Something to Bragg about
North Carolina post wins Army Times top honor  | All photos by Randy Davey Sgt. Bruce Truman, his wife, Grace, and children Gabrielle, left, and Cameron, stand in front of their Army housing on Fort Bragg, N.C. “We love it here,” Grace says. | | | By C. Mark Brinkley
TIMES STAFF WRITER FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Standing in her bright, airy kitchen, slicing a just-ripe banana into chunks for the toddler at her knees, Grace Truman flashes a smile when you ask her about her house. "We love it here," said the 27-year-old wife of Army Sgt. Bruce Truman, handing over the sticky fruit to little Gabrielle, who takes off like a 15-month-old rocket to go find daddy. "It's a great place to live." She's not just talking about the cheery, red-shuttered duplex, which ranks among the best post housing here or anywhere else. Sure, she's happy with the earth-tone vinyl siding and the large, one-car garage that keeps the family's Yamaha WaveRunner out of the elements. She loves her three spacious bedrooms, 2½ baths, and his-and-hers walk-in closets. She loves that when she called with concerns about the children playing out back, where the yard ends in an abrupt drop to a large wooded area, the housing staff responded with a sturdy chain-link fence. "Within two months, it was up," Truman said.  | | The Tolson Youth Center offers a variety of recreational activities and educational programs to approximately 12,000 families on post. | She loves all the bells and whistles - the free landscaping that keeps her from worrying about lawn care when her husband is deployed, the free renter's insurance. But mostly, she just loves Fort Bragg. "I really like the fact that they've got the schools on post," said Truman, who came to North Carolina from Fort Drum, N.Y., almost two years ago. "Everything is here. You don't even have to go off post to the doctor's office. You don't have to go off for anything." Who would expect anything less from the post that Army Times readers rate as the best in the Army? "I don't ever compare Fort Bragg to anything else," said Col. Al Aycock, garrison commander and de facto mayor for the sprawling complex, headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps and home to the 82nd Airborne Division and Army Special Operations Command, among other units. "Every post is different. The thing we do at Fort Bragg is focus on what it is we can do to make Fort Bragg better." The base has humble beginnings, starting out as a field artillery camp in 1918. It turned into a true post in 1922 and now has the Army's largest population. Known as the "Home of the Airborne" because of the parachute units that train here for combat, Fort Bragg sits on more than 200 square miles and provides services to about 185,000 people, including about 46,000 soldiers. About 19,000 of those are currently assigned to combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the children, there's a lot to do. Tolson Youth Center, one of the most popular buildings on post, is the only facility of its kind in the Army, designed specifically to meet the needs of Fort Bragg's families. In the nearly five years it's been open, Tolson has grown into a cornerstone of the community, with nearly 12,000 individual or family memberships participating in a variety of programs. There's swimming and dancing, karate and computers, sports and art. The homework center is staffed by a certified teacher, and the youth dances on Friday nights average about 300 kids. "Fort Bragg is about people," Aycock said. "It always has been, and it always will be." You can see that spirit in the housing, some 4,700 homes that recently were turned over to a private contracting firm for management. The Trumans' house was among the last the Army plans to build here, following the Defense Department trend of handing its base housing responsibilities over to private firms.  | | Fort Bragg, N.C., is known for its many amenities. Spc. Edward Kisinger plays a game of pool at the Sports USA club during his lunch break recently. | Of the 4,700, about 2,000 are scheduled to get major renovations over the next decade. The other 2,700 are new, or will be ripped down and replaced. "There's a tremendous pride that the people have for Fort Bragg and for the area," said Tim O'Connor, program director for Picerne Military Housing at the post. "You can really sense that here. We have a tremendous working relationship with the people here at Bragg, and I'm not sure that's the case for all these projects." The pride doesn't apply just to family housing. Ribbons were cut in September on the new barracks complex for 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, a $100 million project completed in August. Inside are two-man suites, where each soldier gets a private bedroom and shares a small kitchenette and bathroom with a roommate. Similar barracks projects are underway for the members of the 2nd and 3rd brigades. "Down the street, everybody's jealous," said Sgt. Maj. Gary Kalinofski, the garrison sergeant major. "They'll have theirs very soon." The kudos for Fort Bragg keep on coming at every turn. Finalist in 2003 for the Army Communities of Excellence program. Winner in 2003 for the Army's "Best Antiterrorism Program" for an installation. Winner in 2003 for "Fire Department of the Year" for the Army's southeast region. Fort Bragg also nailed the 2002 Army Times' Best Post Award, the first of the now-annual honors. A new Family Readiness Center, built inside the old post hospital, keeps adding services as new areas are completed, centralizing most records and orientation assistance that new soldiers and their families need when they check in.  | | Ribbons were cut in September on the new barracks complex for 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, that includes two-man suites. Each soldier has a private bedroom and shares a small kitchenette and bathroom. Pvt. Aaron Kirby is one of the complex's first residents. | "We wanted a place to bring them where there would be one place they could come to, be welcomed at, and be processed," Kalinofski said. "Here's where it all starts for new people when they come to Fort Bragg." It's one-stop shopping for ID cards, base stickers and the like. A new day-care center is in the works so families can be free of their kids during the sometimes-lengthy processing, and a new computer center and video teleconferencing area will keep families in touch with their deployed soldiers. "A lot of people envy this place," said Spc. Jeffrey Turpin, 23, an administrative specialist from Denver, assigned to Fort Bragg for Airborne training. "You get to deploy a lot, and a lot of soldiers want to be here." Leaning against a table at the post's Sport USA complex - a massive restaurant/bar/arcade, where soldiers break for lunch or a quick game of pool - Turpin said he's happy to be at Fort Bragg. The 27,000-square-foot entertainment center - known for drawing nearly 1,000 people for drinks and dancing on Friday nights, and for showing every football game of the NFL season on one of its 12 big-screen or 19 36-inch televisions - is only one perk.  | | A statue of Iron Mike stands at the beginning of Randolph Street on Fort Bragg in honor of Airborne troops. | "It's a large post," Turpin said, watching as one of his buddies misses a shot in a nearby eight-ball game. "Most don't have places like this. I've enjoyed my time." At the nearby Womack Army Medical Center, one of the newest and most advanced hospitals in the Army, doctors and nurses are treating some of the 900,000 patients they'll see this year. They expect to deliver about 280 babies in February, and they fill about 5,000 prescriptions each day. "There's not many hospitals that will beat this place anywhere in the United States, civilian or military," said Col. David Maness, the hospital commanding officer. "This is the crème de la crème." For the Trumans, that idea encompasses the base as a whole. "This is, by far, the best post I've been on," said Sgt. Bruce Truman, 33, a helicopter hydraulics repairer from Oxford, Ohio, assigned to Delta Company, 3rd Battalion, 229th Aviation Regiment. For the father of two - little Gabrielle in his arms and 11-year-old Cameron headed outside to play with friends - the base provides exactly what he needs, at work and at home. For the father of two - little Gabrielle in his arms, 11-year-old Cameron headed outside to play with friends - the base provides exactly what he needs, at work and at home. "It's a larger post. There's more to offer soldiers and their families," Truman said. "There's lots to do here." | 
