Photo By Roger RyDell Daniels | Linda Schumm speaks with Nicole Johnson, 17, May 23, at the Mindoro Loop Youth...... read more read more
FORT STEWART, Ga. - When asked about her long career, Linda Schumm leaned back in her chair and reflected on her nearly 33 years of civil service.
When Schumm, a training and program specialist at the Mindoro Loop Youth Activity Center, retires this week, she will have completed a career that started in 1980 at Fort Bliss, Texas, and will end here at Fort Stewart.
In between then and now, the San Antonio native has held many civil servant positions, mostly in the youth and recreation department in several locations.
Besides working in state side locations of Fort Bliss and Fort Stewart, she has also worked in South Korea and Germany. While abroad, she found time to visit many locations including Japan, Paris, London and many cities in Europe.
“Everywhere I’ve been, it was very nice,” she said. “I’ve been states side plus I’ve been overseas. I traveled quite a bit when I was overseas. When I was in Korea, I used to love to go to the different cultural programs they had. We would take the youth groups to the different places so they could see them.”
“It’s an experience,” she said. “When you go overseas, you need to take advantage of a lot of things. Being a civil servant and traveling, you get to see all different walks of life; you get to see different cultures. You experience things that the average person would not in their lifetime.”
As much as Schumm enjoyed working overseas, she is just as fond of her first assignment at McGregor Range inside of Fort Bliss.
“I was there when the King of Jordan came,” she said. "I was there when they landed one of the space ships at White Sands. I had a huge recreation center there; we did a lot of things back then.
She left Fort Bliss for a couple of overseas assignments before landing at Fort Stewart in 1992 with the Child Youth and School Services as a youth development specialist. Now, although she claims San Antonio as her hometown, and having also spent parts of her youth living in Albuquerque, N.M., she says she has become a “Georgia Peach.”
“I came here to Fort Stewart to help them build their program and get it off the ground, so I have been here ever since,” said Schumm, who has a degree in Recreation Education from the University of New Mexico.
She wants to make the Fort Stewart area her home after retirement.
“The beach is not too far, Atlanta is not far. I like the area, I like eating good country food and the food is good in this area,” she said. “They have spoiled me down here. I enjoyed having my tour here at Fort Stewart.”
Among her likes are cultural things such as art and seafood festivals.
“I’m going to travel, see some things. It’s time to smell the roses as they say, and see some things and explore. Georgia has some interested things to see.”
Although she is approaching 33 years of service, she said she was offered an early retirement opportunity that she accepted.
“I’m only 61, I’m not 65 yet, so I could have stayed a couple more years and did a few more things with them, but I decided to go ahead [and retire], and there’s other opportunities off post that I might want to venture into,” said the mother of two grown sons.
Her sons live in Germany and are serving in the German military: One in the German air force and the other in the German army.
Long before her sons joined the military life, her father served as a television reporter in the Air Force. He was killed in the Vietnam War in April 1970 when she was 18 years old.
“Most of my Family is military oriented,” she said. “This Memorial Day is very special to us because his name is on the wall [the Vietnam Memorial in Washington].”
Asked if she would consider returning in the future to volunteer, she said she would indeed consider it.
“I may come back and chaperone some of the teen dances or something.”
| Date Taken: | 05.30.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 05.31.2013 10:41 |
| Story ID: | 107828 |
| Location: | FORT STEWART, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 50 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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