HOPEDALE - A rural Hopedale man with nearly 30 years of service in the Illinois Army National Guard will be promoted to brigadier general at a ceremony today in Springfield.

The 1 p.m. ceremony for Col. Robert Pratt will be at the Illinois State Military Museum, 1301 MacArthur Blvd., Springfield.

"I'm humbled and honored," said Pratt, who has more than 28 years of service in the guard. "I did not think 28 years ago I would be at this point."

Illinois has more than 10,000 members in the Army National Guard and 3,000 in the Air National Guard, but there are fewer than 10 who are general officers, said a spokeswoman in Springfield.

"Out of 13,000, that's pretty significant," said Lalita Laksbergs.

"They're just a lot of great Americans," said Pratt of the soldiers he works with.

After enlisting in 1980, he was commissioned as an infantry officer in 1983. He has earned about a dozen U.S., foreign and state decorations.

Pratt, a farmer in civilian life in rural Hopedale, is married with three children. He's originally from Armington.

Pratt has been a joint task commander at many deployment scenes, including Mississippi River flooding last summer and in 1993, the Illinois River flooding in 1995, and in Decatur in the aftermath of a 2006 ice storm that caused massive blackouts in many communities.

Pratt has been overseas for training in Ukraine and Poland.

He's also been stationed with guard units in Bloomington, Peoria, Decatur, Urbana and Springfield and now is with a unit based in Chicago.