Trio of New Board Members
By Curt Brown
Brigadier General Lowell Kruse, Billie DeFoe, and Dr. David Hamlar Jr.
One is a former Navy laundry worker, proud foster parent and Ojibwe tribal leader in Cloquet. Another is a renowned surgeon originally from Ohio who has fixed deformed skulls and stitched up facial lacerations for Minnesota Wild hockey players. And the third grew up raising dairy cows in South Dakota before launching a decorated 35-year career with the Minnesota National Guard.
Drawing on those wildly different backgrounds, Billie DeFoe, Dr. David Hamlar Jr. and Brigadier General Lowell Kruse will braid their shared passion for history as they join the board of the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum.
“I’m proud to be an American and a Native American and I think a lot of Natives feel that call to military service,” said DeFoe, 52. “I thank them and encourage the new generation to follow that call.”
DeFoe spent five years in the Navy as a ship service woman third class aboard the USS Simon in Scotland, the USS Shenandoah and at the Navy Exchange in Norfolk, VA.
Billie DeFoe
“I did not have a glamorous job,” she said. “But working in the laundry, ship’s store and barbershop prepared me to work with the public.”
A granddaughter of a World War II veteran, DeFoe grew up in Washington state before moving to Esko, Minn., where she graduated from high school. Within weeks, she enlisted in the Navy. After her service, DeFoe swung into parenthood in a big way. In addition to one biological child, she helped raise 35 foster children in a six-year span, adopted two children and gained guardianship of two more.
“Our oldest daughter has given us three beautiful grandsons,” she said.
For years, DeFoe has helped orchestrate the veterans’ Pow Wow for the the Fond Du Lac band of the Lake Superior Chippewa in Cloquet. She started in the kitchen, preparing food for 1,500 people on Pow Wow weekends. Then she joined the Honor Guard and now runs the whole program as the band’s Veterans Service Officer.
She’s proud of her position and credits the military for getting her “where I am today.”
DeFoe can’t wait to help complete the museum’s massive, $32 million expansion “and recognize Native Americans’ service in the military.” She says she’s “particularly drawn to the museum’s dedication to sharing the military’s role in a good way for all.”
Hamlar, who turns 70 in June, carries some hefty titles but many simply call him: “Doc.”
He’s an assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology, also known as ear nose and throat, at the University of Minnesota. He retired as the first African-American Brigadier General in the Minnesota National Guard and served as Assistant Adjutant General (Air) with the Minnesota National Guard.
“I don’t necessarily like titles,” Hamlar said in a 2017 profile. “When I introduce myself, I’d rather you just call me Dave because that puts us on equal footing.”
Dr. David Hamlar Jr. (left)
The second of three children, Hamlar grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and followed his father into sports, military service and dentistry. His father, Dr. David Hamlar Sr., served in the Navy during WWII, was drafted to play football with the Los Angeles Rams and spent his career as a dentist.
“I still say it to this day that my father is, and always will be, my hero,” he said.
Hamlar Jr. played football at Tufts University in Boston, graduating with a biology degree before following his father’s lead by studying dentistry at Howard University.
By 1989, he was juggling a doctorate in otolaryngology with a second lieutenant’s commission with the Ohio National Guard. After six years with the Ohio Guard, Hamlar moved to Minnesota in 1994 as one of the first two fellows specializing in facial plastic and craniofacial surgery at the University of Minnesota.
He joined the Minnesota Air National Guard’s 133rd Airlift Wing as a Guardsman and general practice physician in 1995. Hamlar has served in support of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and numerous military humanitarian efforts.
“He has deployed all over the world on numerous occasions, selflessly serving the nation,” Col. Jim Johnson, 133 Airlift Wing Commander, said in 2014 when Hamlar was promoted to Brigadier General. “When he is not saving lives, he is searching for other opportunities to improve somebody’s health.”
Among those who have benefited from Hamlar’s steady surgeon’s hand have been children with misshapen skulls and cleft lips and palates. He’s aided both soldiers and civilians alike.
“My military career has shaped much of my life,” Hamlar said. “I’ve done surgeries all over the world, but there is no better feeling than to better the life, or even save the life, of one of our wounded warriors.”
He’s also treated hockey players as the “cut guy” specialist with the Minnesota Wild’s medical team, consulting with other Twin Cities sports franchises as well. Along the way, Hamlar dug into Minnesota’s rich African-American military history.
Just as numbers were dwindling at Minnesota VFW and American Legion halls, Hamlar learned about the World War I-era Sixteenth Battalion — an all-Black group who volunteered their service and vehicles to protect the state as the 1918 influenza epidemic and deadly forest fires raged Up North along with the war in Europe.
“I look to historical organizations and heroes of that community to reignite that interest in our communities today,” Hamlar said. “Once where there were robust VFWs and Legions in our African-American communities, they are nearly extinct today.”
Joining the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum board, he hopes, will help amplify the history of the Home Guard and countless other stories.
“A spark needs to be rekindled,” he said.
At the groundbreaking ceremony for the 40,000-square-foot expansion to the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum at Camp Ripley in 2023, Brig. Gen. Lowell Kruse talked about a “cradle to grave relationship” where National Guard troops came to train for decades near the veterans cemetery where many will eventually be buried. The adjacent expanded museum, he said, will give the state “a phenomenal chance to do something good in our nation and our society and that’s to continue to remember the service of your fellow Minnesotans as they wore the uniform.”
Kruse wore that uniform for 35 years, culminating as an Assistant Adjutant General (Army) for the Minnesota National Guard (2017-2024) as well as Senior Commander and Officer in Charge of the Camp Ripley Training Center (2017-2023).
As he leaned into the microphone that September day two years ago, Kruse looked forward to the museum’s completion. “But more importantly,” he said, “I look forward to the day the exhibits are done and I can walk through the doors and once again immerse myself in the history of Minnesotans’ military service.
Brigadier General Lowell Kruse
Kruse was born in 1967 in Dawson, Minn, about 150 miles southwest of Camp Ripley, where he’d spearhead the Guard’s training center. He grew up just across the Minnesota border on his family’s 70-cow South Dakota dairy farm near the tiny town of Revillo.
In 1989, the same year fellow incoming board member Hamlar was studying medicine and serving in Ohio’s Guard, Kruse took his ROTC training from South Dakota State University and joined the Minnesota Guard as a field artillery officer.
As Brigadier General, he commanded the Montevideo-based First Battalion of the 151st field artillery (2010-2012) before his promotion to colonel with the Minnesota National Guard. Kruse graduated with a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College in 2014. He also holds a degree in dairy science from South Dakota State and continued to run that family dairy operation from 1989-2006.
Between the cows and the Guard leadership, Kruse and his wife, Amy, raised two sons and he’s been decorated with many military honors, including the Legion of Honor and Bronze Star. He’s also spent time as a military re-enactor of Civil War history.
He now looks forward to rolling up his sleeves as the museum prepares to open in 2026.
His “lifetime passion for military history” gives him the chance to tell the public about military history, “which is still relevant today,” he said. The museum’s expansion will “highlight the service of our veterans and their sacrifices.”