Photo By 1st Lt. Christi Richter | Jennifer Dudley, wife of Lt. Col Matt Dudley, serves her country through her role as a...... read more read more
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All is fair in love and war, and for Matt and Jennifer Dudley, they could never have imagined how intertwined the two would be. Matt and Jennifer have been married for the last 16 years, and their love story is far from the ordinary. Matt Dudley is a Lt. Col at the 179th Airlift Wing, and since the couple has been together, he has gone on 11 different deployments. To help support his career, the mission, and the National Guard family, Jennifer serves as a Key Spouse volunteer.
“I love our unit,” said Jennifer. “I love our country. I fell in love with a boy 22 years ago, and he loves his country and this base. We’ve been blessed to be here our entire military career. The 179th is in our bones, I guess.”
Jennifer Dudley is the Lead Key Spouse for the Operations Group at the 179 AW. Her involvement with the Key Spouse program has helped her feel supported and prepared for anything while her husband was deployed.
“This was number 11 for our family,” said Dudley. “I feel like the connections that I had made within the unit and the involvement was such a family feel. I felt well-supported.”
She has found fellowship among Key Spouse members as well as other other military spouses in general.
“I was very excited knowing that there were other people out there that were going through the same thing, it was huge for my family,” said Dudley. “It felt like there was a support network that I could lean on and people that understood what it was like to have a spouse that was picked up and taken away.”
Jennifer decided to get involved with the Key Spouse group in 2003, when the couple was newly married.
“There was a spouse group that was pretty good,” said Jennifer. “When Matt started changing positions, I wanted to be involved. We had kind of lost that personal touch and family feel around the squadron because there had been so many transitions. Right around that time, the Key Spouse Program came to our base.”
The program now focuses on being there for and checking up on the families of members that are deployed. This, in turn, helps to support our members and allow them to focus on the task at hand.
“When we are engaging with and reaching out to families of members that are deployed, it helps the member feel like somebody's got their families back,” said Dudley. “They are able to focus on the mission a little better if they know that people are back home caring for the people they love.”
The Key Spouse program builds fellowship and supports the National Guard family. Thanks to volunteers like Jennifer, military families are connected with resources and a community to help them get through challenges such as deployments.
In general, outside of the program, Jennifer’s best piece of advice for getting through the tough times is simple:
“Laugh. Just be able to laugh. The only way to get through that trial that you have as a military member and family is to laugh and smile about it. You will realize that tomorrow is still going to come and you can get through it.”
Volunteers like Jennifer work hard each and every day to help protect our members and to keep their families happy and safe, in times of love and in times of war.
| Date Taken: | 04.13.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 05.10.2019 11:08 |
| Story ID: | 318329 |
| Location: | OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 122 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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