St. Bede grad promoted to colonel

The Peru Northview students were a bit sleepy Monday and mainly peppered Jodie Kunkel with questions about the U.S. Army dogs under her oversight.

Kunkel happily answered their queries. The Lostant native and St. Bede graduate now is director of the Army’s Counter Explosive Hazards Center, a post she’s held since April 2023. One of Kunkel’s duties is overseeing the training of canine noses to sniff out a landmine.

“So one day, hopefully, if you join the military you can meet one of our dogs,” Kunkel told the students, “because our dogs are really sweet.

“But if you meet one of the military police dogs, run away – they’re very mean.”

What the school children didn’t, well, sniff out is that their guest speaker is a very high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army.

Kunkel recently ascended to one of the Army’s upper upper echelons. Col. Jodie L. Kunkel, stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, was pinned a full-bird colonel on Jan. 5, a couple of months after Congress confirmed her promotion.

“It’s been fun,” she said, describing her career to Peru students, “but it takes me far from home.”

Kunkel graduated in 1998 from St. Bede Academy, where she loosely contemplated a military career at the suggestion of an uncle who had served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. She soon enrolled at the ROTC program at Lewis University.

Kunkel earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Lewis in 2002 and later earned a master’s degree in public administration from Webster University. Most of the past two decades, however, have been spent bouncing across the globe.

Her past assignments include serving as director of management of NATO’s Joint Force Training Center in Poland. She also is a combat veteran who did two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. She earned numerous commendations including a Bronze Star and three Defense Meritorious Service Medals.

Asked about her combat experience, Kunkel said her task is to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution – “That’s what I signed up to do” – and to protect the folks back home.

“There are a lot of people out there that want to deny us our rights, our rights that that document has provided us,” Kunkel said. “And I want to protect my family. This is a great area. As long as I can keep the threat and danger from here and do it overseas, that’s what I’d much rather have done.”

Kunkel made a trip home this past weekend to cheer on niece Ashlyn Ehm and the St. Bede girls basketball team – “I’m pretty excited for her” – and to visit schoolchildren in uniform to encourage them to push through obstacles in pursuing their dreams.

Fort Leonard Wood is the closest she’s been stationed to home during her many years service and she’s glad to be nearer to her parents. Kunkel isn’t actively contemplating retirement but she said she’s “transitioning” into a phase of her career where retirement is on the not-too-distant horizon.

And could she be Gen. Jodie Kunkel when it’s all said and done?

“I don’t know if that’s necessarily something I’d want to do. One of the things I’ve never done is close the door to opportunities.”