Military Entrance Processing
Station
|
ATLANTA, GA
1500 Hood Avenue Building 720 Forest Park, GA 30297-5000
Phone: (404) 469-3090 Fax: (404) 469-5367
|
At the eve of World War
I, in 1917, Camp Gordon was established
in Chamblee, Georgia, to prepare Georgians
for entrance into the armed forces on
a larger scale than had ever been seen
in the Southeast. Drill sergeants kept
all inductees in very strict and regimental
order and kept the new troops busy throughout
the Camp.
In the 1930’s, the
regular Armed Forces of the United States
was the sixteenth largest army in the
world. Seeing a need for war preparation,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered
the military to expand in a quiet manner.
In Georgia, Fort McPherson was selected
as the major processing station in the
South. In the early 1940’s, applicants
were strictly segregated by service and
highly regimented at all times. It was
not unusual for more than 500 applicants
to be processed in a single day.
In 1954, as the Korean
War ended, the Armed Forces decreased
its numbers and consolidated its processing.
During the country’s longest and
most unpopular war the processing center
on Ponce De Leon Avenue was the gateway
for one of the most patriotic areas of
the nation. At its peak it was not unusual
to see as many as ten charter buses a
day leave the center with applicants
destined for various basic training installations
and later to the war in Southeast Asia.
In 1971, on a Saturday morning, the building
was fire bombed due to anti-war sentiment.
Unlike today’s processing, a large
number of applicants processed in this
building were draftees.
As the draft ended the
processing needs of the Georgian applicants
were moved to a smaller but more comfortable
facility in downtown Atlanta on West
Peachtree Street. In 1974, at this new
station, an era in professional processing
began, and a maximum effort was put forth
to make the applicants’ day as
comfortable as possible. This station
was the site where recruiting of military
personnel faced one of its greatest challenges:
Attracting high-quality applicants from
the nation’s fastest growing city.
While other cities across the nation
were suffering from inflation and financial
stagnancy, Atlanta was building skyscrapers,
and creating thousands of job opportunities.
Yet, its young citizens continued to
answer the nation’s request for
members to the Armed Forces.
By late 1981, the Armed
Forces began to expand again and a larger
facility was needed. A building on Tenth
Street was selected and remodeled to
facilitate the processing needs of the
applicants. Unique to this station is
the advance in computer processing techniques
used by the U.S. Military Entrance Processing
Command as well as the specific applications
used by each of the Armed Services. Although
this new station could process more the
300 applicant’s daily, normal workload
varied between 70 and 120 applicants
per day. Later that decade, in the Fall
of 1986, processing began at the Martin
Luther King Federal Annex on Forsyth
Street. This new facility continued the
advance in computer processing techniques
used by the USMEPCOM.
The current location for
the Atlanta MEPS was designed and built
specifically for use by the MEPS. With
an approximate construction cost of $3.7
million ground breaking for the new facility
was held on August 14, 1997. Personnel
from the MEPS began processing applicants
from this facility on August 30, 1999.
The normal tour of duty for military
personnel assigned to the station is
three years. Enlisted personnel are career
oriented and must be a minimum grade
of E-5. All personnel assigned to the
MEPS have the primary mission of assisting
each branch of the military in processing
personnel for duty in the U.S. Armed
Forces.
The Atlanta MEPS is one
of a network of 65 MEPS located nationwide
and in Puerto Rico.
A separate Department of
Defense (DoD) agency, USMEPCOM is comprised
of two geographical sectors and staffed
with personnel from all military services.
The mission of USMEPCOM
and the Atlanta MEPS is to process individuals
for enlistment or induction into the
armed services, based on DoD-approved
peacetime and mobilization standards.
Three primary areas are
considered in determining an applicant's
qualifications for enlistment:
- aptitude for military service
- physical qualification
- background evaluation screening