Dale County woman wins national honor

A Dale County woman called “a shining example” has earned national recognition by the Fort Rucker contractor that she works for.

Wanda Faye Herring Tye of Newton is the Global Connections to Employment 2020 Team Member of the Year.

A graduate of the Alabama School for the Deaf in Talladega, Tye is completely deaf. She has worked as

a mail clerk at the Directorate of Human Resources Official Mail and Distribution Center on Fort Rucker for more than a decade.

She is employed by GCE, a Pensacola, Fla., based company that employs people with disabilities and provides business services, custodial, facilities management, food services, health care environmental services, IT and employment and support services for customers in multiple states and the District of Columbia.

“Each year GCE presents one AbilityOne individual with the annual Team Member of the Year award,” said GCE Director of Government and Community Relations person Lori Kain. “This award recognizes and honors outstanding team members who fully demonstrate support towards the mission of GCE Key criteria for the award to include customer service, work performance, overcoming obstacles and willingness to go the extra mile.”

Tye was chosen from approximately1,200 employees with a disability who work at GCE sites across the nation, Kain added.

“In the beginning she was a very reserved person with very little self-confidence,” said Leamon Sullivan, who nominated Tye for the national honor.

Sullivan is the Official Mail/Records and Publications Project Manager on Fort Rucker and Tye’s supervisor. He has worked with Tye for a decade. “She is one of the most humble, genuine people I have ever met and I could not have been more honored to nominate Wanda for this award. It is truly well-deserved.”

Tye’s career on Fort Rucker began 10 years ago as a mail sorter and pitcher. “After a lot of positive persuasion by her peers she began to learn the operation of mail metering equipment,” Sullivan said. “She was very timid and afraid to make errors but slowly you could see confidence beginning to build.”

Sullivan explained that the mail delivery routes were, at one point, made with a driver and a courier. “After a position was cut we went to one person doing the entire route alone,” he said. “Wanda tackled the task and handled it perfectly.”

Tye began to emerge as a social butterfly, Sullivan said, adding that he began trying to convince her to work at the front service window. “With the promise that she could return to her former station if she was not comfortable,” he added.

“Wanda is a shining result of the mission of GCE, which is ‘Helping People Through Life’s Journey,’” Sullivan said in his nomination. “GCE has allowed a way for a once timid and very withdrawn person to become a thriving part of society, being able to financially contribute to her home and enjoy the fruits of her labor.

“Wanda didn’t simply qualify for employment,” Sullivan said. “She qualified to succeed and produce—to become self-sufficient, to find her place in the workforce and thrive at it.”

Sullivan is clearly amazed by Tye. “She joined an organization of people, not knowing or speaking the language, being spoken to using pad and pen or charade-like hand gestures,” he said. “I imagine it was like working in a foreign country and not understanding what peripheral conversations are being conducted, relying on her interpretation of reading lips and body language— she has become a vital component of that organization.

“Overcoming those obstacles alone are well worth an honorable mention,” Sullivan said. “But to add the adversity of facing her fears of interacting with literally hundreds of people per day always with a smile and willingness to serve with never a single complaint the entire time I’ve known her, more than qualifies her for the Team Member of the Year award.”

Tye and her husband Chuck have been married 23 years and are the parents of Christy Stanford of Newton and Kara Kirkland of Columbia and the grandparents of four.

When Tye was laid off from a factory job more than 10 years ago, a neighbor told her about GCE. The idea of working for a company that sought to employ people with disabilities was appealing to her, she said.

“When I first started working here, I was kind of scared, kind of nervous,” Tye said after learning she had won the award. “I didn’t know how to communicate with everyone. I just would sit in my little corner, doing my work quietly.

“Eventually my supervisor asked if I could move up front and I have learned a lot working with the customers,” she added. “Everyone is really friendly here and some of them have tried to learn sign language and to finger spell—they always try their best to communicate with me.”

Asked to describe Sullivan, she smiles. “He is a really great supervisor and sometimes he will pick on me a little bit but he is super nice and is a great person.

“He’s wonderful,” she adds about Sullivan. “He tries to work with us if we need help. He is really a great person.

“It was really hard for me to believe that it had actually happened,” Tye said about learning that she had won the Employee of the Year award. “They had flowers for me and balloons and I was really in shock,” she recalled. “And then my supervisor called my daughter and actually had her on FaceTime so she could see that I had won the award.”

“Wanda is an inspiration to all of us and a shining result of the mission of GCE which is ‘Helping People throughout Life’s Journey,’” said GCE President Ian Smith.

Sullivan agreed. “She’s grown in her role as mail clerk to now be the ‘face’ of the U.S. Army Post Mail and Distribution Center at Fort Rucker,” he said.