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Brig. Gen. Carol Timmons, 59, brings 40 years of Delaware National Guard experience to her new role in the outfit’s top job, adjutant general. “I’ve done everything that we ask our airmen and soldiers to do,” she says. She started by getting intel from key figures among the 2,700 in the air and army units (“when a new leadership comes in, you sit down”), but her lengthy service means she already understands the importance of professional development, the call for a few more C130s and the need for increased support for when “citizen airmen and citizen soldiers leave the families in tough times to help their neighbors.” Criminals online are an increasingly significant foe, here and abroad. “Cyber is the current and future mission,” says Timmons, who with the promotion becomes the governor’s chief military adviser. Timmons—whose wife, Lynn Wass, joined Gov. Jack Markell to update her uniform at the change of command ceremony—is also well aware of the demands of being the first woman to lead the Delaware National Guard. “I’ve seen all the changes for women in the military,” she says. “I lived through that whole cultural change.”
Before her promotion, Timmons was assistant adjutant general, leading the Delaware Air National Guard. She counts a 2008 Bronze Star given for commanding a combat deployment to Afghanistan among her many awards. She has flown more than 5,000 hours for the military and more than 10,000 for United Airlines. In 2001, she was first officer on a United flight that some people believe was a fifth plane that the 9/11 terrorists planned to use. In inducting her in 2007, the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame called her “the perfect model for young women who want a dream fulfilled. Since childhood, Carol wanted to fly jets. Following graduation from William Penn High School in 1976, she enrolled in college and enlisted in the Delaware National Guard.”