Michael Pintagro serves as adjunct faculty with the UAH History Department. He retired from the U.S. Army as a command sergeant major with 28 years of service in fall 2024. He joined the Army from Opelika in 1996 after graduating Auburn University with an MA in U.S. History – his terminal degree.
His eclectic Army career included more than a dozen assignments. Stateside, he served from the National Capital Region and upstate New York to the desert Southwest, with many stops in-between. Worldwide, assignments spanned from Western Germany to East Asia, with operational and combat deployments to Afghanistan, Kuwait, the Balkans, Poland and Romania.
In addition to leadership responsibilities later in his career, he wrote and taught extensively in the service. As a newspaper and magazine editor, journalist and photographer (his main activity from 1997-2001), he wrote more than a hundred published articles and captured hundreds of supporting photos. He also wrote longer pieces, including “battalion histories” of his organization’s activities during Operation Enduring Freedom VI and VII in Afghanistan (2006-2007). Recent works covered V U.S. Corps, American Army and allied activities, missions and personnel in Eastern and Central Europe as well as Stateside unit headquarters at Fort Knox, Kentucky (2022-2024). His main academic work is his 1996 MA thesis on the Dixiecrat movement in Alabama.
He taught writing fundamentals, journalism, editing and public affairs to new military communicators at the Defense Information School in Fort Meade, Maryland from 2001-2004. He later served as senior enlisted leader of the schoolhouse (2019-2022). He also taught U.S. history to deployed soldiers in Afghanistan as adjunct faculty for the University of Maryland Global Campus in 2007.
His military education includes a wide array of leadership and career courses culminating in the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy (2012-2013) and Pre-Command Courses (2017 and 2019)
Blessed with boundless travel opportunities over a long career spanning large swaths of the U.S. and Europe as well as more focused activities in Southwest and East Asia, he’s visited historic sites, battlefields and museums around the world. He volunteers with the Knights of Columbus and substitutes at Holy Spirit Regional Catholic School when he's not in the library or his yard.
He and his wife Divina have three grown children, two mixed beagles and a housecat. Their home is in Huntsville.