Photo By Chuck Cannon | Johnny Bevers, Deputy to the Garrison Commander, talks to members of one of the small...... read more read more
FORT JOHNSON, La. — The Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Johnson hosted its semi-annual Quality of Life Conference May 5 at the installation’s Warrior Center.
More than 100 Soldiers, Family members and Department of the Army civilians attended the conference which highlighted advancements made in the JRTC and Fort Johnson’s quality of life, as well as a look ahead at other projects slated for the post identified as one of four Army installations to receive special quality of life improvements.
The event also elicited suggestions from those in attendance on ways to improve the quality of life at Fort Johnson.
Brig. Gen. Jason A. Curl, JRTC and Fort Johnson commander, shared with those in attendance his quality-of-life priorities: Education, housing, childcare, health care, Army spouse employment and Family Morale, Welfare and Recreation.
They support his personal priorities: Care for people, build readiness and succeed in JRTC and Fort Johnson campaigns.
“These quality of life conferences — where you bring up issues that need to be fixed — help us make better decisions across the installation,” Curl said. “Some things we already know about, and we’re working on them, although probably not as fast as you — or we — would like. But continuing to bring it up is helpful, because some things might have slipped from our consciousness. They’re still important, but maybe we haven’t thought about them in a couple of months. Bringing it back up is helpful.”
Curl said there are issues the installation team is already tracking and are probably not going to be fixed for several reasons outside of the team’s control.
“But some of the issues, are things we’ve never heard before,” he said. “At these forums there always seems to be a couple of things that we’ll look at each other and ask, ‘Really? That’s going on here at Fort Johnson?’”
Curl addressed the upcoming gate closures and explained the need to get borrowed manpower back to units for training.
He also spoke about the new household goods system and said work continues to make it better for Soldiers across the Army.
Presentations covered childcare, education, housing — to include privatized accompanied housing and barracks, infrastructure and strategic partnerships.
Breakout sessions after each presentation allowed groups of five to eight attendees the opportunity to discuss the specific areas and come up with suggestions for improvements. The groups then shared their suggestions with leadership, who acknowledged the suggestions and promised to see which might be viable.
“I believe the quality of life conference serves two functions,” Col. C.J. Lopez, Fort Johnson garrison commander, said. “The primary one is it gives us an avenue for all the citizens of Fort Johnson to directly communicate with the people that prioritize the resources and develop the strategic plan to evolve Fort Johnson into tomorrow.”
Lopez said he wants to give the voice of the citizens of Fort Johnson — Soldiers, Department of the Army civilians and Family members — an avenue to inject suggestions into the installation’s strategic plans.
“Simply put, I want to hear from them, and I want our guys to chew on what they say and see if it’s a better idea for Fort Johnson tomorrow,” Lopez said.
The garrison commander said the conference also serves as a reverse engineer of the primary function.
“Not a lot of people are aware of the volume of things that we do for the installation, so this serves to inform them and creates stakeholders when we give them the mic,” he said. “We received some good feedback and are reviewing what was said to determine how we can prioritize the ideas, programs and initiatives with the resourcing,” Lopez said.
Logan Morris, civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army, was in attendance and said these types of conferences are important to the Secretary of the Army.
“Most civilian aides are not co-located with an installation and very few get the granular feedback on Army policies that impact installations,” Morris said. “Since the secretary wants to know what we’re missing in the secret sauce that makes the Army a good place to live and work, these quality of life conferences provide direct feedback on Army programming, not only from a Soldier, family and DoD civilian level, but also with a partnership in the local community.”
Morris said, for him, the conference also provides a better understanding about why a certain policy is what it is — why it does or doesn’t work, and how to help the installation command team vector that up to big Army to impact the changes that need to happen to improve the quality of life for everyone that lives here.
Morris highlighted two important aspects of the conference for CASAs.
“First, the access to certain services or amenities on the installation may be a challenge,” he said. “We might be missing the mark in terms of what we think Soldiers and their families should have versus what they actually have.”
The second aspect was his realization that the Army’s messaging and communications systems are a little disjointed.
“There are assets and services available that people don’t know how to get to,” he said. “There are a disparate number of ways the Army attempts to do that. We probably want to look at fixing those communication modes to better reach their intended audiences so that people think and know the Army is here to take care of them.”
Fort Johnson hosts two Quality of Life Conferences each year — in the spring and fall. The event allows Soldiers, civilians, retirees and family members to participate and provide feedback or suggestions on the state of quality of life on Fort Johnson.
| Date Taken: | 05.12.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 05.20.2025 13:55 |
| Story ID: | 498483 |
| Location: | FORT JOHNSON, LOUISIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 15 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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