America's North Shore Journal

Navy Petty Offi­cer 2^nd Class Lan­don Church, an elec­tri­cian from Naval Mobile Con­struc­tion Battalion-5, inspects a por­tion of the Camp Leath­er­neck Gar­ri­son Com­bat Oper­a­tions Cen­ter, June 2. Since March, the Byron, Mich., native has served as project lead elec­tri­cian in build­ing the oper­a­tions cen­ters here. Photo by Cpl. Aaron Rooks

For sev­eral nights he has walked down an empty, wooden hall­way par­tially lit by a mix­ture of moon­light and a spot­light off in the dis­tance, stop­ping spo­rad­i­cally to observe dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the struc­ture. After he moves on, he leaves the build­ing as calm as it was when he found it.

Being at a con­struc­tion site before any­one else arrives is a nightly rou­tine for Navy Petty Offi­cer 2^nd Class Lan­don Church, an elec­tri­cian from Naval Mobile Con­struc­tion Battalion-5.

Church, a native of Byron, Mich., is the project lead elec­tri­cian in build­ing the com­bat oper­a­tion cen­ters here. Since March, his knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence have been essen­tial in the progress made here by Marine Expe­di­tionary Brigade-Afghanistan and its sub­or­di­nate elements.

"This has been the oppor­tu­nity of a life­time," Church said. "I knew in the begin­ning that the MEB project was cru­cial to the begin­ning of oper­a­tions here and it has been an honor to head up and man­age the elec­tri­cal por­tions of the project."

Church, 24, has less than four years in the Navy and is in charge of plan­ning and esti­mat­ing the elec­tri­cal require­ments of the three buildings.

He and his team of four elec­tri­cians com­pleted the elec­tri­cal por­tions of the brigade's com­mand cen­ter less than two weeks ago and installed more than 10,000 feet of wiring through­out the build­ing that will run power to hun­dreds of com­put­ers, tele­phones and more.

"I spent many hours review­ing build­ing codes for elec­tri­cal com­po­nents and mak­ing sure I had an over­all knowl­edge of every aspect of the project, down to the very last detail," Church said. "With that knowl­edge, I had the best idea of how to go about task­ing, coor­di­nat­ing and man­ag­ing my troops."

Church was trained as an elec­tri­cian in Wichita Falls, Texas, from May to July 2006. It was then where he learned about elec­tri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and inte­rior wiring, motors and con­trols, and how to climb util­ity poles and trou­bleshoot elec­tri­cal problems.

From Texas he was then sent to his cur­rent duty sta­tion at Port Huen­eme, Calif., and deployed to Kuwait from Sep­tem­ber to Novem­ber 2006, and later to east­ern Afghanistan's Camp Salerno from Decem­ber 2006 to Feb­ru­ary 2007.

Nine months before com­ing here he was assigned to his battalion's con­voy secu­rity ele­ment. There he focused on weapons train­ing, impro­vised explo­sive device aware­ness and urban combat.

Shortly after arriv­ing here, he was handed the blue-prints for three of the largest projects he'd ever fath­omed, even though he hadn't worked as an elec­tri­cian for almost a year.

"I kind of stared at the blue-prints for a while, won­der­ing how I would ever plan this out," Church rem­i­nisced. "I chose to push through it one item at a time, and pretty soon the plan came together and even­tu­ally evolved into one of the biggest projects the Seabees have seen in quite some time."

Petty Offi­cer 1^st Class Gar­ri­son Hardisty, project super­vi­sor, said he had no doubt in Church's abil­ity to adjust to the chal­lenge, and proof of that is the recent com­ple­tion of the MEB-Afghanistan COC.

"That's what Seabees do, we make do with what lit­tle we have," Hardisty said.

Church attrib­utes his suc­cess to the hard work and com­mit­ment of the elec­tri­cians in his team. He said he's happy with the results he's pro­duced so far, but said that wouldn't be the case if not for his men.

"I've tasked them, and they haven't let me down yet," Church said. "They put in the extra effort to get the mis­sion done."

Sea­man Appren­tice Aaron Bluitt, 36, an elec­tri­cian from Santa Bar­bara, Calif., said he found inspi­ra­tion in fol­low­ing Church, a leader 12 years his junior. He said Church is always well orga­nized and puts forth a lot of extra time in plan­ning and exe­cut­ing every task he's given.

"I'm glad I'm able to be a part of his crew," Bluitt said. "His pos­i­tive lead­er­ship has helped us get the job done. He's very good at what he does and I'm happy that I've been able to learn as much as I have from him."

Bluitt said Church gave him the oppor­tu­nity to install the cir­cuit pan­els inside the MEB-Afghanistan COC, a task not nor­mally given to a junior elec­tri­cian. Because of this, Bluitt said, Church devel­oped a last­ing impres­sion as a leader in the eyes of his troops.

"The best thing to do as a leader is to give the troops a sense of accom­plish­ment," Church said. "Once they see that it all works and comes together, they develop a trust in you."

Church sees the suc­cess achieved by his team every evening before he leaves the job site. He said he's blessed to have the oppor­tu­nity to lead such a mean­ing­ful project and to lead sailors who help him succeed.

"At the end of the day I go home, get in my rack and think about what I did that day," Church said. "I've always felt satisfied."

DVIDS
Story by Cpl. Aaron Rooks