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	Major General Tod Bunting, Kansas's Adjutant General

God and Country: Kansas’s top general finds a home in Topeka church

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

Major General Tod Bunting is in what he calls “a serious business.” As Adjutant General, he commands 7,700 National Guard troops in Kansas, soldiers and airmen who are called to fight in Iraq or to assist with life-threatening disasters like the Greensburg tornado or Hurricane Katrina.

He couldn’t do his job without a deep faith in God, he says. And that faith led Bunting and his wife, Barbara, to St. David’s, Topeka, where they were confirmed in December 2007.

Bunting knew St. David’s rector, the Rev. Don Davidson, from the priest’s years as a National Guard chaplain. The couple (he was Lutheran, she, Methodist) visited the church, liked the people and considered joining.

But it was an arson fire that claimed the church building in November 2006 that sealed the deal for him. “My whole life I’m a sucker for the little guy,” he said. “I love the underdog. And here was a church that was really knocked down. Literally. Burned down. I said, ‘That’s it. There’s the church for us.’”

Benevolent and violent

Bunting calls the organization he leads “paradoxical,” alternately “the most benevolent and the most violent organization around.”

He said, “We are prepared to give our life to save your life. We also will go anywhere on earth and take someone else’s life to preserve our way of life. You need to be in touch with your faith when you understand that’s the nature of things.”

That paradox leads Guard troops to assist in times of natural disaster and also serve in a variety of overseas deployments. Right now that includes 1,200 Kansas Guard members, serving everywhere from Iraq and Afghanistan to Kosovo, the Horn of Africa, South America, Central America and the U.S. border with Mexico. “We’re pretty much everywhere,” Bunting said.

Of the 5,600 members of the Kansas Army National Guard, 5,000 have served at least one tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some have been two or three times. The Kansas Guard has lost eight members in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, with more than 40 seriously wounded.

A forever thing

Bunting said he has to rely on his faith when one of his troops is killed in action, what he calls easily the worst part of his job.

“When you are responsible for people and they die, going somewhere you sent them, doing the job you asked them to do and they do it exactly right and they still are killed, that will change you forever.

“You present the colors of the nation to a widow or a mother or father — that’s a forever thing. I could not have sustained myself through it all if I didn’t believe in my country and have my faith to get me through that.”

Davidson said he has stood with Bunting at the highs and lows of the general’s duties, “when a soldier comes home, and when they are wounded or you lay them in the ground.”

No matter the circumstance, Davidson said Bunting exhibits “high ideals, faith and integrity that comes shining forth when you are with him.”

As Adjutant General Bunting also serves as director of the Kansas Division of Emergency Management and director of Kansas Homeland Security.