CLEARFIELD – The Clearfield Veterans Day Service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the American Legion Post No. 6. The guest speaker will be Major General Laurel J. Hummel.
Hummel is the adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard and the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA).
As the adjutant general, she is the senior military advisor to the governor of the State of Alaska and commander of the Alaska National Guard, responsible for overseeing the training and readiness of 4,100 soldiers and airmen.
She also oversees the Alaska State Defense Force, the Alaska Naval Militia, homeland security and emergency management, veterans’ affairs and the Alaska Military Youth Academy.
Hummel is the official liaison between the state and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and all military forces in Alaska.
Hummel is a native of Clearfield and the daughter of Gay Hummel and the late Sergeant First Class Gordon E. Hummel.
She commissioned into the Military Intelligence Corps in 1982 and served 30 years on active duty in a variety of intelligence assignments within the 18th Airborne Corps, in Korea and in Alaska.
As a tenured professor of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, she then taught cadets, led faculty and developed curriculum at West Point.
As a geographer with expertise in political demography and the geographical roots of terrorism, she served as policy consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency and other organizations.
She joined several missions in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom: first as an advisor for a program using social and environmental science to help commanders in the field better understand cultural conditions and make smarter decisions and then twice as an advisor to the leaders of the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.
Hummel is married to Brigadier General Chad Parker, who serves as the mobilization assistant to the chief of intelligence at Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. They have two children and an increasing number of grandchildren.
