News 6 Mashup: Oct. 26, 2020

Here are the top stories for the week of Oct. 26, 2020, straight from AWN News 6 Correspondent, Jolene McNutt:

Tricare Young Adult Costs Increase

“Military families whose children are enrolled in Tricare Young Adult will see their monthly costs increase next year by up to 22 percent,” reported Military Times. Tricare Young Adult Prime, which will increase by 22 percent, from a current rate of $376 per month to approximately $459 per month.
Tricare Young Adult Select will increase 12 percent, from $228 per month to about $255 per month.
These increases will begin in January.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville Prioritizing Work Life Balance

Task & Purpose interviewed Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, giving a glimpse into his priorities. The first? Work life balance.

No. Really.

Task & Purpose shared an experience when Gen. McConville was a major. While attending a joint training exercise called Cobra Gold, he found out that a captain in another brigade missed the birth of his son when they could have gotten him home early to be there.

“I was furious,” he said. “I wasn’t even in that brigade . . . And I made a pledge right then: I will never let that happen on my watch, in any unit that I’m ever in.”

Gen. McConville is also working to address and change the Army culture around diversity and inclusion, suicide, and sexual assault and harassment.

He has started with changing the policy which used to mark a soldier AWOL if he or she did not report. Now, rather than assuming that a soldier who does not appear at formation has gone AWOL, he is working to investigate that soldier as missing until shown otherwise.

He is also working on a new campaign, “This Is My Squad”—a way to ensure that each person in the team is accountable to one another, so they feel empowered to step forward if they see something.

“If soldiers really care about each other, how could they stand by when one of their teammates is harassed? If soldiers really care about each other, they’d feel confident in reaching out when things got hard, instead of carrying the burden alone,” said Task & Purpose. Read more at Task & Purpose.

National Museum of U.S. Army Opening

The long wait is nearing its end… The National Museum of the United States Army has set an opening date. Mark your calendars for Nov. 11, 2020. The museum, which is located in a publicly accessible area of Fort Belvoir in Virginia, will be offering ticketing for the opening. The pandemic interrupted the original celebration which was scheduled for June 4. The museum expects 750,000 visitors annually and will be open seven days a week, year round, and closed only for Christmas.

Central to the 185,000-square-foot museum is a tank named Cobra King, a 38-ton Sherman tank first used in combat in France in 1944, and later broke through German lines at Bastogne. Eventually, the tank made its way back from Europe and into storage at Fort Benning, finally landing in its final resting space in 2017, where the museum was constructed around it. I have pared down this tank’s glorious history, but you can read the rest of the story at Military.com.

And maybe add visit the National Museum of the United States Army to your bucket list!

This Week in History

The Erie Canal opened on Oct. 26, 1825, allowing for water transportation between the Hudson River on the east and Lake Erie at the west, according to the Library of Congress. The canal took eight years to build and is 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and four feet deep. The Erie Canal paved the way for western settlements in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. One such family, Mr. and Mrs. Barre Stoen, traveled from Norway, 14 weeks across the Atlantic where they arrived in New York. Continuing on their journey, they then traveled through the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes where they ended up in Milwaukee. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “Mr. Stoen purchased a team of oxen and wagon as the family was to travel farther west . . . six weeks [later] they arrived at their destination” in Holmen, Wisconsin. An area still known for its nordic influence.