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Photo by Adriana Salas
WSMR Balfour Beatty community manager, Deborah O’Brien, holds the Army Residential Communities Initiative, Unsung Hero Award, which was presented to her during a Professional Housing Management Association conference in San Diego, Calif. Feb. 2. |
Deborah O’Brien, Balfour Beatty Community Manager, was awarded the Army Residential Communities Initiative, Unsung Hero Award, for her attention to a family in a tragedy.
Following the untimely death of a Soldier from the Forward Support Company in August of last year, O’Brien was the first to visit and console the family, prior to the arrival of first responders. Shortly after the incident O’Brien was nominated for the PHMA Unsung Hero award by WSMR Garrison Commander, Col. Leo J. Pullar. O’Brien won and officially accepted the award during a PHMA conference held in San Diego, Calif. Feb. 2.
“She was proactive and just incredibly helpful,” said WSMR Garrison Commander, Col. Leo J. Pullar. “It probably wouldn’t have gone as smoothly without her.”
WSMR Garrison Command Sgt. Maj. Glenn Robinson was present at the award ceremony and presented O’Brien with a Garrison coin. Pullar said it was easy to write a nomination for O’Brien because of her relationship with the community and her upfront willingness to help.
“This just shows how strong the bonds are between her, the community, and the Command Group,” Pullar said. “We have great employees here at White Sands that do great things each and every day.”
O’Brien has been described as a staple to the WSMR community because of her community involvement and willingness to do whatever she can to assist her tenants.
“To me, I was just doing my job,” O’Brien said. “That’s just how you treat people.”
O’Brien, who has worked on the installation for eight years, said it was common sense to be proactive and console a family that was always so active in the community. Pullar said it was O’Brien’s instinctual actions that played an important role during the first few hours of the tragedy.
“Most folks are reactive, she was proactive,” Pullar said. “More importantly she made the family feel relaxed.”
Julia Armstrong, who was a Family Readiness Group member at the time, said she is grateful for O’Brien’s actions because not only did she respond in a timely manner but she responded in the manner a family member would have.
“She was able to respond so quickly and give them the comfort that other first responders may not have thought of,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong said it was O’Brien’s ability to look at the situation from a human perspective that helped ease the pain for the family members.
“I think it’s important to highlight those that go above and beyond in a highly difficult situation, not everyone was able to think about the care of the family, she did,” Armstrong said.
O’Brien and her family are scheduled to leave WSMR in June to follow her husband at his new position in Washington D.C. “It feels really good to get something like this before you leave,” O’Brien said.
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