(The following article by Hal McCune was posted on the East Oregonian website on October 4.)
HERMISTON, Ore. — The manager of the Union Pacific diesel shop at the Hinkle rail yard was quick to share the praise when he was honored Monday by the Department of Defense for his support of the National Guard and Reserve.
“I’m proud to receive it,” said Dean Hickenbottom, “but it’s the company, the employees and the management” who ensure that UP employees who are called to service are supported while they’re gone and have a job when they get back. “We’re just enforcing and supporting the policies.”
One of the first people he shared credit with was Andy Ribbing, an administration and operations manager.
“I support the troops, just like he does,” Ribbing said of Hickenbottom. But he added while that’s company policy, “it’s more than that. It comes from our hearts.”
It’s particularly personal for Ribbing.
His son, Robert, recently returned from assignment in Iraq, where he drove fuel tankers in the Baghdad area. “He was in the thick of it,” said Ribbing, who has a bevy of photos pinned behind his desk sent from his son while on duty.
It’s more than just a company policy to Hickenbottom as well. He was drafted while working for Union Pacific during the tail end of the Vietnam War. The infantryman never made it farther than assignment in Hawaii, but he recalled how nice it was to “come back to a job, with my same seniority and vacation time” before he left two years before.
Union Pacific has a long history of welcoming and supporting members of the service and veterans, Hickenbottom said, pointing out that much of the railroad’s construction boom was completed by former Civil War soldiers.
“Union Pacific has a very clear policy of supporting our troops in every way possible,” echoed Phil Houk, regional risk management specialist for Union Pacific.
He told how, at one point, the company considered changing the American flag emblem painted on its engines, but UP’s leaders decided the patriotic touch should be kept.
Joe Burns, chairman of Hermiston’s Employee/Employer Guard Committee, presented the Department of Defense certificate. He was accompanied by Hermiston Mayor Bob Severson.
The certificate praised Hickenbottom and UP for “contributing to the national security and protecting liberty and freedom” through support of the National Guard and Reserve.
Burns said Hermiston businesses have been “really good” about supporting Guard members called to active duty in Iraq and following the hurricanes. “They know the law.”
Union Pacific in northeast Oregon includes many Guard members, Houk noted. The diesel shop at Hinkle has three employees on active duty, or at least not back at work yet: Kyle Christianson, Clint Walters and Brent Clampitt.