SRU receives Freedom Award for vet support
Slippery Rock University students send care packages and cards to assistant professor Gary Clark when he is deployed as a member of the Army Reserves and fellow instructors teach the classes he can't when he is called to duty.
But that's not why he nominated the university for a Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award, which the school won.
The Department of Defense annually presents the awards through its Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve program to employers who support their employees serving in the National Guard and Reserves.
“I've been at Slippery Rock for I guess 10 years now. I've been deployed twice. Both the faculty and staff have been great filling in for me, but this is more about other things I see at the university,” said Clark, an assistant professor in the physical and health education department.
Students in the campus chapter of Student Veterans of America raised money to provide and train a service dog for a student-veteran, the school's Storm Harbor Equestrian Center provides therapy programs for disabled veterans and the school hosts an annual Veterans Day service.
Clark said he was on a deployment last year when he was inspired to fill out and submit an award nomination for the university.
“Slippery Rock does a lot of stuff that nobody probably knows about. A veritable plethora of things. I submitted the nomination while deployed in Iraq last year. I wrote up what I thought,” he said.
Clark and SRU trustee Jeff Smith were in Washington, D.C., Thursday and Friday to accept the award on behalf of the university.
He said he and Smith attended a reception at the Army and Navy Club on Thursday and Smith accepted the award Friday at a ceremony at the Pentagon.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis was not able to attend so Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie served as the keynote speaker and handed the award to Smith.
The Defense Department received 2,300 nominations for Freedom Awards, but only 15 employers won, and only 220 awards have been presented since they were created in 1996.
“You can only receive it once. It's a one shot deal so it's quite an honor,” Clark said. “It was a very positive experience. It was a really nice event.”
Smith said the event was overwhelming.
“The one word that sums it up best is overwhelming. When you have the secretary of veterans affairs thanking you personally for everything that Slippery Rock has done, it was really special,” Smith said.
He said people approached him and thanked him for the programs Slippery Rock has for veterans, reservists and military personnel after making a speech at the reception.
“A number of people thanked me for everything that Slippery Rock does at the reception last night. I told people about what Slippery Rock does for veterans, military and reservists. People came up to me afterward thanking me. It was great,” Smith said.
He said a lot of retired military generals attended the event, which included a tour of the Pentagon and the National 9/11 Pentagon Monument, which memorializes the 184 people who died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
The monument includes the names and ages of the victims. The last name was a young girl.
“The very last one was this little girl. She was 2 years old. She was on the plane with her parents,” Smith said. “The whole experience, being down there with all the gratitude from all the people, it was an experience unlike anything I have ever had,” Smith said.
Clark said the award, a large bronze eagle, will be shipped to Slippery Rock for permanent display.
A display listing all of this year's award winners will stay in the Pentagon until next year's awards are presented.
