Creative Stone Worx is a small, bustling, thirteen-year-old fabrication company located in Jacksboro, Tennessee. 

In fact, the company is so small, that including its owner, Robert Foster, it consists of just five fabricators. One of those employees, Army National Guard Reserve Airman Clark Woods, has just been called back to active duty for a year-long stay in Poland beginning in March 2019. 

So what does an owner who is going to lose one-fifth of his workforce do?  Well, for starters, he receives the Patriot award from the ESGR (Employees Support to Guard Reserves), for going above and beyond for his country and employee Clark Woods.      

Above, Left: T.J. Johnson, representing ESGR, presents the award to Foster. Above, Right: All the team members at Creative Stone Worx understand they will have to take up the slack while Clark is deployed. “We are a family first and foremost. That’s just the way we do things,” said Foster.

Above, Left: T.J. Johnson, representing ESGR,  presents the award to Foster. 

Above, Right: All the team members at Creative Stone Worx understand they will have to take up the slack while Clark is deployed. “We are a family first and foremost. That’s just the way we do things,” said Foster.
Clark applies a hand-finished touch to a custom-length countertop.

Clark applies a hand-finished touch to a custom-length countertop.

“Clark is one of my men who knows how to do everything, and his absence will definitely push us back a bit, but it is worth it in the end,” explained Foster. “He has been deployed before, and when he is again, we’ll just go from there. It will affect our workflow for a short while, but by the time everybody pitches in we will pick right back up. As for his family and the year that he’s gone, I will keep in touch with his wife, Kayla, for anything that his family needs. Needless to say, upon his return, Clark will always have a job here.” 

To clarify, the ESGR is an organization that works to mitigate and enhance relationships between business owners and veterans or military personnel. Most are reservists. Representing the ESGR and presenting the Patriot Award to Foster was Todd Johnson. Johnson was an active duty member of the U.S. Navy for twenty-four years, and is now retired and works for Braxton-Bragg’s sales department while simultaneously training all branches of military service members and their employers about the ESGR and USERRA (the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act). 

“What we do is to educate both service members and their employers in regard to the USERRA Act,” explains Johnson, “and spell out their rights and responsibilities. Depending on how long they’re gone, we spend most of our time with the employer’s human resources department by educating them on what a service member should be receiving while they are deployed, and their entitlements when they return. Nine times out of ten, when we educate, there is never a problem, and when there is, we have procedures in place to help mitigate it as fast as possible to get the service member back to work. 

“What we did in this case, because Airman, Clark Woods has been deployed and left his job before, and Creative Stone Worx is such a small company, is to present Robert Foster with the Patriot Award on behalf of the ESGR and in recognition for the Army National Guard Reserves. Airman Clark is doing more than most by serving his country, his community and his family, and for Robert Foster to see that value and to have him as an employee is unbelievable and so deserving of the Patriot Award.” 

The entire staff at Braxton-Bragg wishes to thank Clark Woods for his unwavering patriotism and Robert Foster for his unwavering support for the brave that assure our country’s freedom. 


For more information or to nominate someone for this award visit www.esgr.mil/Employer-Awards/Patriot-Award