When Col. Marty Reynolds, commander of the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, called Caley Cramer up to the front of the room in the 55th Logistics Readiness Squadron on April 3, Cramer thought there had been a mistake.

“Hey, Staff Sgt. Cramer, come up here,” Reynolds had said.

Cramer looked around, confused. He had been told that the commander was coming to present him with his award for the 55th Wing’s Outstanding Airman of the Year. His wife, Katie, had missed the actual awards ceremony to stay home with their newborn son, Harvey. Today’s events were supposed to give her an opportunity to see what she had missed.

Reynolds called him again.

“Sir, he’s a senior airman,” said Command Chief Master Sgt. Michael Morris, command chief of the 55th Wing.

“No, it’s right here, he’s a staff sergeant,” said Reynolds, and pulled out an ABU top with Cramer’s name and new rank on it.

With two weeks to spare before beginning his terminal leave, Cramer was promoted under the Stripes for Exceptional Performers program. He had been flagged for high year of tenure last year, and had been dealing with the thought of separating from the military he loved ever since.

“The closer and closer it got, it wore on me,” he said. “With a baby, you have expenses. I can live on scraps, but you don’t want to be cutting your baby short. The thought of trying to make ends meet and making sure he has everything he needs was definitely challenging.”

While it could have been tempting to start doing the bare minimum of work in his last months on the job, Cramer didn’t waver in his focus.

“At my first base, I thought, in basic training you’re not supposed to raise your hand,” he said. “But once you get out of basic training, you should start raising your hand – volunteering for things and putting yourself out there. When you do something, it’s always a reflection of who you are.”

Deivis Bliujus, the fleet manager at the 55th LRS, said Cramer was a no-brainer to submit for STEP promotion, but not because he had high year of tenure.

“We would have never put him in for that kind of package if he didn’t have those leadership abilities already,” he said. “We weren’t just trying to save a good guy, we were trying to save a good supervisor and a future leader.”

Bliujus said Cramer already had the traits needed to be a supervisor.

“When he first came back from his last deployment, all of our other NCOs had deployed,” he said. “He wasn’t even an NCO, but he was doing the job of an NCO and running the five or six lower-ranking Airmen who were in upgrade training. It just fortifies that he is a supervisor deserving of running a shop.”

Second Lt. John Lucas, a distribution section chief with the 55th LRS, began writing the STEP promotion package last year when he was Cramer’s flight commander.

“Honestly, from what I saw from Sgt. Cramer, he had what the Air Force needed in a staff sergeant,” Lucas said. “Everything was there, we just had to try and work for it.”

Morris said Cramer’s work ethic and accomplishments speak for themselves.

“When we looked back at Staff Sgt. Cramer's history of dedication to duty and his track record of sustained superior performance, I was pretty sure that the right person was selected for this promotion,” he said. “When I attended the announcement at his squadron and heard the jubilation and witnessed the outpouring of emotion from his squadron mates, I absolutely knew Col. Reynolds promoted our most exceptional performer. This is a stripe truly earned through exceptional performance and a steadfast dedication to duty.”