ARLINGTON, Va. - He wears a U.S. Army uniform, but Command Sgt. Maj. David Ray Hudson once was in the U.S. Air Force. That makes him uniquely qualified to be the senior enlisted advisor to the chief of the National Guard Bureau.
"My primary concern is enlisted issues: jointenlisted issues," Hudson said during a recent interview. About 85 percent of the nation's 457,000 Army and Air Guardmembers are enlisted. Hudson is the second senior enlisted advisor to the chief, LTG H Steven Blum. The first was Command Sgt. Maj. John Leonard, who retired in August.
Whether Blum is visiting Guardmembers abroad, such as at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in November, or at home, such as in all four southwest border states in December, odds are good that Hudson is at his side.
The command sergeant major is there to advise Blum about enlisted issues and to answer questions from enlisted Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen. He said warriors are one of his top five priorities. " 'Warriors' encompasses both our Airmen and our Soldiers," Hudson said.
His other four priorities: Enhancing the National Guard's mission at home and abroad; helping with the National Guard Bureau's transition to an increasingly operational role; advocating for Guardmembers' families; and supporting civilian employers.
"Employers in the United States today are doing some phenomenal things with the way that they support warriors," he said.
It's important that employers understand how greatly their support is appreciated and that they remain clear on the National Guard's mission, he said. "Our warriors also have a responsibility to assist with employer recognition and keep their employers informed about their required Guard duties. It should be a two-way street. We keep our employers informed and tell them how much we appreciate their help, and they support us when we are called to duty for our state and country."
Although he's been a Citizen-Soldier for 23 years, Hudson said four years in the regular Air Force and six years in the Air Force Reserve gave him the foundation he needed for success.
"That was a very valuable time in my life as a young man," he said. "It educated me and trained me on discipline and on the military. I love the military."
Hudson switched to the Army National Guard in 1984, a couple of weeks after his wife, the former Denise Stevens of Boone, Iowa, enlisted in the Army Guard. The couple had moved to Nome, Alaska. The nearest Air Guard unit was 1,200 miles away, but the Army Guard had a unit in Nome where Hudson served as a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
"The choice was rather simple," he said. "I wanted to remain in the military. I wanted to continue to use the skills that the Air Force had taught me."
He eventually became the ninth state command sergeant major for Alaska. Along the way, Hudson served in military intelligence and was commandant of the 207th Regional Training Institute among many other positions.
As a civilian, he served with the Alaska Highway Patrol, advancing from trooper to captain.
He observed how the Guard has transformed significantly in the two decades since he joined in '84.
"When I joined the Alaska Army National Guard, the National Guard in Alaska had never deployed anywhere," he said. "During World War II, the Alaskan Territorial Guard, which was made up of Eskimo scouts, had basically been forward-deployed by being in Alaska. Once in a while there might be a two-week annual training tour somewhere other than Alaska, but generally speaking even all the annual trainings were right in Alaska, because we were considered Arctic warriors, cold-weather experts. So everybody came to Alaska."
And today?
"Today," Hudson said, "Alaska has deployed probably 70 percent of its resources."
In 1995, Hudson served as command sergeant major of the 2nd Scout Battalion in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in west Alaska on the Bering Sea. The majority of the battalion's Citizen-Soldiers were Yupik Eskimos, hunters who live on walrus, seals, whale, fish, moose and caribou.
"They had never left their villages, where they still have a subsistence lifestyle," he said. "They primarily live off the game that they catch.
"Approximately 300 of them right now are sitting in Kuwait," he said. "The Guard of today is nothing like it was 23 years ago. It's a complete change. It is now an operational, professionally organized institution that does tremendously more than two weeks out of the year and one weekend a month."
In the fall of 1995, the trajectories of Hudson's Guard, civilian, family and personal lives came together to create one of the most challenging times in his life.
He was promoted to sergeant major and enrolled in the correspondence portion of the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy. His new National Guard duty as a battalion command sergeant major was 700 miles from his home. He was working undercover narcotics and was promoted to sergeant in his civilian job as a state trooper. He was completing his master's degree in organizational management at the University of LaVerne.
"What I had to do at that time was like every traditional Guardsman has to do at some point in time: Seek a balance between my civilian career, my educational goals, my National Guard goals, my National Guard career, my National Guard promotion, and I still had a wife in there who had a career, and we had to put all that together and make it work."
Hudson holds his thumb and index finger close together. "I came this close to just saying 'to heck with the sergeant major's academy'," he said. "That close."
But using everything he had learned from his Air Force roots and drawing on support from his family and his civilian employer, he pulled off the challenge.
"There's plenty of people that use excuses all the time. 'Man, I'd like to go to college, but I just don't have the time,' or 'I don't have this. …' That's OK. I'm not telling you that you're a bad person because you're not going to college or you're not doing this or you're not doing that," Hudson said. "I'm just telling you that it's a choice that you make."
Hudson made his choices and earned his rewards: A master's degree, an eventual command position among the state troopers, and now the highest enlisted position in the National Guard.
"It's what's important to you," he said. "You will find the time to do what you think is really important."
Right now, what's really important to Command Sgt. Maj. David Ray Hudson is representing the Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen – the warriors – of the National Guard to chief and country.