Photo By BUMED PAO | CAPT Gerard "Jay" Woelkers and family get "piped ashore." (U.S. Navy photo by Mass...... read more read more
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On April 9, 2021, at a ceremony held at the Walter Reed Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) in Bethesda, Md., Capt. Gerard “Jay” Woelkers, MSC, USN, retired after 39 years in the Navy.
The commanding officer of Bethesda’s Naval Medical Readiness and Training Command (NMRTC) since May 2019, Woelkers began his career in 1982. You could say joining the Navy was an easy choice for Woelkers. Growing up in a large family in Detroit, Mich., he was surrounded by numerous models of military service.
His father Fred was a decorated Army infantryman in World War II who instilled in his 15 children a sense of service to community and country.
“Growing up we knew he served in the Army,” said Woelkers. “When Vietnam came along my older brothers and sisters joined.” And one by one each entered the uniformed services almost as a rites of passage into a family business.
The Woelkers family had representatives in the Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Navy. In the end 12 of the 15 children born to Fred and Sally Woelkers entered the military. The three remaining siblings served in their communities as teachers, public defenders and YMCA administrators.
Beginning with his older sister Margaret “Peg” Spencer, who was commissioned as a Navy Nurse in 1970, Navy Medicine was a preferred destination for the Woelkers. She was followed by brother Mike into the Nurse Corps; and siblings Joe, Mary, David, Chris into the Hospital Corps.
When asked what sort of advice she imparted to her younger siblings about Navy Medicine, Spencer remarked, “I shared my experiences taking care of patients at the Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune. It was rewarding, and an honor and I told them to ‘just do it.’”
Following in the footsteps of his older siblings, Capt. Jay Woelkers enlisted with the hope of becoming a hospital corpsman. Initially, he found service not too different from home life. As he joked, “14 brothers and sisters living together, eating dinner every night was good preparation for boot camp. It was chaos every day.”
Before reaching Hospital Corps School, Woelkers served as an unrated deck plate sailor aboard USS Alamo (LSD-33) during an extended repair period. “It was a rough way to go, but chipping paint each day was great motivator” said Woelkers.
After graduating Hospital Corps School San Diego in 1983, Woelkers served on the wards at Naval Hospital Charleston, and then went to Physical Therapy “C” School before being assigned to the Naval Hospital Annapolis. Woelkers stated it was one of his favorite and most formative tours. In addition to getting to work on notable Naval Academy athletes like basketball great David Robinson, it opened his eyes to what “could be.” Seeing the midshipmen with commissions and graduating with college degrees inspired him to go to college and become a commissioned officer. In 1993, Woelkers was commissioned as an Ensign in the Medical Service Corps.
In the second part of his career, Woelkers met his wife Tracy, also a Medical Service Corps officer. During the ensuing years, he worked in patient administration, public works and facilities management at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune and Naval Dental Center Northeast. He returned to his home city of Detroit in 2000 where he served as a medical recruiter. This was followed by tours as Officer-in-Charge at Naval Health Clinic Earle, N.J., Director for Administration at Naval Health Clinic Corpus Christi, Texas, and Officer-in-Charge at the Naval Branch Health Clinic Groton, Conn. Along the way, Woelkers was deployed in support of the Global Contingency Operations, serving as Executive Officer, Charlie Trauma Surgical Company, Al Anbar Province, Iraq and Bravo Trauma Surgical Company, Commanding Officer Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Following tours as Chief, Program Operations, TRICARE Area Office Eurasia-Africa in Seimbach, Germany, Executive Officer, Naval Professional Development Center, Bethesda, Md., and Commanding Officer of Naval Health Clinic Cherry Point, N.C., Woelkers assumed command of the first stand-alone NMRTC.
At NMRTC Bethesda, Woelkers was responsible for 2,400 sailors at WRNMMC and Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, 49 deployment platforms, and oversaw his staff involved in 18 separate short-notice deployments in the fight against COVID-19.
Despite his many accomplishments and his 22 duty stations over 39 years, Woelkers leaves the Navy most proud of his family, their tradition of service and his role as a mentor to his sailors.
The husband, and father of six, can boast that among his immediate family, his siblings, their spouses and their children there is 171 years of collected military service (in two generations alone!) This includes his son Ryan who is a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps.
His family’s years of service comes with an implied dedication, sacrifice and self-lessness. As Woelkers put it, it’s a commitment to “keeping your nose clean, working hard, staying motivated despite set-backs and being that person everyone wants on their team.”
For Woelkers finding success in the military is not always defined by rank, but by character. He sees this single piece of advice—and having had the ability to make a difference in his sailors’ lives—as perhaps his greatest career achievement in the Navy.
“Over the years when I talked to a sailor—whether it was good news or bad news—I could change the way they saw the world, the way they saw the Navy,” said Woelkers. “By talking to them I could make them a better person and make a positive difference to them.”
| Date Taken: | 04.09.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 04.10.2021 16:52 |
| Story ID: | 393546 |
| Location: | FALLS CHURCH, VA, US |
| Hometown: | DETROIT, MI, US |
| Web Views: | 1,230 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, 39 Years in the Family Business: NMRTC Bethesda’s CO Says Goodbye to Navy Medicine, by André B. Sobocinski, Historian, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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