4th star latest milestone for S.A. general
Just one other woman has rank
Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson, commanding general of U.S. Army North in San Antonio, has been nominated to receive her fourth star and to lead the Pentagon’s Southern Command.
If the promotion is confirmed by the Senate, Richardson would become just the second female four-star officer currently serving in the nation’s military.
Richardson has been overcoming gender barriers all her life. She was a champion swimmer at age 8, a private aviator at 15, an All-american swimmer in college and later a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot who flew combat missions in Iraq in 2003.
“I’m the daughter of great parents who always told me I could do anything and never put the typical gender norms on me,” she said to a crowd at Joint Base San Antonio-fort Sam Houston after taking command of Army North in 2019. “In fact, as the oldest of four kids, I think my dad
thought I was his son for the first 10 years on earth.”
Little did she know that a gender question would complicate her path to a coveted fourth star: Would then-president Donald Trump pass her over for promotion because she was a woman?
As they prepared to recommend Richardson and another female general for promotion during the tumultuous final months of the Trump administration, two top Pentagon leaders were so concerned about Trump’s reaction that they decided not to tell him of their plans, the New York Times reported recently.
The Times said then-defense Secretary Mark Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, worried that Trump would replace the two women with his own candidates. So they withheld the recommendations for Richardson and Air Force Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost until after the Nov. 3 election, gambling that Joe Biden, if victorious, would be supportive.
Biden won the election, and Trump fired Esper a week later.
The recommendations to promote the two women moved forward.
They became official Saturday, when the Pentagon announced that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had formally recommended that Richardson receive a fourth star and be assigned to lead the Southern Command, based in Doral, Fla.
Van Ovost, already a four-star officer, was recommended to lead the Transportation Command at Scott AFB in southern Illinois.
The Senate Armed Services Committee and the full Senate now will consider the nominations. Commanders up for promotion typically do not talk to the media while awaiting Senate confirmation.
An Army North spokesman said he did not know when Richardson would leave Fort Sam for the Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Army North is the Army component of the Pentagon’s Northern Command. It employs 225 service members and 175 civilians in San Antonio and more than 600 nationwide.
Its primary mission is defense of the homeland, but it also supports civilian authorities in responding to natural disasters, and it works with military counterparts in Mexico and Canada. The head of Army North is the senior Army commander for JBSA.
The command has been busy over the past several years, supporting the Homeland Security Department on the Southwestern border and helping the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricanes Matthew, Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence and Michael.
During the pandemic, Army North has served as the Northern Command’s Joint Force Land Component Command, supporting civilian hospitals across the nation as they treat COVID-19 patients.
It has provided assistance to FEMA and the Health and Human Services Department as part of the government’s coronavirus response. Army North said it has assigned about 730 soldiers to community vaccination centers in Texas, New Jersey, California, Florida and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
When Richardson took hold of Army North’s flag in the traditional transfer-of-command ceremony July 8, 2019, she registered the latest in a series of firsts for women in the Army.
Already the service’s first female combat arms general officer, she became the first woman to command the Army component of a multiservice unit.
At the time, she was one of four female three-star generals in the Army.
She is married to a fellow three-star officer. Her husband, Lt. Gen. James “Jim” Richardson, is deputy commander of the Army Futures Command in Austin. He is an AH-64D Apache helicopter pilot who served seven tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When she assumed the Army North command, Laura Richardson told the San Antonio Expressnews that being a woman in a male-dominated Army hadn’t been difficult and that she wanted to be treated “just like anybody else.”
But she acknowledged: “There were a lot of times, even now, (when) all of a sudden I’d go, ‘Wow, I’m the only gal sitting here in the room.’”
She added: “I wouldn’t be where I am today if I had folks that were easier or harder on me. The great leaders I’ve had as bosses have all been men.”
If confirmed to lead the Southern Command, Richardson will oversee more than 1,200 military and civilian personnel from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and various federal agencies.
It is one of the Pentagon’s 11 unified combatant commands and is led by a four-star general. Its responsibilities include defense of the Panama Canal.