JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. –
On Jun. 16, 2021, U.S. Air Force Col. Wes Adams assumed command of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and the 87th Air Base Wing. Adams is joined by his wife, Misty, son, daughter, and a yellow labrador retriever.
Adams was commissioned in 1999 as a Distinguished Graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. Having spent four years at Joint Base MDL from 2005 to 2009 as a maintenance officer, Adams brings an established resume here that includes commanding a group and two squadrons, various positions at the field, depot, and headquarters levels, as well as a Service Chiefs Fellowship at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Adams shared his past experiences, vision, and feelings on rejoining the Joint Base community.
PA: What is your story?
Adams: “I was born in a small coal mining town in southern Illinois. My dad was a coal miner before he became a funeral director… and later became a casket salesman... eventually working for a brokerage that buys funeral homes. My mom was a social worker. A lot of people in the family have a service background. I am the first generation since World War II to have joined the military.”
PA: What made you want to join the military?
Adams: “I had no desire at all to join the military, but I did go to military college at The Citadel. Because I was such a chronic procrastinator, it was the only place I applied. There was a moment where I said, this might be good for me… it changed my life. I had no idea that I was in so much need of discipline and regimen in my life, and how much that military lifestyle catered to my DNA. In those formative years, you're trying to figure out what you want to do, or what you want to be - it left a large impression on me and helped me understand the value of hard work, teamwork, challenging yourself, and admitting that sometimes it's okay when something sucks, because usually you are better on the back end of it.”
PA: How do you approach change?
Adams: “Begrudgingly. If there's going to be a change, I try to have a conversation with whoever else is involved. We walk through things, even if it's just a change in my diet at the house, I would talk it over with my wife. But you kind of grow into it, talk your way through it, start to embrace it. Change is never easy, but I recognize the need for it.”
PA: What are your priorities and goals?
Adams: “Part of establishing the priorities is understanding the environment. I'm still deep into that right now and still doing my assessment to understand what the priorities need to be. To that end, it’s more of a value statement. Outreach, influence, and resiliency. This is a window of opportunity right now where we're gaining an advantage over COVID. For the last year and some change, we have lost deliberate face to face leadership, mentorship, outreach, and supervisory development, because we were physically and socially distanced. If the COVID posture allows, I want deliberate outreach, meaningful influence, and resiliency - the chance to get back into that no-kidding, leading face-to-face helping people through difficult situations and doing things shoulder-to-shoulder that, before, we had to do six feet apart. We lost a lot of maturing in the last year and we've got to get better at that.”
PA: What experiences do you bring from your career to-date that will be most valuable in this role as commander?
Adams: “There's a great Mark Twain quote that loosely is: “good decisions come from experience and experience comes from bad decisions.” I've made a lot of bad decisions, ergo I've got some pretty decent experience. I was a maintenance officer and had the opportunity to take on a lot from a young age. Having been assigned to other units here on the base, I feel like I've got an alumni aspect that can help. I bring a certain level of experience, just from my perspective and what helped shape me.”
PA: What would you like to communicate to the installation and 87th Air Base Wing community upon taking on the role of installation commander?
Adams: “Reconnecting. A lot of the civic leaders wanted to stay engaged with the base during the past year or so and couldn't. We wanted to stay engaged with the civic leaders and couldn't, units wanted to form new morale events and couldn't. We're trying to get to a place now where we can and we want to reconnect. That's the big message: to our mission partners, all 88 of them, and to the civic leaders, we want to reconnect.”
PA: Describe yourself in five words or less.
Adams: “Someone you can depend upon.”
PA: Last question - what is your North Star?
Adams: “If there's nothing else about me, integrity matters. You would cut me to the core if you challenged my integrity. If there was something in how I acted, in a way that made you think that I was being deceitful or intentionally misrepresenting, that would hurt - not because you use those words against me, but because I even got close enough to an act or a phrase, or some behavior where you had reason to doubt.”
As the Joint Base and 87th Air Base Wing commander, Adams provides installation support to more than 88 mission partners of the Department of Defense’s only tri-service joint base.