Laura Lange

Share your military spouse story:
Going with the flow and adjusting to life is how it started when I met my husband 20 years ago after moving from England to the US for my teaching career and to try something different. After a chance meeting at a Memorial Day party led to our wedding a year later, I was suddenly thrust into this military life that I literally knew nothing about! Over the past 20 years I have embraced the steep learning curve! I have managed the house, my career, and my family through 5 military moves across different countries while also holding down the fort during 15 deployments and countless TDYs. I am an adventurous empath at heart and I’m always looking for new ways to support those around me and trying to find new challenges, as if life wasn’t already stressful enough! I have tackled everything from learning how to taiko drum, to being the president of the spouses club. I have learned new languages like Japanese and the military lingo! I try very hard to be a ‘when in Rome’ kind of person, pushing myself out of my comfort zone to experience new things and learn about new places and cultures. One assignment & my bleeding heart led us to fostering. During the COVID years we cared for 11 babies and we are currently working on adopting a set of twins! Both the joy and stress that we gained from fostering is immeasurable, but I attribute our family's ability to handle the uncertainty of working with the Division of Child and Family Services to our years of experience as a military family. We are adaptable, have a strong work ethic and we were able to rely on each other and our strong support network despite not having family nearby. Being a military spouse touches every single aspect of my life, and these qualities are invaluable to it.

Share an example of your leadership experience within the military community:
Being a teacher by profession, I believe I am a natural born leader. I love to step up, get involved & take responsibility. One of the ways I did this early on in my time as a military spouse was at our first duty assignment. We were stationed in Japan and I wanted to quickly immerse myself in the military lifestyle, make friends and be social. Joining the spouses club felt like the natural move. When I joined it, there were only 6 active members and understandably, a very lack luster social calendar. I participated but knew that it could be so much more! A friend and I stepped up at election time & took over as club presidents, revamping it’s logo, developing a social calendar with new ideas, we offered local culture field trips and membership meeting incentives. We quickly increased our membership by over 600%. It was a great experience as club president to see how some time, energy & effort really helped improve base life & foster new friendships for many spouses.

Describe your involvement in the military community:
I love to be involved in the military community & I actively seek opportunities to do so at every duty station. Some bases, particularly overseas assignments, provide a deeper level of involvement than others. I have been a Key Spouse at 3 duty stations and was the president of the Enlisted Spouse’s Club while living in Japan. A big part of being involved in the community for me is representing military families well. I was given a fantastic opportunity to do so when I was asked to brief the AMC commander about the hardships of a military spouse during Operation Allies Refuge (OAR). I was able to offer a unique spouse perspective to leadership, allowing them to provide better support during times of need. I was also able to provide my insight for a major non-profit that has support programs geared for wounded veterans and military children. This was filmed for a Netflix documentary, which gained lots of attention and generated discussion among my world-wide friends network.

Describe how you support your community:
I always try to find an active role within my community no matter where I am in the world. As an active Key Spouse, I have tried to find new ways to help bring people together. Starting something as simple as a Bachelor watch night that began as a handful of ladies getting together to socialize while their husbands were away and grew into a rotating crowd that endured for over 10 years. It was a great place to share what was happening, a low stress place to welcome new members to the unit and to ask for help where no one would judge. I continue being involved no matter where I go because I know it’s the little things that help me and that they can benefit others. I always jump straight into my local communities too. We enjoy volunteering as a family by serving food to the local community, wrapping gifts for the local Christmas Alliance and shopping for the Angel Tree. We also participated in a clothing drive to support OAR, made blankets and packaged meals for a local non-profit.

What do you advocate for? Why?
I support various causes within the military community but the most important is communication. There are many excellent organizations, endless resources and support systems available for our families, yet they are under-utilized due to lack of practical, clear information. I meet many spouses who are shocked when I share how I got my graduate degree funded, or my professional license renewed. They can’t believe we got overseas PCS travel paid for our pets, or that our child attends summer camp every year for free! We are fortunate to be offered many opportunities in return for our family’s military service, and I do my best to not only seek them out, but then to share them with others through word of mouth, my personal social media and on squadron community pages. Have they seen this opportunity before? Maybe. But hearing it from someone who has done it, makes it suddenly more accessible and appealing. This is why I advocate for communication of resources through my daily life.

How have you spread the message of your platform/advocacy?
“If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skillfully, you can work miracles.” – Jim Rohn, author, speaker and entrepreneur Share, share, share! The best way I know to increase communication is to communicate well & lead by example. I have spread the message of resources available through writing monthly squadron newsletters, playing an active role in moderating social media outlets/pages, through personal conversations and by sharing my own personal experiences. Oprah Winfrey once said that “Great communication begins with connection.” I aim to create and deepen my connections by sharing experiences and information through fun stories and conversations. The hope is that this will create a ripple effect where those people will then pass on their new knowledge with a similar enthusiasm to their own circle, therefore increasing awareness and likelihood that available resources and support systems will be utilized.

What do you hope to accomplish with the AFI Military Spouse of the Year^® title?
If I were to serve as AFI Military Spouse of the Year, this would allow me to advocate for the whole spectrum of military families; the new families who have no idea where to start, the tired out experienced families who are burnt out, the a-few-years-in-so-no-one-thinks-we-need-help-anymore families. Everyone needs assistance at some point, and I would love to help open up clearer lines of communication, guiding them to the resources available, reinvigorating them for the opportunities that this military life can provide. With the AFI Military Spouse of the Year Title, I aspire to help others not only get the most out of their assignment, but to improve their enjoyment of them, better their careers and foster lifelong friendships along the way.