How many of us would be willing to sacrifice our lives for an organization that didn’t want us? Lt. Col. Adam W. Hackel was willing to take that challenge, knowing that someday things would change and he’d be in a position to act as a leader and role model.
Life has thrown a number of challenges his way, which the military man has taken in stride — starting with the loss of his parents at a young age, to the realization that he was gay and embarking on a career where being LGBT was against policy. Despite having to hide a portion of his identity, Lt. Col. Hackel racked up quite a military career. In his 20 years of service, he has spanned a full complement of key staff and command responsibilities. Upon commission into the U.S. Army Reserve Chemical Corps, he was first assigned as a Platoon Leader for a Dual Purpose (Smoke/DECON) Chemical Company, which he eventually went on to command. In 1998, he served in multiple staff lead roles for the 4/98th (CM) TASS Battalion and completed his four-year tour as the acting battalion commander. Following that assignment, he was selected to command the Logistics Support Company for the 98th Training Division.
In 2003, Hackel was cross-leveled to deploy with the 222nd Broadcast Operations Detachment to create the American Forces Network Iraq. During his tour, he served as the Deputy Commander AFN-Iraq, Chief of Command Information CJTF-7 and PAO TF 6/26 in Fallujah.
Upon his return to the States, Hackel served in an array of public-affairs posts, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 2012 and selected to command the 361st Public Affairs Operation Center at Fort Totten, N.Y. In May, he was appointed as the chief human-resource and personnel officer for the 78th Training Division at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. He received two Meritorious Service Medals and was honored by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps with the Honorable Order of the Dragon.
But lest you think Lt. Col. Hackel is all buttoned-up and regimented, his day job is something quite different. Dr. Adam W. Hackel Ed.D. (by day) is the director of instrumental music at Montgomery Middle School in Skillman, N.J. Hackel holds a bachelor’s of fine arts in conducting and orchestration from Tulane University, a master’s in educational administration from Kean University and a doctorate in educational leadership from Rowan University. He has also graduated from the Defense Information School and is a branch-qualified Chemical Officer and Master Resiliency Trainer. Oh, and did I mention that Hackel is married to his husband of 14 years, William Young, and that they have a daughter, Emma Hope?
PGN: Wow, there’s a lot to take in with you. Let’s start with where you hail from.
AH: I kind of grew up all over. I moved around quite a bit. I started off in Central New Jersey and in the seventh grade I went to a military boarding school in Wayne, Pa.
PGN: Oh, Valley Forge Military Academy! I grew up in Wayne, walking distance from the academy. I used to know a lot of the polo players.
AH: Oh yes! I was there from ’84 to ’90. And then after my first active-duty tour I moved to New Jersey for 13 years, then my husband and I later moved to New Hope and then bought a house in Doylestown, where we live now.
PGN: Was your family military?
AH: Yes, all my uncles served in the Navy. My father enlisted in the Marines at the age of 16 during World War II and drove a “Duck,” ferrying troops back and forth through enemy fire during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
PGN: When did you lose him?
AH: Both of my parents died when I was in high school, about three years apart, both from complications due to cancer.
PGN: I always wondered what life was like for the cadets at VFMA.
AH: It was an interesting beginning. I wasn’t the best student and was in the process of being held back for the second time. The family decided something drastic had to happen because I wasn’t headed on a very good path. I went from an extremely permissive and liberal household to a very strict and regimented atmosphere. But I thrived in it and I went from getting Ds and Fs to being on the honor roll and going on to one of the top universities in the country.
PGN: What made the difference?
AH: I think being around people my age, many of whom were struggling with the same learning disabilities and trouble with academics that I was and seeing the potential of what I could be if I really tried. Before that, if I didn’t do my homework I didn’t really care, but at Valley Forge, I’d see my friends who did well get rewarded. It was something tangible to strive for. As a 12-year-old, I wasn’t deciding, Oh, I want to change my life around; it was, Oh, I want a pass to go off campus — little breadcrumbs that led me down the right path.
PGN: Any siblings?
AH: I have an older sister and an older brother and I used to have another brother but he passed away too.
PGN: Wow, you’ve dealt with a lot of loss.
AH: It was an interesting childhood.
PGN: What did you do for fun?
AH: Unfortunately as a kid, my favorite things to do were to watch TV and eat. When I was 13 years old I weighed about 30 pounds more than I do now. Happily, at VFMA, I joined a bunch of clubs, made friends and joined the track team. It was a good time in my life.
PGN: What’s a favorite memory with your parents?
AH: I was 13 when my dad died and 17 when I lost my mother. Both of my parents were older when they had me. I had a lot of pleasant memories with my father but one stands out. I’d found a kite that somebody had thrown away, just a cheap little five-and-dime kite, a piece of vinyl and a few sticks, that was ripped and broken. My father was extremely handy. He was a mechanic by trade and loved building model boats and stuff. He loved fixing things so he took it home and repaired it and we went to the park and flew it. It sounds silly — something so small — but it was one of the truly resonant moments with my father. I remember being there with him, I remember the color of the kite, the shirt I was wearing, my dad sitting at his desk putting it back together. It’s a moment I reflect on often. For my mother, I just remember her sense of humor. We’d watch TV together, probably things that were inappropriate for my age, but she’d laugh and then explain to me why it was funny. We’d go out and have conversations that made me feel very grown-up. She never treated me like some stupid kid.
PGN: When did you realize that you were gay?
AH: Probably when my father took me to see “Star Wars” when I was 7! I remember going to school and everyone talking about how cool Han Solo was shooting things or how pretty Princess Lea was and I was infatuated with Luke Skywalker. I didn’t know what it meant, but I realized that I saw things from a different perspective. A more cognitive awakening was my sophomore summer; that was when I realized that it wasn’t going away and that this is who I was.
PGN: That must have made it tough to pursue a military career.
AH: When I started in the military, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” hadn’t even been conceptualized yet. I remember sitting in one of my classes and filling out a simple demographic form and one of the questions was, “Are you a homosexual?” I was thinking, Oh my God, I can’t believe they’re asking this. Why? The pragmatist in me realized that if I answered truthfully, I was going to have a very short military career. It was meaningful because at Valley Forge we had an honor code. To us, honor and integrity meant a lot, and it was the foundation of who you were as a leader, and now my military career was starting with a lie. It was a huge conflict for me but I knew deep inside even then, that at some point things were going to change and that soldiers were going to need people in good positions to stand up for them. During DADT, which lasted about 18 years, were some of the toughest times. Sitting around in the chow hall with everyone talking about their girlfriends and wives, I had to be very conscientious about what I said. I had to be constantly aware about something that shouldn’t have been an issue. The hardest time was when I was deployed in Iraq between 2003-05. Bill and I were together and it was challenging to communicate. We had a fake email address in a woman’s name and on the rare occasions where we were able to talk on the phone, the conversations were very controlled and benign with often-changed pronouns. Obviously hearing from him was a wonderful thing but fraught with concern that someone might intercept an email or read a letter. It made an already-difficult environment exponentially more stressful. We’d only know each other a year-and-a-half and he stuck by me and was a wonderful support system during that time. The most newsworthy moment after DADT was when I was selected for a battalion command, which is a huge honor, especially at the colonel level. There’s a big change-of-command ceremony and traditionally if your spouse is female they receive a bouquet of roses; if it’s a man he gets a bottle of champagne. Someone asked me what color roses my wife would like and I replied, “My husband’s going to get the champagne” and there was no big deal about it. When Bill and I got married six months into my command, my battalion got us a wedding gift. He came to a lot of events after that as the commander’s husband and no one batted an eye. One of the men in my command made a point to say how proud he was. It’s wonderful to see how far we’ve come, on all fronts. When I was in Iraq, a good portion of my unit were females, some of the first women in direct combat zones. My female soldiers did the same jobs as the males, serving right beside them.
PGN: What was the most harrowing situation you faced?
AH: One time Bill and I were on a phone call. My compound started getting attacked and we lost connectivity. I couldn’t call him back for quite some time and he was naturally concerned because the last thing he heard was an explosion and then my phone went dead. Personally, it wasn’t worrisome — we’d been under attack every single day since I arrived — but it was scary for him to hear it. For me, there were a lot of interesting moments. We were doing a convoy in Northern Iraq and there was an event that forced us to get out of our vehicles and walk. There were thousands of people around, looking at us from store windows and houses and we had only about 20 people in our convoy. I was thinking, At any second now, someone’s going to try and kill us. I got really nervous and then realized that we had another 5 miles to walk, so I needed to get over it. On another occasion, I was working in an office inside the embassy when a rocket flew into the room right next to me. Fortunately, it didn’t detonate and no one was hurt, but it was wild to open the door and see this enormous rocket in the middle of the office! We were able to get everybody out and get the DOD to remove it, but it was shocking in that split-second moment as the rocket hit thinking, Oh man, we’re all going to die.
PGN: Do you think some of your fearlessness comes from having dealt with death and loss at such an early age?
AH: Hmmm, I don’t know that I’m fearless, I think I just process fear and danger in a different way. I think my parents taught me that I was loved and valued. Even though my dad was a mechanic and a Marine, he had a very calm demeanor that I try to emulate. But perhaps being exposed to the volume of tragedy that I experienced at a young age and learning that I could live through it might have set me up to be more resilient. One last funny thing if I may … When George Bush got re-elected, I was in a room with 70-80 people. When they announced that he’d won, I was with a politically likeminded friend and I turned to him and said, “We’re going to be here forever.”
PGN: How do you cope when you’re fighting under questionable circumstances and asked to risk your life and perhaps take another life?
AH: For me it’s about protecting those under my command and trying to do the best for the people who we were in charge of there. I try not to think about the politics behind it. I’m a school teacher in my other career and many of my fellow teachers are — like myself — very Democratically bent and not very fond of war, especially that one. But they were really supportive of me and sent me letters and good wishes, which made it a little easier. Unlike when my brother-in-law served in Vietnam and people turned against him. They couldn’t seem to differentiate between the people and the politics.
PGN: Speaking of people, what’s a misconception that we have about Iraq?
AH: A lot of people seem to be convinced that the entire population are all terrorists. And that’s not the case. Most of them are really wonderful and normal people who just want to raise a family and have a good job or read a good book, create art, do normal things. The media focuses on a very small but vocal minority who is focused on not just death and destruction, but discord and stagnance. Unfortunately, that’s all the greater Western community sees. But I knew an awful lot of people who just wanted to live normal, peaceful lives.
PGN: Someone made the analogy that it’s like judging America if all they showed was the KKK. Happy thoughts … Tell me about forming your family.
AH: Bill and I always talked about adopting children. Being two men, we weren’t able to have our own though we tried very hard. [Laughs] We looked at a lot of different agencies, some of which were not open to LGBT couples, until we found one that fit. It was a long process, about three years, but we’re so happy to have this funny, spunky, confident little girl in our lives. She’s a major blessing. And everyone says she’s a true combination of Bill and me: her mannerisms, her personality. She’s a bright star in our lives.
PGN: Something she did that would make a good YouTube video?
AH: She’s very dramatic and enamored with “Frozen” and we have her on tape with crown and cape doing the song with her own choreography. At the end, she throws open our shutters and does the ending like in the movie. She’s very serious about it and it makes me laugh.
PGN: As a music director, you must enjoy that. Do you play any instruments?
AH: I’m a percussionist. Between going for my doctorate and the military, I haven’t had much time, but I played for two years with the Philadelphia Freedom Band.
PGN: There are many of us who were against the war but supportive of the troops. Since we’re about to embark on another involvement, what would you suggest people do who want to help?
AH: Personally, I don’t care about memorial monuments or fancy ceremonies. Take care of my family. If I have to deploy again, make sure that Bill and Emma are not alone. If I perish in combat, take care of my husband and my child as if they were your family. Make sure my daughter goes to a good college. If I lose a limb, make sure I get the best possible care. Vote this November. Elect a Congress that will pay for all of the war, not just for more troops and equipment, which are important, but also budget to make sure we can take care of that serviceman or woman when they get home or if they never do.
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