CASPER, Wyo. — Trey Wilhelm is a bartender at Black Tooth Brewing Co. in Casper and also serves with the Wyoming Army National Guard Detachment 1, Alpha Company, 2nd of the 149th Aviation Battalion.
Wilhelm is preparing to deploy overseas, and on Wednesday, Black Tooth invited people to sign a “deployment keg” to help send him off and to show appreciation for all military members. The brewery allowed anyone deploying this year to drink for free and gave discounts to all military veterans Wednesday.
“They wanted to throw me a going away party, but I was like, ‘It can’t be just about me because there’s tons of other people deploying and people that have served,’” Wilhelm said Wednesday afternoon. “So it’s more of a military appreciation day.”
“There’ll be a keg here for me for anyone to sign if they wanted to come down and sign. My ‘deployment keg’ is what they’re calling it.”
While his deployment isn’t until June — he couldn’t disclose where specifically he is being deployed — Wilhelm said his unit has a lot of pre-deployment training. He’ll have to temporarily stop working at Black Tooth for that. He said the people he works with at Black Tooth have been supportive, and when he returns from deployment he hopes to get some experience on the brewery side of the business.
“They’ve been a great bunch of people to work,” Wilhelm said of his colleagues. “They’re very patriotic and I appreciate that very much. It helps me focus on what I’ve got to do. We’ve become a pretty tight-knit family here in the last few months since we opened in December.”
Wilhelm said he joined the National Guard in 2006, and he’s found some rewarding experiences during the time he has served.
“With my unit now, our state mission is also very rewarding because we do a lot of work with the state — search and rescue, firefighting, training with other local departments like search and rescue out of Big Horn County and
stuff like that. So it’s very cool to be able to work with the community,” he said.
His upcoming deployment will be his second.
“You know, making it through almost 20 years of service and only having two deployments is pretty
blessed, honestly, because a lot of dudes will rack up seven or eight deployments,” Wilhelm said.
He added that his kids were born when he was on his first deployment, so this will be the first time they will actively experience what that is like for the family. He’s talked to them about what to expect.
“They’re a little worried, but communication nowadays is pretty good for deployed people,” Wilhelm said. “It’s not like it’s going to be a year without communication. I’ll be able to talk to them on a pretty regular basis and check in on them, see how things are going and, you know, they’ll tell me about their days. I’ll tell them about my days. It’s all good. We’ll still have that time together, it just won’t be face to face,” he said.
Wilhelm said he appreciates Black Tooth organizing a “deployment keg” for him, but added he wants other service members to get their recognition as well.
“It’s not just me,” he said. “I’m not a one-man army, right? It’s a big family. We all work together help each other out.”
