people showed up not knowing how this was going to play out politically, and these folks stepped up to the plate."
"People in a deployed situation search for meaning and purpose, and it allowed me the opportunity to present my faith to them in a non-threatening way," Pickering remarked.
Tent life brought on its share of problems. Leaks, wind damage, hard cots, and the heating and cooling were among the many issues listed on the bulletin board across from the administration tent. Pickering got the most out of his counseling degree as he explained the challenges that service members faced while not just working long hours and sleeping on a cot, but being on a different continent from their families.
One New Jersey airman lost a grandfather, another had a mother put on hospice, while another was having marriage problems.
"These people brought real problems when they came with them, and I really didn't expect them to open up to me like they did, with only being here a month, but they did,” Pickering said.
Lt. Col. Christian Bakogiannis, "Col. Baggs", an Air Reserve technician assigned to the 414th Fighter Group at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, was chosen to be the tent city mayor for the exercise. He echoed the importance of the chaplain being the link between the airmen and the commander without circumventing the chain of command.
"Stacey has been providing spiritual support and counseling to our augmentees, even to me personally on some matters," Bakogiannis said. "He also provided me an ear to camp issues from the exercise, and the guidance that he gave me has helped on some personnel topics."
"Chaplain services are a huge force multiplier, because people are taken outside of their social strengths, circles, and family, and they get scared."
Baggs mentioned a real-world medical situation where a service member had to be medevaced out of the country. Pickering was able to be the "interface to the individual, myself, and their leadership at home state by providing feedback without betraying clinical issues," Bakogiannis said.
Tent life had its share of ups and downs, according to Pickering. There were long days in the beginning when people started arriving, and then long days taking everything down at the end of the exercise.
Pickering's deployments this year included Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and Joint Base San Antonio with 25th Air Force, but he was still very conscious of his duties as state auditor. Despite the 14-hour time difference at Osan, he conducted daily calls with his staff that sometimes began at 4:00 a.m.
For his time in the tents, which lasted just over 30 days, Pickering earned himself a Korean Defense Service Medal. When his orders were up, he began the taxing 12 plus hour, three connection flight back to the Hattiesburg-Laurel Regional Airport, where he gained the day he lost on the trip there. At his home in downtown Laurel, he has a Serta mattress, and isn't sure how much he paid for it.
Whatever it was, it was worth every penny.
| Date Taken: | 09.24.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 09.26.2017 13:47 |
| Story ID: | 249451 |
| Location: | MERIDIAN, MS, US |
| Hometown: | JACKSON, MS, US |
| Hometown: | LAUREL, MS, US |
| Web Views: | 178 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Auditing Airmen Morale: Pickering Deploys to SKorea as Tent City Chaplain, by Maj. Dusty Culpepper, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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