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Department honored for assistance

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By Dustin Lemmon | Sunday, June 25, 2006 11:48 PM CDT | () comments

Be it as simple as mowing a lawn or changing a spouse’s tire, anything an employer can do to help out the family of an employee who is serving with the U.S. armed forces is

appreciated.

And in an effort to recognize such efforts, the Iowa Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, or ESGR, presented an award last week to the

Davenport Police Department to acknowledge its assistance to officer Jacob Pries, who served in Afghanistan from February 2004 to June 2005. The police department was one of 12 Iowa institutions honored for supporting its employees in the service.

Al Enright, executive director of ESGR in Iowa, presented the award to the Davenport

department along with Barry Spear, the vice president of Iowa Health Systems and

chairman of ESGR in Iowa.

The ESGR in Iowa received 300 nominations for the annual award and chose 12, including the Davenport Police Department. The decision was based on efforts to go an extra step to help its employees serving in the military.

“For a police department, it’s probably the first in this area,” Enright said of Davenport’s award.

Pries said he nominated the department because of the efforts by the police officers union and Police Chief Mike Bladel to help both him and his family while he was in the Middle East.

His family’s medical coverage was maintained while he was gone, which proved valuable, Pries said, when his wife underwent serious kidney surgery. “The insurance paid for a lot of it,” he added.

Pries, a three-year police veteran, said the union also provided his family with a check while he was gone around Christmastime and made sure his seniority within the department was maintained. “It shows that our department is taking care of us and doing what we need to,” he said. Spear said the initiative to recognize employers and their efforts is important because it reminds others to do the same. “We’ve got to be supportive,” he said. The award “is not just a little blip on the radar, this is a big deal.”

Davenport police Capt. David Struckman, who accepted the award on behalf of the department, said it is a challenge for employers to deal with a worker’s absence, but he noted that it often is more difficult for the employees. “We realize the sacrifice they have to make,” he said. For Pries “to come back and honor us with this makes it even more of an honor.”

Spear said the ESGR sends out people to interview human resource representatives and others from each workplace that is nominated. “It’s a series of conversations to determine how the office has gone above and beyond,” he added.

Enright said Gallaway of Iowa in DeWitt was one of the 12 others who received the award. None of the local winners were nominated for the national Freedom Award. Every employer finds a different way to help, he said.

“It may come down to mowing people’s lawns and taking care of a wife’s car,” he said. “It can be a real hardship on the families if they’re deployed for a year-and-a-half, which is what we’re seeing, and it doesn’t look to be slowing down.”

Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com.