If Leavenworth Wasn't Your Mayberry...

Over the past three weeks, I’ve seen the article “Goodbye Mayberry: A Farewell to Fort Leavenworth” circulating through my social media circles. And for many reasons, it hasn’t sat well with me.

My family is one of about 900 preparing to leave preparing to depart Fort Leavenworth after completing Command and General Staff College (CGSC). From Day 1, we’ve had people – from friends to faculty to General Officers briefing the entire CGSC class – tell us it will be “the best year of our lives,” and that Fort Leavenworth was “amazing.” And from Day 1, we’ve found those to be untrue.

It hasn’t been a bad year, per say. Fort Leavenworth isn’t a bad duty station. But “the best year of our lives,” and “Mayberry” certainly feel like a stretch, and I think those taglines give a lot of incoming families unrealistic expectations.

Our family may be somewhat unique – we are dual-miliary, so as a female service member I certainly didn’t get to experience Fort Leavenworth in the same manner as other spouses may have.

First, CGSC has changed quite a bit since the “Mayberry” post was written in 2019. As of fall 2020, all graduates of CGSC are awarded a Master’s in Operational Studies (MOS). With the automatic degree comes a higher level of rigor – more essays, more deliverables, a higher bar for success (any grade below a B will disqualify you from the degree), and point blank, more work. The days are still nice and predictable, and much shorter than a typical “Army day.” Most days, class ended at 1230 and I stayed at the schoolhouse unit 1600 to complete my reading and assignments, and only had to tap into evenings and weekends occasionally. Many others, and especially international and sister service students and those who chose to pursue the thesis option, had no choice but to dedicate nights and weekends to work. Again, we had a different challenge since BOTH of us were in the course, and made deliberate choices about how we'd manage the load. But dual-military aside, very few people are truly home at lunch, work day complete, anymore.

To me, Fort Leavenworth is like many other Army bases. The one difference is simple: there are almost no Soldiers and NCOs on this base. Most of the on-base community is officer families – senior Captains up to full-bird Colonels. There is a small community of senior non-commissioned officers, and the remaining enlisted families are almost exclusively Military Police and medical personnel. Demographically, I’d imagine Fort Leavenworth stands out. Older, more mature families. More financial stability. Higher education levels. We got the same vibe at West Point, another post devoid of Soldiers and full of highly educated field-grade families. It’s simply not a fair comparison to places Fort Liberty, Fort Drum, or Fort Cavazos!

Moving to Fort Leavenworth is fast, frenetic, and rife with stress. Outgoing students graduate the second week of June; incoming students follow within days. In retrospect, the privatized housing office does a really good job of getting people into home quickly; however, they typically can’t offer homes until 7 days before a family’s arrival, and many don’t have an address until they show up at the housing office. It was incredibly stressful. On top of that, the local communities are small, and can only support so many military moves a day. We knew many friends who waited 30-60 days for household goods to be delivered. While it’s great that neighbors were willing to loan them air mattresses and sugar, spending two months “house camping” really isn’t that fun. For us, it was our first move with school-aged kids – and wow, what a game-changer. It was gut-wrenching watching them leave their friends, and painful to know they’d be doing the same thing just 10-11 months later.

Services were hard to come by here. When we arrived in early July, I called the clinic to schedule CYS physicals. I couldn’t get appointments until late September (we, like most other families, ended up paying out-of-pocked for school and CYS physicals off-post). Child care was hard to come by, especially with kids under age 3. Kansas City was actually much father away than advertised, too. Most of the headliner attractions are on the south side of Kansas City, so we often drove 50-60 minutes to get to the zoo or children’s museum.?

In July and August – the AIM Marketplace visits began. Army units courting fresh Majors began showing up before CGSC began, offering briefings, no-host socials, and interviews before we could unpack boxes. For perspective’s sake, the actual Marketplace didn’t open until October. It was a long, slow, and quite frankly exhausting build – one that drained a lot of energy from families who were still trying to get their footing.

Schools, yes, -- schools were amazing. Our kids attending the beautiful MacArthur Elementary on post, and loved it. The teachers were great, from what I could tell, and my kids learned a lot. I am certain USD207 (the Kansas public school district that operates schools on post) outperforms many DoDEA schools and other publics in the areas. After all, parents’ education level and socio-economic status are the best predictors of academic success, and Fort Leavenworth has a huge concentration of middle-class families with educated parents. (This is certainly not saying the schools aren’t well-run, and the teachers aren’t phenomenal – but it’s also short-sighted to overlook that USD207 is predisposed to higher academic performance compared to school with a different socio-economic mix).

The extremes of the seasons were hard for our family. We arrived in early July, and our street was about 1/3 filled. Our kids had great, close knit group of friends at West Point, and we didn’t find that here until school started in mid-August. It was hard to make friends initially because most days in July and August hit the high 90’s, and sometimes over 100 degrees with intense humidity. The bugs were relentless. Our yard, devoid of trees, was unusable. Plenty of others who had overgrown yards, full of poison ivy, ants, and ticks. Being outside all day (like we were able to be in New York) wasn't feasible until the temperatures dropped.

The fall was nice as we settled into new routines, but fleeting. It gave way to a brutal winder. The day of our X100 final in early November, I almost suffered a cold-weather injury during my 1.5 mile bicycle ride from dropping my kids off at school to CGSC. I wasn’t sure if I would make it through the exam – not because I was nervous, but because my body was literally in shock from the extreme cold.

It went downhill from there. Not much snow, but bitter cold and never-ending wind. My minivan actually didn’t start for almost a week in late December when the temps plummeted below -40. From my foxhole, Leavenworth got the extreme summers you’d expect in the southeast, coupled with the brutal winter weather you’d expect in the Dakotas. As a student, the winter months are when we do Advanced Operator’s Course (AOC). Those cold, dark days doing endless rounds of MDMP felt like groundhog day. We got through, sure. But I don’t look back at those winter months with fond memories.

Finally, by April, the weather turned. The sun came out again. Outside became comfortable. My kids had found their friends.

The two months final months here were jam-packed. We finally knew the area well enough to bop in-and-out of various attractions, parks, and events. We had a new network of friends we wanted to spend time with. We went to birthday parties galore!

But now, it’s time to go.

I’m walking into the challenges of last summer’s PCS all over again.

The stress of moving. The brutally hot weather. The heartbreak for my children, who did manage to find wonderful friends here, only to lose them after a few months.

What was this year? Fine. It was fine. It wasn’t bad. We had some great moments – I had a great staff group, our neighbors were wonderful, we found an awesome church, reinvigorated our date night routine, and got good family time. I’m really not a negative person, and I really think my family made the best of it.

But Mayberry? Nope.

I’m sure it was a truly magical year for some families. Just not mine. If you feel the same way, I hope you know that you’re not alone.