Veterans Land in Saratoga

United States Air Force veterans Alex and Karen Smith can be found in full force at downtown’s Shively Hardware in Saratoga moving here in November 2023.

Karen is no stranger to Saratoga as she grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and Saratoga, Wyoming. Her mom, Mary Jellen, is the second of the Glode/Shively children making Karen a 4th generation to work in the family hardware store.

Alex grew up in Fort Myers, Florida, graduated high school in 1992 and joined the Air Force in 1995.

Karen graduated high school in 1994 and attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln but did not finish a degree. She moved to New Jersey as a nanny and quickly determined that she was not fit for that kind of job. She had many friends stationed at McGuire AFB, New Jersey and decided to join the Air Force.

Her first station was at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington where she met Alex and they eventually married. They moved to Aviano AB in Italy and Scott AFB in Illinois during their careers.

Karen served eight years as a command post controller and an emergency action coordinator. Alex served 20 and a half years as an electrical system journeyman and did a brief stint as a security police officer.

A command post controller in the Air Force is the heart of operations in charge of assessing, controlling and developing the flow of operations. An electrical journeyman in the Air Force is part of the civil engineering team that takes care of all systems and components of an electrical distribution system.

Karen’s job entailed high stress shift work coordinating all things airlift even in Operation Enduring Freedom from 2002 to 2003. In fact, one of her final shifts was coordinating the successful rescue of Jessica Lynch, the first ever female prisoner of war, from Iraq.

Alex was usually part of the first to arrive in foreign places behind security forces to stand up tent cities and get airfields going. He got the airfields and cities on the power grid in Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, the UAE, and Afghanistan.

Karen thinks that her job in the Air Force was the best she ever had. “If you asked me to do a shift today – I would,” she said.

Alex found the building of the tent cities to be the most fulfilling part of his electrical journey and loved setting up the airfield lighting in combat zones to get things up and going pretty quickly.

After serving, Karen was a government contractor in the Global Decision Support System (GDSS) which works in coordination with the Air Force in command and control. Alex worked as a civilian in the electrical division of the Department of Defense — both still in Illinois.

In 2023, the Smiths moved to Saratoga to help out in the family business  where they can be found them greeting and helping customers in the heart of downtown Saratoga.