JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Former Alaska National Guard Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Laurie J. Hummel retired during a ceremony at the Alaska National Guard armory on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Jan. 26.
The ceremony was presided by Maj. Gen. Bret D. Daugherty, adjutant general, Washington National Guard, whom Hummel worked with periodically as a fellow adjutant general.
“She’s had an incredible adventure,” Daugherty said. “That’s something to be celebrated not mourned because it’s coming to an end.”
Hummel, originally from Clearfield, Pennsylvania, commissioned as a Military Intelligence officer in 1982 after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Hummel holds graduate degrees from the University of Colorado, Penn State, the Army War College and the University of Alaska Anchorage.
She served 30 years in the Regular Army, including tours in Korea and Alaska, retiring from the service in 2012.
During her military career, she deployed on several missions in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
“I am so very proud since 1978 to have been able to say ‘I am in the Army,’” Hummel said.
During deployments, she served in many roles including serving as an advisor for a program using social and environmental science to aid commanders in the field and advising the Afghan National Army’s leaders of the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.
After her Regular Army career, she taught West Point cadets and led faculty in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering.
“She’s left a legacy at the United States Military Academy at West Point after helping to educate the future leaders of the United States Army,” Daugherty said.
Hummel also served as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and other organizations.
Then Gov. Bill Walker recalled her from military retirement to serve as the adjutant general of Alaska and the commissioner of the Alaskan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs in May of 2015.
As the adjutant general, Hummel was the senior military advisor to the governor of Alaska and commander of the Alaska Organized Militia, and was responsible for overseeing the training and readiness of 4,100 Soldiers, Airmen and civilians of the agencies she commanded.
“Members of the Alaska National Guard, Naval Militia, State Defense Force, and Department of Military and Veterans Affairs: we became colleagues in a troubled time, and we worked arm-in-arm to create and strengthen a high-performing organization we, and all of Alaska, could be proud of,” Hummel said.
She also oversaw state homeland security and emergency management and the Alaska Military Youth Academy.
Hummel was the state’s official liaison to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and all of the Regular and Reserve military forces in Alaska.
At the end of her retirement ceremony, Hummel said goodbye to her fellow service members for her second and last time.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to be your colleague,” she said. “And please know that you will forever inspire me.”
She is married to Brig. Gen. Chad Parker, Mobilization Assistant to the Chief of Intelligence at U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. They have two children and three grandchildren.
After retiring, Hummel will go on to teach at Penn State in their Master’s program in Homeland Security.