Steadfast in Service: The Life and Family of Sue Hertling

A portrait in motion

Sue Hertling’s public presence reads like the steady rhythm of a march: quiet, disciplined, and always moving forward. Known primarily as the spouse of retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark P. Hertling, Sue has carved a public identity through decades of military-spouse leadership, community volunteering, and fitness instruction. Her story is less about a single headline and more about accumulated acts — speeches at family events, fitness classes taught for decades, and the kind of day-to-day support work that keeps military communities functional when command posts and deployments change on a moment’s notice.

Basic information

Family and household

Sue’s public identity is closely intertwined with family life. Military biographies and event programs repeatedly place her beside Mark Hertling, and they present a multigenerational household shaped by service and mobility.

Family life for the Hertlings, as described in public accounts, reads like a long migration across pins on a map — 22 moves over 37 years. That kind of mobility becomes the family’s grammar: one learns to speak in dates, schools, and base names rather than in long neighborhood roots. Residences noted publicly include a move to Baldwin Park, Florida in 2012 and later listings in the Flagler Beach area.

Public life and community roles

Sue Hertling’s public engagements fit a pattern familiar in military communities: presence, leadership, and service without fanfare. Her appearances typically center on supporting families, speaking at spouse events, and participating in community competitions.

She has been featured as a speaker at events such as garrison family ceremonies and month-long observances, and she has been photographed and named in Defense imagery and base media as an active participant in Family Readiness Group activities. In event programs and veteran/spouse gatherings, she’s presented as a fitness professional, a community leader, and a visible spouse supporting the social fabric of the units where her husband commanded.

Fitness and professional practice

Numbers and dates help anchor Sue’s fitness biography. According to available program material, her fitness work dates back to 1983, when she began as a Jazzercise instructor. Over the years she transitioned through certification pathways and class formats, teaching as a certified trainer and later instructing BodyPump sessions. For a person who has lived the moving life of military families, fitness instruction becomes portable capital — a skill set that travels easily, folds into new communities, and provides an immediate avenue for local engagement.

Her fitness work reads like a throughline: a consistent thread that runs parallel to the more episodic public appearances tied to military spouse programming.

Public appearances, events, and dates

These dated touchpoints sketch the public record: a pattern of community events in the 2000s and early 2010s, anchored by fitness contributions that extend into the 2020s. The public narrative is not a continuous diary but a mosaic assembled from event programs, institutional biographies, and base news items; the mosaic emphasizes presence — Sue appears at milestones that matter to military families.

The shape of service

Sue’s public role is not dramatic; it’s structural. Where public headlines focus on commands, deployments, and medal ceremonies, the spouse’s work is the scaffolding behind the scenes: organizing, speaking, teaching, cheering, and competing in spouse events that bind a unit’s social life together. To borrow a metaphor, if a military life is an engine, spouses like Sue are the oil that keeps moving parts from grinding. There are numbers to back that up — decades of fitness instruction, at least two named sons with military ties, 22 household relocations — and there are the small, steady gestures cataloged in event captions and program notes: a speech on a base green, a fitness class in a community center, a jointly delivered holiday greeting video.

Public image and recorded moments

Sue appears most often in institutional snapshots: photos accompanying base media stories, captions on Defense imagery, program bios for veterans and spouse events, and the occasional local newspaper profile tied to the family’s relocation. Video clips and feature interviews capture her in motion — teaching, speaking, or appearing alongside Mark in holiday greetings. These recorded moments are the archival echoes of a life spent in public service roles that are supportive rather than headline-grabbing.

Numbers that matter

• 37 years: span across which the Hertlings reportedly made 22 moves.
• 1983: the year Sue’s fitness work is publicly dated to have begun.
• 2012: the year public reporting cites the couple’s move to Baldwin Park, Florida.
• 2013: the year Mark Hertling retired from active duty and transitioned to civilian public roles.
• 2022: most recent event program listing Sue’s fitness background in program materials.

A life of repeated commitments

Sue Hertling’s public biography is a study in repetition and persistence: repeated relocations, repeated volunteer efforts, repeated instructing of classes, repeated appearances at the rituals that sustain military community life. Her identity in the public record is less a single portrait and more a series of frames — each event caption, each program bio, each class listing another exposure that, when collected, forms a clear silhouette of a life spent serving alongside and within the military family sphere.