Col. Manuel Ramirez to serve as installations’ garrison commander

The Savannah community can look forward to building new partnerships with the military communities through a new garrison commander as of last week.

Col. Bryan Logan, garrison commander for the past 24 months, relinquished command to the leadership of Col. Manuel Ramirez June 22 during a ceremony held in the Marne Club on Fort Stewart.

“Commanding a garrison today is a challenging business, and it requires strong, resourceful and inspiring leadership,” said Brenda Lee McCullough, Senior Executive Service director, Installation Management Command – Readiness, who hosted the ceremony.

Ramirez will take over as the Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield garrison commander, in charge of partnerships with the communities outside the gates of the military bases as well as community involvement within the gates.

“I’m extremely honored to take command and serve alongside a distinguished team that directly supports the Army’s priority: people,” Ramirez said.

A garrison commander is the temporary steward of an installation’s, or in the case here, two installations’, history with the responsibility to honor the history of the installation while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the future.

Throughout his time as garrison commander, Logan lead Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield garrison through an Army wide housing crisis, a global pandemic and several hurricanes. “Through all of this, Logan provided effective and efficient support to Fort Stewart; his leadership was nothing short of excellent,” McCullough said. “Excelling at community engagement, he embraced the coastal Georgia community as his own.”

McCullough said Logan took the lead during the COVID-19 pandemic by establishing a weekly video conference that included all of the surrounding municipal leaders. This provided a forum to share best practices, discuss restrictions and even welcome tours to the installation to showcase daily operations in a COVID environment.

McCullough thanked Logan for his time.

“I looked for several ways to close this out, not to say goodbye but to say goodbye for now,” Logan said. McCullough informed Ramirez he has big shoes to fill as the new garrison commander, but stated she was confident in his leadership capabilities.

“He is ideally suited to lead the Fort Stewart team and support the priorities and requirements set by the Maj. Gen. [Charles] Costanza and the IMCOM priorities set by Lt. Gen. [Douglas] Gabram,” McCollough said.

Ramirez’s most recent assignment was as the director for the U.S. Army G-2’s Foreign Intelligence Directorate in Washington, D.C. He brings with him his wife the former Helen Cerro of Auburn, Alabama, and their three children, Gabriel, Aurora and Liliana.

“This is going to be a great opportunity that I look forward to,” Ramirez said. “It’s going to be a challenging opportunity but it’s also going to be a great one.”