Serving U.S., Heather Fuchs, U.S. Army Reserve

If you frequent the Sully Locker & Market, no doubt you’ll recognize Heather Fuchs (pronounced fox), one of the staff members who will help you with your meat and grocery purchases! Fuchs lives just north of Sully with her husband Josh and five children, where they’ve been since 2008. But also standing behind the counter is a veteran, as Fuchs served for eight years in the Army Reserve.

When speaking about her military time, Fuchs is quick to draw the distinction between the purpose of her time served in the Army Reserve, as compared to that of the people she knows who have served in the military during times of war. According to the Veterans Administration va.gov website:

The purpose of the Reserve is to provide and maintain trained units and qualified persons to be available for active duty in the armed forces when needed. This may be in times of war, in a national emergency, or as the need occurs based on threats to national security. Their presence can be called upon to serve either stateside or overseas. The primary job of the Reserve is to fill the gaps in stateside service positions when the active duty forces ship overseas.

Because the quantity of Army personnel needed will likely increase during a time of war or a national emergency, it is prudent to have a number of well-trained Reservists available to fill that gap on a moment’s notice. Army Reservists are able to maintain a civilian career while serving one weekend a month (commonly called “drill weekend”) and an annual two-week time period for active duty training. In contrast, members of the Active Army forfeit their civilian careers for at least two years during their enlistment. Fuchs was able to attend college and pursue a civilian career during her enlistment in the Army Reserve—a good fit for her at her stage of life at the time.

  Growing up in Hedrick, Fuchs knew at an early age that she wanted to go to college and see the world. After researching her options, she enlisted in the Army Reserve in the summer of 1995 for an eight-year commitment and was actually a member of the Reserve while she completed her final year of high school before graduating from Eddyville-Blakesburg in 1996. Fuchs’ maiden name was Smith, and both of her parents had to grant their written permission for their daughter to enlist in the military because she was 17 at the time. During that year, even though she had not yet attended basic training, she still took part in monthly drill weekends at Fort Des Moines on Des Moines’ south side, where she received some prior training on her MOS (military occupational specialty code) of executive administrative assistant with the 19th TAACOM (Theater Area Army Command) Reserve component of its Active Duty counterpart stationed in South Korea.

Just before July 4, Fuchs was sent to Fort Jackson, SC, for basic training, where she prepared for military service alongside people enlisted in the Active Army and Army National Guard. During that time, Fuchs learned a lot about different cultures from her fellow soldiers, having grown up herself in small-town Iowa. When people found out where she was from, they would typically ask about the potatoes grown in her state, which was followed up with her reference to Idaho. People also wondered about Hedrick, and Fuchs would tell people that the biggest city nearby was Ottumwa—and people would look wide-eyed at her and say “Radar!”, referring of course to Radar O’Reilly, the character from the TV show “M*A*S*H” whose hometown was Ottumwa.

When she finished basic, Fuchs stayed at Fort Jackson and moved to the other side of the base where she received her administrative assistant training. She said her military profession (MOS) was chosen for her, based on her strengths identified by her scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, an aptitude test developed by the Department of Defense and taken by every enlisted person. A person’s score identifies potential jobs from within a list of MOS’s appropriate for a specific range of scores. Fuchs already knew she was going to be an administrative assistant before she went to basic because she had already been serving in the 19th TAACOM at Fort Des Moines for several months. After completing all of her training, Fuchs returned to Iowa and resumed her drill weekends until an Army-wide restructuring took place in 1997 among all administrative assistant positions, and Fuchs was required to return to Fort Jackson for additional training as an executive administrative assistant, to qualify her to continue serving at Fort Des Moines for the two-star general to whom she reported.

During this extended training at Fort Jackson in 1997, Fuchs was approached by Army recruiters from Washington, D.C., who offered her the opportunity to join the Active Army and work at the Pentagon. Fuchs turned this down and sometimes regrets this, but at the time she was going to college at Indian Hills in Ottumwa and did not want to disrupt the course of her studies. This decision would make a difference a few years later, however, in 2001. Within a few years after the completion of her training, Fuchs moved to Centerville and then to Oklahoma, where her mother lived and needed her daughter to be. Fuchs continued to commute and attend some of her monthly drill weekends at Fort Des Moines but was also able to fulfill some of her service obligations at a military site in Oklahoma. On the date of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon was one of the targets of the terrorist attacks that took place that day, and Fuchs could very well have been working in that building that day if she had accepted the offer of the recruiter back in 1997. While working at her civilian job that morning, Fuchs told her supervisor she had to get in touch ASAP with her branch officer at Fort Des Moines about the ongoing attacks. Fuchs was then told by her officer that she should not give any information to anyone about her status in the military, as her unit’s future assignment had not yet been decided. When she went home later that day, her mother told her she’d received several “weird” calls about her daughter, verifying her daughter’s name, her status, etc. When Fuchs went to her first drill weekend at Fort Des Moines after 9/11, as soon as she walked in the door, she heard a resounding “SMITH!!!” (her maiden name) from her coworkers. That day she learned rumors had trickled down to members of her unit that she was on one of the planes that had crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, due to the similarity of her own name to one of the unfortunate victims. Fuchs then understood the reason why her mother received the “weird” calls.

Fuchs was able to serve for her two-week annual active duty obligation in South Korea on four occasions during her enlistment in the Army Reserve, training for potential support of the active component of the 19th TAACOM stationed in Taegu. The Reserve personnel strengthened their skills on how to handle the tasks of tracking supplies and troop movements for their active counterparts, should they be called up to active duty themselves in a time of war. Serving there gave Fuchs a broader appreciation of her life in the U.S., seeing firsthand how different life can be in a country other than her own. She recalled a wonderful aroma that she smelled when visiting a market in a neighboring city, but then found out it was roasted silkworms, not too appetizing for her. Fuchs shared a story of a time she and some friends went off base and bought a bag of apples from a market and had some left over, which they gave to a little girl who was walking nearby. Almost as quickly as they gave the apples away, they were swarmed by a mob of kids who would have been grateful to have received an apple, too. These and other experiences made a lasting impression on Fuchs, which she’d carry forward into her post-military life.

After serving for eight years and receiving an honorable discharge from the Army Reserve with a rank of Specialist E4, Fuchs received an AA degree in health information technology at Indian Hills, qualifying her with the knowledge and credentials of an RHIT (Registered Health Information Technician) on how to perform medical coding and transcription, prepare statistical reporting, release information, and anything else a hospital would do with medical records. She worked at Skiff hospital in Newton for her final clinical assignments during school and interviewed for and was then hired as a medical coder. She left Skiff after seven years to stay home with her two youngest children.

Fuchs left the military service armed with valuable lessons she carried with her as she resumed her civilian life.

“People in America don’t realize how good they have it until you leave it and see another country. I love my country, I love living here, but people take it for granted,” Fuchs reflected. In South Korea, all males are required to serve in the military for two years after graduation from high school. Fuchs served with some people who did not have a good, strong background growing up, but she feels the military gave them what they needed to be successful in life. Being in the military also taught Fuchs patience.

“I have no problem with standing in line!” she said with a smile. She keeps in contact with several of the people she befriended during her military service, among whom she was affectionately known as the “Social Butterfly.”

“I’m happy I served, and I’d definitely do it again in a heartbeat!” And thank you, Specialist Smith Fuchs, for your service!

 

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