Tag: Corps Contributions

At Virginia Military Institute, there’s a top team providing high-quality services, support, and supplies to keep the Corps of Cadets running smoothly and looking sharp. In this series, Corps Contributions will take a look at VMI Auxiliary Services, and the people that power VMI behind the scenes.

Bins can be seen in the alcove off of Daniels Courtyard. They’re nearly empty in the summer, but come fall they’ll be filled with bags and bags of laundry. Cadets at Virginia Military Institute can drop off their dirty laundry and pick it up just a day or so later. This service is included in their annual fees, and is just another part of what makes VMI not an ordinary college.  

All items cadets wear have a tag on them with their assigned laundry number, which they keep until they graduate. Laundry is sorted by that number so everything is tracked and each cadet gets their items back.  

Gregory Bowman has been the laundry services manager for four years. He’s in charge of the laundry and the dry cleaning for VMI cadets. 

How does it work? First, it’s dropped off on the third floor of the facility, which is just off of Daniels Courtyard. The laundry facility is three levels — two of them can’t be seen from barracks, they’re underneath. It’s taken downstairs to the first floor, which is technically the basement level. That floor is where everything gets separated, weighed, and washed. 

They have a designated washer who operates all the machines, Bowman said. They have washers with capacities ranging from 100 to 600 pounds. On the first floor, it’s washed or dry cleaned, then it comes up to the second floor where each piece is dried and pressed — depending on what the item is.  

The second floor has stations where shirts and pants are pressed. Three people work one press machine for shirts. There’s a board for the sleeves, the shoulders, and then the front and back of the shirt. It’s a simple assembly line. One person presses the sleeves, then the shoulders, and then the front and back are pressed simultaneously.  

When it comes to the third floor each piece is separated by its number, hung or bagged ready for the cadets to pick it up. 

Each cadet is issued four pants, four shirts, three pairs of ducks, two pairs of wool pants, three black shirts, a blouse, and a duty jacket. Overall, it’s 16,000 pieces to wash, plus another 1,500 laundry bags.  

“It’s mostly important so the cadets don’t have to worry about their clothes … they can use their five minutes of spare time to study or whatever,” Bowman said. “It’s a very important part. Plus, I want everybody to look clean and presentable. They have the uniform and that’s a representation of VMI, so they should look good and they should look neat.” 

The laundry facility is impressive, to say the least. On average, laundry services do about 3,000 shirts a week.  

They have a combination of seven chemicals they use, but not all are used on every item. For example, lots of starch goes into the duck pants, which are the white dress pants that are used for special occasions like Ring Figure. When those are completed at the laundry they look like a piece of thick white paper; that’s how stiff they are. Bowman said the cadets have to peel them apart in order to put them on.  

Some tips Bowman has for cadets: don’t wait until the last minute to turn in your laundry. Don’t turn it in on Friday afternoons, as it won’t get done until the following week. He suggests turning it in on Mondays, so you’ll have clean clothes for the rest of the week. He wants cadets to not have to worry about doing their laundry. Drop if off and come pick it up later. If it’s not right, they’ll redo it.  

He offers a few kind words to the cadets who are more lax on their laundry habits, “You are paying for laundry, please utilize it,” he said. 

At Virginia Military Institute, there’s a top team providing high-quality services, support, and supplies to keep the Corps of Cadets running smoothly and looking sharp. In this series, Corps Contributions will take a look at VMI Auxiliary Services, and the people that power VMI behind the scenes. 

Tracy Hiner said he got into dining services at the age of 15. It was a chance at a summer job. He started as a dishwasher but had the opportunity to work with a chef and the rest was history. He enlisted in the Navy to work as a cook, then went on to receive his culinary degree and worked as an executive chef for 15 years.  

Hiner is the general manager for dining services at Virginia Military Institute through Parkhurst Dining. He does a little bit of everything — from managing the dining facilities (Crozet Hall, PX, and The Arsenal), on post to serving up food, and managing a team of 120 employees.  

He’s held this position for about a year, coming from Mary Baldwin University, where he held a similar position.  

“VMI is different,” he said. “I feel like I can make a difference here and I certainly love the team.”

His first day on the job, he walked in, asked what he could do and he was immediately put on the food line. What he wasn’t prepared for was the mass number of cadets that came rushing in for breakfast.  

“It was like 800 to 1,000 cadets at once and so it felt like a swarm of bees around you,” Hiner said. “So you’re constantly saying, ‘Excuse me,’ so that you can put new pounds of food on. But what amazed me was how courteous [the cadets] were.” 

Cadets march down for food twice during the day — once for breakfast and another for supper. This is when the dining hall is abuzz with activity. Breakfast roll call has a march-down at 7 a.m. and it’s served from 7 to 9 a.m. Dinner, or lunch, is from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Supper roll call has a march-down at 6:30 p.m. and is served from 5:30 to 8 p.m. 

Hiner said they have corporate standards to follow in food preparation and serving — what they call their “gold standard.” They cook from scratch, using fresh ground beef and more. They also hold classes and orientations for their staff to talk about standards and the approach they take in the dining hall.  

There’s a five-week cycle menu that’s written by the chef, which is seasonally based and also changed up with cadet input. It’s constantly changing, he said. Hiner’s goal with regularly-scheduled meetings is to interact with the cadets and ask what they like and what they don’t like, along with any changes dining services need to make. Some main staples include chicken parmesan, pasta dishes, and steak. This year, there will be an Asian fusion bar available.  

There are monthly dining service committee meetings, where cadets can come and give their input. Hiner said that sometimes the cadet count ranges from 30 to 100, giving their opinion on what should be served.  

“We just make sure that we listen,” he said. “There’s been a lot of subtle changes that we’ve made based on them. We interact with them, we make sure they’re happy. It’s kind of like at home when you put a meal together and you serve it to your family. You’re there to make sure that everybody’s happy and they have what they need.” 

In order to ensure the food is served fresh, Hiner says they batch cook. They have grab-and-go options for dinner, but for the larger meals (breakfast and supper), new batches are served and simultaneously swapped out as cadets roll through.  

Hiner credits his staff to being able to pull off an operation like this seamlessly. He also likes to give the spotlight to his staff, featuring them on a rotation through something he calls Parkhurst People. There’s also an associate of the year award.  

“We wouldn’t be able to do this without each other. So we depend on each other. We spend a lot of time together. So the team is everything,” he said.  

There was also a new program started this year to support VMI’s cadet-athletes, Hiner said. Dining services offered each coach an open practice meal — football was one of the first teams to come back and be offered the new program. Staff prepared a special menu and meal specifically for them including, pasta, rice, flank steak, grilled chicken, blackened salmon, roasted zucchini, red onions, tomatoes, and Caesar salad. Hiner said they received a lot of compliments on the food.  

“I enjoy the big picture. I’m a chef by trade so obviously, I love the creativity side. I like making people happy through food,” he said. But, there’s also the business side to the job. “You’re managing relationships not only with your customer but also with your client, so putting all these pieces together like a puzzle, and just making it run as efficiently as it can and being consistent in quality is what drives me.” 

At Virginia Military Institute, there’s a top team providing high-quality services, support, and supplies to keep the Corps of Cadets running smoothly and looking sharp. In this series, Corps Contributions will take a look at VMI Auxiliary Services, and the people that power VMI behind the scenes. 

It takes three years to train as a tailor in the tailor shop at Virginia Military Institute. Those who work in the shop only work on a certain garment for a certain portion of the year, starting with blouses in the fall, tailor shop manager Cindy Hartbarger said. Then they move on to overcoats, but it might be an entire year before you touch either one of those items again, she said.  

“The first year, you’re learning. [In] the second year, you will remember part of it. The third year, by the end, you should know the whole process,” she said.

In the summer, those in the tailor shop are stripping and putting chevrons on coatees and blouses. They open up the sleeve, put the strip in, then sew it back up. It’s all done by hand — in fact, the majority of the stitching and sewing is done by hand.  

Hartbarger is in charge of 10 tailors who work year-round at mending cadet and staff clothing. She said it’s been a challenge to fill spots in the shop, for a couple of reasons. It takes a long time to train individuals, but also sewing and tailoring is a skill that a lot of people don’t know, have, or want to learn.  

“That’s why I have so much trouble finding people to work in here because it’s not a normal place to work. Sewing as an art is dying because there are no people to do it,” she said. “So we’re blessed that we can come in here and do this every day. We’ve learned a skill. Most people don’t know we can fix stuff that not regular people can do because we’ve learned something.” 

When Hartbarger took over the shop more than a year ago, she implemented some changes and the process is more factory-like.  

“We take the sleeves apart and somebody will stripe it, then somebody else will do the seam up, and somebody else will finish it,” she said. It’s more of an assembly line where the garment is passed from one station to the next.  

Striping means they are adding different class stripes to the coatees. Rats have no stripes. 1st Class cadets have three stripes, 2nd Class have two stripes, 3rd Class stripes have one. In order to do this, they have to split the seam of the coatee along the sleeve, place the stripe in, sew it back up, then sew the lining up. They do this for every cadet prior to them coming back for the fall semester.  

Everything they do in the tailor shop is tedious work that takes time and concentration. To put a stripe on could take half an hour. A chevron would take an hour, but the higher the rank, the longer it could take — potentially up to two hours.  

The longest alteration? The tails on a coatee can take about three hours, Hartbarger said.  

“You actually take every piece of the bottom of that coatee apart,” she said. “It’s like a mind game because it’s like a puzzle. You have to figure out which piece goes to what when you take it apart. When you take it apart it’s hanging by threads and then you have to put it all back together.” 

The day after matriculation, alterations start. The fittings are done at the VMI Military Store and then sent down to the tailor shop. That’s the first batch of major alterations. Then at the end of September, the blouses for rats are due. After that, they’ll start fitting the rats for their wool pants and overcoats, which will be worked on until November. The coatees are due in February. By March, overcoats will be turned in for repairs and the shop will begin to prepare for commencement.  

They aim to do a total of 30 alterations a day, but it all depends on what is being worked on and how time-consuming the alterations are, and also on walk-ins. Cadets are aware of the tailor shop. If they split a seam, get a hole, or something like that, they head to the tailor shop to get their uniforms fixed .  

Her advice: start slow. It’s all a learning process. If you try to speed through it, you’ll mess it up. It’s a point of pride for Hartbarger and her staff to see the cadets wearing the uniforms they had their hands in. She likes them to look sharp. 

“It’s great to see what work we’ve done and how nice they look in their uniforms,” she said. “We critique it because we know what it’s supposed to look like. We might even stop and say ‘hey, you need to take your pants and get them refitted or your blouse is too tight … get it fixed!’ because we like to make it look nice. That’s our goal, to make it nice and professional.” 

Hartbarger has worked at VMI for nearly 25 years. She started in laundry services, then the military store, then the post office. She’s been at the tailor shop for about 17 years. Even though she does the administrative side of the tailor shop, she’s still mending clothes. One of the first things she did when she took over as manager was move her sewing machine to her new desk. Now, she mends, emails, answers calls, and manages the team.  

“I love my team. I have the best team on the hill,” she said. “We work together, we laugh, and when somebody hurts, we cry. We’re family. And that’s the part I absolutely love. We have been short people for several years and we’ve had to work extra, extra hard and we’ve jumped in and done what we’ve had to do.”

At Virginia Military Institute, there’s a top team providing high-quality services, support, and supplies to keep the Corps of Cadets running smoothly and looking sharp. In this series, Corps Contributions will take a look at VMI Auxiliary Services, and the people that power VMI behind the scenes.  

Music is playing in the background as plastic squeaks beneath a man who is sitting in a barber’s chair. A smocked woman places a cape around him and picks up her clippers. With a few glances, she examines his hair and begins to transform his look.  

It looks as though you’ve walked into any normal barbershop, with the red, white, and blue emblem on the window outside. Except, this barbershop is located in the basement of barracks at the Virginia Military Institute. 

Glenda Dudley is no stranger to a set of shears. She has been doing hair for almost 40 years. She picked up on the trade while her husband was a major in Army Aviation, and eventually was able to cut hair at each base he was stationed at. She’s been the manager of VMI’s barbershop for the past 12 years.  

The VMI Barbershop is busy, she said. Typically a barber completes 20 haircuts a day on cadets, but that number can spike. During busier times of the year, such as when cadets return from furlough, they may do 30-40 cuts a day. 

The barbershop is one of the first stops for matriculants on the day they arrive on post.  

“You’ve come to VMI, you’re going to get the VMI experience by getting a haircut,” she said. “And I think that’s very important for males and females.” 

They use an adaptation of the AR 670 haircut regulations from the United States Army. Although they follow these regulations, there is much room for interpretation among cadets.  

Some enter the barbershop and request a “high and tight” haircut similar to the Marines. For some male cadets, a haircut may only last for two weeks.  

Male rats are required to have a buzzed head throughout the Rat Line. To maintain this, they visit the barbershop every seven days until Breakout. Female cadets, including rats, have their hair cut to the shoulder blade. Dudley says they cut it so when the hair is in a ponytail, it’s not dropping any further than the shoulder. Female cadets after Breakout have more flexibility with how they can wear their hair — even short.  

“Their haircut is part of their uniform. So we’re just trying to give them a style cut and keep them within regulations,” she said. “We’re upholding the standard because the haircut is part of that uniform. It just keeps looking sharp … and the haircuts are part of that.” 

Female cadets are encouraged to come into the barbershop every two weeks, but not for hair cuts. Instead, Dudley said they offer shampoo and conditioning treatments, which both male and female cadets can utilize. Other services include scalp treatments and eyebrow waxing.  

She has a staff of 10, including one esthetician. She’d like to get more people on staff to add to the rotation with the six chairs in the shop.  

“This barbershop cannot function the way we do without that team I have. My team is probably the best in my opinion on this side of the Mississippi. They work together for the cadets and for each other,” she said.  

Besides her staff, she loves meeting the cadets.  

“I love the cadets. You get to meet so many different people from so many different walks of life. We’re learning from them, just getting to know them,” she said.  

She said she likes to provide a relaxed environment, especially during that first day for the incoming class. When the rats come in, they’re getting so much thrown at them so fast, she said it’s like getting information through a firehose. 

“I think we try to make them just settle down and encourage them that they can do this, that they’ve got this. And that’s what we do throughout the entire Rat Line,” she said. “So when I encourage all of them to keep coming back … you’re paying for it, keep coming back. Sometimes they don’t necessarily need the haircut — maybe just a shampoo and let us just wash a little of the week down the drain.” 

At Virginia Military Institute, there’s a top team providing high-quality services, support, and supplies to keep the Corps of Cadets running smoothly and looking sharp. In this series, Corps Contributions will take a look at VMI Auxiliary Services, and the people that power VMI behind the scenes. 

Katherine “Blaine” Noel has a two-count system. Everything in Virginia Military Institute’s Military Store is counted once. Then it’s counted again, for inventory purposes. If those numbers don’t match, you start all over. It’s important to have the proper count — the store has nearly $8 million worth of items in stock and Noel doesn’t want to waste money. She and her team need to be accountable.  

“Sometimes I’ll get a third counter,” she said. “But if it’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t match, then I’ll throw the counts out and I’ll make people start over. I want to be fiscally responsible for what comes and goes, so I take pride in being able to look at that and hope that I do a good job and a good service, as well as to the state of Virginia, to make sure you’re not overspending or underspending or all those things.”

Noel is the quartermaster at the VMI Military Store, a place which serves as the first stop for rats and cadets to get their uniforms and everything that goes with them at the start of the year. It’s also the place they can go if they need to exchange an item or replace lost items. Everything a cadet needs to be outfitted with comes from here, from the pants, the shirts, the shoes, and jackets to the buttons, cuffs, padding and more. 

On average, each cadet is issued $4,500 in uniform items. During Matriculation in mid-August, Noel and her team equip approximately 500 new cadets with 60,000 uniform items. Within the corps, there are nearly 200,000 uniform items that are altered, exchanged, or replaced throughout the school year.  

“They change body sizes, they build muscle and get bigger or they could lose weight, get trimmer or any variation thereof,” she said. “We accommodate that.” 

They have a wide range of sizes for most items. For instance, the boots available run from size 1 to size 20.  

“We’re prepared for those unusual circumstances,” she said. 

Summer is the store’s busy time, Noel said. It’s spent upping inventory, doing audits, organizing, and more.  

“It takes a lot of people and a lot of effort during the summer to make sure that we’re prepared for all the people who are coming and you never know who’s going to come through the door,” Noel said.  

During the school year, the store runs as a regular military shop — cadets come in and purchase new gloves or need to replace random items throughout the year.  

“Mostly we’re an exchange. So if your pants are too snug, if they’re too short, if something ripped … we replace those uniforms,” she said. “We swap one for one. The thing that we don’t exchange is close contact body items so, we’re not going to take gym shirts back.” 

Noel has been working at VMI for 18 years. When she first started, they took measurements by hand and filled out a sheet. Now everything is computerized and a system will help select what sizing a cadet fits into. Her career at VMI began with fitting females for their uniforms, which is something she still participates in, and then worked her way up to the quartermaster. She credits Col. Michael P. Friski Sr. as a great mentor.  

She’s able to look at her job as an integral part of VMI’s operations.  

“One, we are a military school, so uniforms are essential, right? They don’t go here unless they’re in uniform. So we are the first stop. We issue them everything that they need, with the exception of any ROTC items,” she said.  

She also enjoys hearing the stories of the incoming cadets, learning about where they’re from and why they chose VMI. 

“I love to hear those stories,” she said. “Every once in a while you’ll meet a couple of them that just grab your heartstrings a little bit.” 

What keeps her at VMI is her work environment. They all have each other’s back, she said. Even if they joke around, they know when to get serious and work hard.  

“We work cohesively, we’re a good team. It’s just a welcoming environment,” she said. “I’m confident in what I’m doing. I’m confident in my job and I think the people that are here are confident in what they’re doing as well. So it definitely makes for a good career.”