Trygve Hammer is a North Dakota native with a long history of service.

Trygve grew up in Velva, ND at the south bend of the Souris River. After graduation from Velva High School he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served as a nuclear power machinist mate. While serving, he was nominated by the Secretary of the Navy and appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He graduated in 1990 with a bachelor of science degree in chemistry and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. 

First Lieutenant Hammer completed flight training at Naval Air Training Command in Pensacola Florida and was designated a Naval Aviator in September of 1992.  He completed two fleet tours as a CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter pilot, a deployment as a forward air controller with Third Battalion, Third Marines, and assignment as a company officer and leadership instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy. He left active duty for the Marine Corps Reserves in June, 2001. 

 In the Marine Corps Reserve, Trygve completed a combat deployment to Iraq in 2003 as an infantry weapons platoon commander and battalion forward air controller for Third Battalion, Twenty-third Marines. Other assignments included duty as assistant Marine attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy, and as a trainer for general-level staffs deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq at the MAGTF Staff Training Program in Quantico, VA. When not engaged in Marine Corps Reserve duties, Hammer was an airline pilot, a defense contractor, and a security consultant.

Major Hammer retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in 2010 and returned to North Dakota in 2016. Since then, he has worked as a grades 7-12 science educator in a rural North Dakota school, an oil field roughneck, and a substitute teacher.  

Trygve's three children; Adam, Alexandra, and Francesca, grew up all around the country and the world. Adam graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2016 and completed two Western Pacific deployments as a Surface Warfare Officer before being accepted into the Navy Medical Program and medical school at The George Washington University in Washington DC. Alexandra lives and works in Annapolis, Maryland. Her husband John's latest fleet tour was aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. He is now stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. Francesca is a student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia