Serving on the Home Front
by Susan M. Sipprelle
Master Sgt. Minnie Hiller-Cousins of Passaic, N.J. (pop. 67,681), has spent most of her career helping others, both as a high school dropout prevention counselor and as a family assistance coordinator for the Army National Guard.
“She’s a blessing,” says Jovannie Villabol, who visited Hiller-Cousins’ office at the Teaneck (N.J.) Armory last year while her husband was serving in Iraq. Villabol, 26, says Hiller-Cousins greeted her with a warm smile and a simple question. “How can I help you?”
Villabol recalls bursting into tears as she explained that she and her three children needed a place to live. Hiller-Cousins went to work, finding Villabol an apartment with a free month’s rent and arranging day care for her youngest child.
“My job is to change a no into a yes with a breath of sunshine,” says Hiller-Cousins, 51, who joined the Army National Guard in 1978.
When the 50th Main Support Battalion in Teaneck was deployed to Iraq in 2004, Hiller-Cousins left her high school counseling job to become the battalion’s full-time family assistance coordinator, working stateside as a liaison between the soldiers, their families and the community. As part of her duties, she coordinated the armory’s food pantry, provided counseling in its family readiness and teen programs, and organized events ranging from baby showers to trips for military families.
In late 2005, she received permission to go to Iraq to visit her fellow soldiers. Widowed five years ago, Hiller-Cousins left behind her own five grown children and six grandchildren to spend four months in the desert.
She recalls admiring soldiers asking, “Why’re you coming here, Ma? It’s dangerous here.”
For Hiller-Cousins, the answer was simple. She wanted to be there, in person, to reassure soldiers about their families at home and help them prepare for challenges they would face when returning to civilian life. Today, most of the battalion’s troops have returned home.
In February, Hiller-Cousins returned to her counseling career at Passaic High School, where she likes to tell students, “It’s not where you start, but where you finish.”
When she began working at Passaic High School as a counselor in 1999, the school’s dropout rate was 13 percent. In 2005, the rate had fallen to 7 percent.
“She’s constantly talking with students,” says Carlist A. Creech, the school’s principal. “She engages them and doesn’t let them go.”
One of the many students she helped was Pedro Valentin, now 26.
While in high school, Valentin was seriously injured in a car accident and spent 13 days in a coma. One night, when he was still unconscious, Hiller-Cousins arrived at the hospital straight from the armory, dressed in her military fatigues. She brought a National Guard chaplain to pray for Valentin’s recovery.
“She took me under her wing,” says Valentin, who went on to graduate from William Peterson University and remains close friends with Hiller-Cousins. “She’s a leader and she trained me to be a leader.”
Although Hiller-Cousins has returned to her civilian life and regular monthly National Guard duty, her military supervisors wanted her behind-the-scenes impact to extend beyond the 50th Main Support Battalion. She recently received a new assignment—to provide equal employment opportunity training and counseling for the New Jersey Army National Guard at Fort Dix.
“She’s the most caring person I ever met,” says Lt. Col. Jerry Guareno, director of military personnel in New Jersey. “There’s something the Army calls the 4 C’s—careful, complete, conscientious and continuous. She has it all.”
first appeared: 12/3/2006
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12/6/06 6:03 PM
I am livid! Twenty years ago I was required, by regulation, to force a mid-career NCO out of the Army because he was 17 pounds overweight. The Sergeant had been a productive soldier, and a proven combat leader. He was married, and had three children. I fought for more than nine months until all appeals were exhausted. I felt horrible because he was an excellent leader, and an exemplary family man. But I was given to understand that the Army could not begin making exceptions or the entire system would suffer. I look at MSG Minnie Hiller-Cousins and I am sickened. How can this be? She may be a nice person ... but a good representative of our nation's Army??? Her picture in an Army uniform is a travesty. LTC Jerry Guareno ought to be ashamed; our men and women in service of their country deserve to be represented by something or someone that at the least approaches conforming to the Army's regulations. If you are going to praise an organization's member, make sure that individual is not in violation of the organization's minimum standards.
J. Carter
12/29/06 11:38 AM
First, she's National Guard, not career Army. Second, the article highlights a job well done in support of the troops in Iraq by someone who apparently is also a good influence on young people in her civilian life.
Aim your anger at Army regs and don't bring down a good article by your indirectly calling the Master Sargeant a shameful representative of the Army. If anything the Master Sargeant supports your position about not forcing people out because they don't quite meet the regs. She is worthly of our respect.
L in California
1/19/07 6:16 PM
Master Sgt. Minnie Hiller-Cousins does a very good deed both National Guard wise and Civilian wise. When I was younger, my parents would tell me and my sister about how military life was and how they wanted a better chance for us and our futures, by not following their footsteps and think the military is the only good option for great paying jobs or a good life.
Since then, I have not been tempted to or will ever want to go to the military as a means of financial support like most indivuals think the military is good for. No offense, but the military is not very reliable as to preparing our younger generations as it did back when. I have encountered many young persons who come out of military service and most of them are very arrogant and rude towards the people who don't prefer military. Many civilians have come up to me and told me how some of these persons should be sent back to where they were discharged and taught manners of how to come back into civilian life with civilians who don't want to be pushed around by some youngsters who think they were so "hot stuff" in the military ranks but here they are normal average joes just like everyone else.
I think we should print articles that supports the military, but also supports the "no names" that don't care about military ways because civilian life has been good for them and they prefer to stay civilians. The military may protect us and our freedoms, but it's the civilian "no names" that makes sure there is a home to come home to.
While many of our troops fight overseas and else where, it's the workers, teachers, police persons, gas attendants, grocery store managers, fast food crew members, and so on and so far that keep the military what it really is.
Please don't forget to recognize the individuals that work for a living, not in the military, and in what most of us call "real life".
Thank You and God Bless,
Donna Leeman
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