Watch the video here: https://www.sourceamerica.org/get-involved/achievement-awards/2023-winners

Below is the nomination submitted by Beacon Group Senior Project Manager, Tom Ashton.

Terry McDade is the consummate example of a veteran who is service-minded. This still remains evident 50 years after he returned from war. As a Marine, he learned teamwork, selfless service, and care of others. According to him, “Anything you do can affect everybody you work with.” Terry is an individual with a service-related disability and employee of Tucson-based Beacon Group, on Hill Air Force Base (AFB), in northern Utah.

Service to Country and Community

Terry flew as a helicopter combat air crew member for 19 months in the Vietnam War. He spent more than seven years in the service including six in the US Marine Corps and another one in the Utah Army National Guard in a combat assault group. It was during this service Terry developed PTSD that he continues to struggle with to this day; however, he uses service as his superpower to help himself as well as others.

When Terry returned from Vietnam, he came to work for the Federal government. In 1971, he continued to serve the mission of the US military by working on the production floor repairing aircraft on Hill AFB, and did so for eight years. He then went to work as a hospital phone operator. It was a stressful job, but he cherished helping families understand care and connect with their loved ones. Terry then began serving his community as a sheriff’s deputy. He says, “It was work with a lot of fun times and a lot of sad times,” but it’s a job that taught him about people and how to help them.

Service Through Excellence

When Terry was hired by Beacon Group in October 2019, he came full circle and returned to the building where he worked in 1971, right out of the war. He was hired on as a Maintenance Trades Helper and spent much of his time cleaning and maintaining the aircraft maintenance hangar. However, shortly after beginning this task, Beacon Group lost a long-time employee in a skilled field and needed someone with attention to detail and maturity to fill the position. Terry was the obvious choice and was promoted to Engineer Tech II.

After only about 12 hours of training, Terry took on the full-time task of finding, replacing, repairing, and logging radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on military equipment. On a base the size of Hill, that equates of tens of thousands of tags spread across hundreds of acres and no less than 65 hangers and buildings. Tom Ashton, Beacon’s Senior Program Manager for the location stated, “We needed someone with responsibility to work independently and autonomously. Terry has fit this bill from Day 1 and is trusted to work unsupervised and ensure government assets are located and accounted for.”

Given his service mindset, Terry sees position requirements as a starting point. “He goes above and beyond the normal job duties expected,” states Shelly Oram, Program Manager for the RFID tagging and Terry’s government supervisor. “Terry is basically the top person that reports issues immediately that has helped fix issues for all four bases [that use this system], and not just Hill AFB.” This means that Terry’s area of influence has expanded past northern Utah, and onto bases in Tucson, AZ; Oklahoma City, OK; and Warner Robins, GA. Because of his initiative, expanding role and influence, Tom Ashton recommended his position be raised to Engineer Tech III when the contract was renewed in June 2022. The government agreed and Terry was quickly promoted again.

Service to Fellow Veterans

Terry continues to serve the veteran’s community and has been featured on KUED, the local PBS station’s recorded program Utah Vietnam War Stories. He also helped during fundraising drives and spoke about veteran’s issues, including PTSD, and how to get help. One of his proudest moments was meeting a fellow veteran in Home Depot who recognized him and said that because of Terry, he reached out to get help for his PTSD. Terry continues to serve his community, fellow veterans, the Federal government, and Beacon Group employees. We are all fortunate to have him continue to “affect everybody you work with” for the better.